Quality Of Life In Usa Vs. Argentina

[rickulivi]

One of our members, who was very popular on this forum, is back in the States and happy with his situation, and I am very happy for him. However, he has written several posts where he decides that the quality of life is better in the USA because of the ease with which materialistic goals are achieved: he was able to furnish his apartment for little, found a great job, leased a car, etc., etc. In other words, he seems to be defining quality of life by the ease in which materialistic objectives are reached.

Perhaps he is right. I am not an expert on the definition of quality of life, but I do understand happiness, and I am not sure that is completely related to the achievement of materialistic goals. If you define quality of life as the amount of joy and happiness you derive in life, then perhaps materialism loses its importance. Therefore, whereas one might achieve more materialistic goals in life in the USA, one may not be happier.

I just returned from a two week trip to Santa Cruz, Bolivia where you can witness degrading poverty. Yet, you find people happy everywhere. One day I was walking around a "mercado", which is not a supermarket but more like a feria, and two young girls were holding hands and walking together with big smiles in their faces. As I watched that, two other girls were jumping rope, well, not rope because they did not have that luxury, but using a sweater as a rope and jumping. They were having so much fun and seemed to happy.

I stayed at a house where a 13 year old girl works fulltime as a cleaner. Please, no comment on this issue; it's a sad reality (she left her house in the highlands urged by her mom who was afraid she would get raped by her stepfather). One day she burned her arm with an iron, and had an ugly red mark. This girl has no money in the world and works six days a week as a live in helper. You know what. She had a permanent smile on her face. And when I left, she gave me one of the warmest hugs I have ever received. I am sure she is super lonely, very afraid, broke, and has few chances of achieving any materialistic goals, but, in her own way, I felt she was happy.

In sum, let's not fall in the trap of defining quality of life by how many dollars we have in our pockets, or what our spending power is, or what goods we have accumulated. I think there are other ways to measure quality of life. Are you loved in life? Do you love someone? Do you have a chance to express your love to the same person that loves you? Are you healthy?

How do you define quality of life? How is your quality of life?

 

[RodalfoWalsh]

I stayed at a house where a 13 year old girl works fulltime as a cleaner. Please, no comment on this issue; it's a sad reality (she left her house in the highlands urged by her mom who was afraid she would get raped by her stepfather). One day she burned her arm with an iron, and had an ugly red mark. This girl has no money in the world and works six days a week as a live in helper. You know what. She had a permanent smile on her face. And when I left, she gave me one of the warmest hugs I have ever received. I am sure she is super lonely, very afraid, broke, and has few chances of achieving any materialistic goals, but, in her own way, I felt she was happy.

Simms is that you?

 

[Ceviche]

Rickullivi

Loved yr post.

Thats the reason I live and will continue to live in South America.

 

[mc kenna]

Not having to wake up to do a job i don't like for somebody i don't know is good enough for me... oh and not having to have soup because i'm all grown up now and i do what ever i want
Money? i don't need no stinkin' money to be happy

 

[ElQueso]

Quality of life certainly doesn't equate to happiness by itself, and without happiness, you aren't going to have much quality of life either, I would agree, no matter how many material things you have.

I'm happier here than I was in the States. I had a huge house in a nice neighborhood, three car garage with two nice autos and the third space had my wood shop. But I was miserable. It had little to do with the US itself, although there were some things about my home country that bugged me at the time. My unhappiness, rather, had to do with the miserable person I'd married almost 20 years previously, and the way I was raised to honor my commitments kept me there until I felt I was dying. I still liked my house and my cars, but those were tools to give me a more comfortable life, not a better life.

My wife's family, as many here know, are from Paraguay. They are very poor. Their parents don't read (they don't even speak Spanish). When I met my wife and we went to visit her family in Paraguay, my heart wrenched at the way they lived. They were reasonably happy because they had each other - but it was practically all they had. They were very ignorant. Their mantra was "don't dream too high". Literally.

All but one of her brothers came here to look for work because of the poverty in Paraguay, eventually taking a cue from my wife.

Three of her sisters live with us so they can go to school and learn and hopefully have what they consider a better future, and two more back home, who are too young, will most likely do the same at some point in the future. I am very happy, even though I don't have as much stuff as i did in the States - but we live very well here, also. They are also very happy because they have opportunities that they didn't have back home, and that they wouldn't have if i wasn't working hard to make sure they had those opportunities.

While being happy back home, they were also very worried most of the time. They often didn't know when they were going to be able to buy food to supplement the small amount they could grow for themselves. They rarely had meat because as cheap as it was in Paraguay, they couldn't afford it. The youngest kids wore rags that were handed down from the oldest, which were handed down from the parents. They rarely had shoes to wear. They went to school in a two-room school house where the teachers taught that mermaids were real and it's OK if we destroy our planet because Mars has plenty of air, water and plants.

They were surrounded by ignorance.

Children in Paraguay as young as 11 have babies, which is reasonably rare, but my girls know a lot of girls who get pregnant at 13 and 14. Invalids are often treated with contempt. People can't read and write and get screwed by others who lord it over them all the time.

Indeed, people with a low quality of life, at least in many circumstances, often raise children as a means for retirement. My wife's family is working on breaking that cycle because in reality, the strong obligation that goes with such a low quality of life, even with happiness, often puts the children in a position of near slavery to support their family (their words, my feelings).

I was taught the opposite, right or wrong. I was taught that a parent should sacrifice for his or her children to give them a better quality of life, and a better chance at happiness. That actually makes me happy, seeing first my kids graduate and move into life, and now my brothers- and sisters-in-law having a chance to pull themselves out of debilitating poverty and ignorance, while showing them that they can have a good quality of life as well as be happy.

I don't see why people shouldn't aim to be both happy and have a good quality of life. I would agree that over-reaching may be detrimental to happiness while trying to achieve quality of life and if the two are in conflict, it's a zero-sum game at best. But just as poor people find happiness in their lives, worrying from day to day how they are going to survive, people who have money and work hard can also find happiness in their lives even though they also race to accumulate more things.

"Noble poverty" really doesn't exist, at least not very often, in reality. Happiness is not a function of what you have or don't have, but rather what you make of life with what you do have.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Quality of life certainly doesn't equate to happiness by itself, and without happiness, you aren't going to have much quality of life either, I would agree, no matter how many material things you have.

I'm happier here than I was in the States. I had a huge house in a nice neighborhood, three car garage with two nice autos and the third space had my wood shop. But I was miserable. It had little to do with the US itself, although there were some things about my home country that bugged me at the time. My unhappiness, rather, had to do with the miserable person I'd married almost 20 years previously, and the way I was raised to honor my commitments kept me there until I felt I was dying. I still liked my house and my cars, but those were tools to give me a more comfortable life, not a better life.

My wife's family, as many here know, are from Paraguay. They are very poor. Their parents don't read (they don't even speak Spanish). When I met my wife and we went to visit her family in Paraguay, my heart wrenched at the way they lived. They were reasonably happy because they had each other - but it was practically all they had. They were very ignorant. Their mantra was "don't dream too high". Literally.

All but one of her brothers came here to look for work because of the poverty in Paraguay, eventually taking a cue from my wife.

Three of her sisters live with us so they can go to school and learn and hopefully have what they consider a better future, and two more back home, who are too young, will most likely do the same at some point in the future. I am very happy, even though I don't have as much stuff as i did in the States - but we live very well here, also. They are also very happy because they have opportunities that they didn't have back home, and that they wouldn't have if i wasn't working hard to make sure they had those opportunities.

While being happy back home, they were also very worried most of the time. They often didn't know when they were going to be able to buy food to supplement the small amount they could grow for themselves. They rarely had meat because as cheap as it was in Paraguay, they couldn't afford it. The youngest kids wore rags that were handed down from the oldest, which were handed down from the parents. They rarely had shoes to wear. They went to school in a two-room school house where the teachers taught that mermaids were real and it's OK if we destroy our planet because Mars has plenty of air, water and plants.

They were surrounded by ignorance.

Children in Paraguay as young as 11 have babies, which is reasonably rare, but my girls know a lot of girls who get pregnant at 13 and 14. Invalids are often treated with contempt. People can't read and write and get screwed by others who lord it over them all the time.

Indeed, people with a low quality of life, at least in many circumstances, often raise children as a means for retirement. My wife's family is working on breaking that cycle because in reality, the strong obligation that goes with such a low quality of life, even with happiness, often puts the children in a position of near slavery to support their family (their words, my feelings).

I was taught the opposite, right or wrong. I was taught that a parent should sacrifice for his or her children to give them a better quality of life, and a better chance at happiness. That actually makes me happy, seeing first my kids graduate and move into life, and now my brothers- and sisters-in-law having a chance to pull themselves out of debilitating poverty and ignorance, while showing them that they can have a good quality of life as well as be happy.

I don't see why people shouldn't aim to be both happy and have a good quality of life. I would agree that over-reaching may be detrimental to happiness while trying to achieve quality of life and if the two are in conflict, it's a zero-sum game at best. But just as poor people find happiness in their lives, worrying from day to day how they are going to survive, people who have money and work hard can also find happiness in their lives even though they also race to accumulate more things.

"Noble poverty" really doesn't exist, at least not very often, in reality. Happiness is not a function of what you have or don't have, but rather what you make of life with what you do have.

Total contentment at the Gulch, then...

 

[ElQueso]

Total contentment would be hyperbole, I do believe.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Total contentment would be hyperbole, I do believe.

Meanwhile, libertarian paradise lost: https://twitter.com/fmanjoo/status/613523339974324224

 

[Ceviche]

delete

 

[camel]

I've seen it defined as follows:

happiness = outcome - expectations

"quality of life" seems harder to define. In fact, I think people have gone crazy trying to define "quality".