Happiest Place on Earth

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So my husband and I have been talking about Catholicism and he brought up a point about Scandanavia being the happiest place on earth (he is currently not interested in becoming Catholic and I am); they are largely secular people having been a part of the Catholic church 500 years ago. How can I counter his argument?
 
Where did the spouse ever get the idea that Scandinavia was some kind of utopia?

BTW, “happiest place on earth” is a registered trademark for Disney, and Mickey Mouse would not be pleased if they called themselves that publicly.
 
I am sure from listening to the news and watching a few documentaries.
 
That sort of statement is a measurement of subjective happiness, and probably has far more to do with availability of natural resources and entertainment than actual fulfillment. People in Disneyland are certainly happy, but I doubt any of them would say that their time there is fulfilling.

Catholic happiness is about the true fulfillment that comes from living in God’s light, not fleeting happiness brought about by a lack of hardship.
 
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You can’t argue his way into converting.

Catholicism accepts suffering.
 
Agreed. There is something to be said for not doing that which is expedient, but that which is instead meaningful.
Having our immediate physical needs met is not all that matters. Perhaps because they are more secular, they don’t care as much about the world to come.
 
Yes, I am realizing this. I was just curious on your thoughts.
 
You realize that the population of all of Scandinavia combined-- Denmark (5.6 million), Finland (5.3 million), Iceland (320k), Sweden (5.1 million), and Sweden (9.7 million) (roughly speaking-- a lot of those are rounded up) – is roughly equal to the population of Texas (28.3 million). The City of Los Angeles has a population of almost 4 million. The population of New York City has a population of 8.5 million.

So when you’re talking about “Scandinavians are the happiest people”, you’re talking about (a) five different countries, and (b) not a whole lot of people, who (c) have a tax rate that’s anywhere between 40-60% of your take-home income, and (d) live at latitudes that have precious little sunlight in the winter.

If that’s the recipe for his happiness, maybe y’all can move to the Arctic Circle or something, but Sweden has had a crime wave where five different kinds of crime are on the upswing over the last two years, Iceland is genocide-ing its Downs Babies with a 100% termination rate, the Finnish economy has been shrinking since 2009 (has it improved in the last 2 years?), etc. And those are the headlines that made it on my radar.

They’re not really utopias. But they get put up there as models of socialism which others would like to emulate, because other models, like Venezuela, aren’t good examples at the moment. But people always forget-- when you’re talking about those sorts of countries, you’re talking about the population of a good city, not about ideas that can be successfully sustained by a country of 326 million.
 
midori said:
You realize that the population of all of Scandinavia combined-- Denmark (5.6 million), Finland (5.3 million), Iceland (320k), Sweden (5.1 million), and Sweden (9.7 million) (roughly speaking-- a lot of those are rounded up) – is roughly equal to the population of Texas (28.3 million). The City of Los Angeles has a population of almost 4 million. The population of New York City has a population of 8.5 million.

So when you’re talking about “Scandinavians are the happiest people”, you’re talking about (a) five different countries, and (b) not a whole lot of people, who (c) have a tax rate that’s anywhere between 40-60% of your take-home income, and (d) live at latitudes that have precious little sunlight in the winter.

If that’s the recipe for his happiness, maybe y’all can move to the Arctic Circle or something, but Sweden has had a crime wave where five different kinds of crime are on the upswing over the last two years, Iceland is genocide-ing its Downs Babies with a 100% termination rate, the Finnish economy has been shrinking since 2009 (has it improved in the last 2 years?), etc. And those are the headlines that made it on my radar.

They’re not really utopias. But they get put up there as models of socialism which others would like to emulate, because other models, like Venezuela, aren’t good examples at the moment. But people always forget-- when you’re talking about those sorts of countries, you’re talking about the population of a good city, not about ideas that can be successfully sustained by a country of 326 million.
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This here is why I always laugh when people talk about those places as if they prove socialism can work. They’re talking about taking an experiment that isn’t working all that great on a city level, and applying it to an entire nation.
 
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ProdglArchitect said:
This here is why I always laugh when people talk about those places as if they prove socialism can work. They’re talking about taking an experiment that isn’t working all that great on a city level, and applying it to an entire nation.
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I had seen the headline the other day-- “Chicago Is Considering a Universal Basic Income Experiment”. And I’m like, “Isn’t this the same Chicago that can’t even fund its pension system properly? What are you thinking, Chicago?!”

(Chicago: Population 2.7 million.)

(Ooops, I see I wrote “Sweden” twice up ahead. Norway is 5.2 million, not 5.1 million. The infographic I was using seems to be reflecting 2015 population numbers, not 2016. But Norway is still less than two Chicagos.) 🙂
 
Pleasure is not the same thing as joy.

Pleasure is not the same thing as happiness.
 
I am learning that in most conversations it is often better to ask a lot of questions instead of trying to make the other person understand my own point of view. I am a slow learner. 😉
 
If I were you I wouldn’t believe all these loose, subjective facts. It depends on what angle you look at it.

TBH, these arbitrary labels of PEOPLE drive me nuts! We are all HUMAN, adopted children of God.

I look up to those people who were uneducated and, thorough willingness to work hard, opened a business and moved up in the social foodchain. Those people you can learn from.
 
Why are you trying to counter your husband’s argument?
Happiness in the common use of the word has very little to do with true holiness.
 
Their happiness is only temporary is they are not heading to Heaven. In fact if they are not on the path to Heaven they are only distracting themselves with temporal things that will disappear at death.

What is the point in having the best life on earth possible, (lasting 80 years approx) and then spending billions of years without end in Hell?

Jesus even said this:
‘What profit it a person, if they should gain the whole world, but lose their very own soul?’
 
A statistic we would all be interested in finding out from Jesus would be:
Out of all the nations of the earth, which country has the highest statistics of those who reach Heaven?
 
I would ask him to google:

-The Turin Shroud forensic pollen analysis of the Cia

-the Resurrection evidence of the Shroud of Turin

-the NASA examination of the Shroud of Turin

-the scientific analysis of the Miracle of Laciano in italy

-the final apparition and miracle at Fatima
 
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Limoncello4021 said:
Why are you trying to counter your husband’s argument?
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That’s a good question. Perhaps, I am wanting to walk down this road together, but maybe that is not what I should be desiring. Maybe, I need to just be willing to do this on my own. I came on here to get feedback, expecting my questions to be answered, and what I got was an opportunity to self-reflect, over and over again. Thank you, guys and ladies.
 
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