{"id":966,"date":"2014-01-13T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T12:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/where-life-has-meaning-poor-religious-countries.html"},"modified":"2014-01-13T12:33:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T12:33:00","slug":"where-life-has-meaning-poor-religious-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/where-life-has-meaning-poor-religious-countries.html","title":{"rendered":"Where Life Has Meaning: Poor, Religious Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Much\u00a0ink<\/a>,\u00a0film<\/a>, and many ones and zeros have been spilled on the topic of how to be happy lately. Science has given us some clues, often subdividing \u201chappiness\u201d into smaller parts: the importance of\u00a0relationships<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0social connection<\/a>, the positive effects of\u00a0optimism<\/a>. This sort of research gets a lot of attention when it comes out, as unhappy or even just vaguely dissatisfied people clamor for a fix. Maybe if we can unravel all the threads of happiness\u2019s snarled tapestry and see how they fit together, we\u2019ll finally be able to weave our own lives into a reasonable facsimile thereof.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We\u2019ve seen before that perhaps the most important thread\u2014more important than diet or exercise or the easy but often-unfulfilling happiness of a booze-soaked evening\u2014is the feeling that\u00a0your life means something<\/a>, that you have purpose. How to get that, of course, is another knot to untangle.<\/span><\/div>\n

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A\u00a0recent study in\u00a0Psychological Science<\/em><\/a>\u00a0takes a global look at the quest for meaning, analyzing data from the Gallup World Poll to determine where people feel meaning, and how they found it. The survey data comes from 132 countries in 2007\u2014the researchers specifically looked at self-reported meaning in life, religiosity, fertility rates, GDP, and suicide rates (from the World Health Organization).<\/span><\/div>\n

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Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much\u00a0ink,\u00a0film, and many ones and zeros have been spilled on the topic of how to be happy lately. Science has given us some clues, often subdividing \u201chappiness\u201d into smaller parts: the importance of\u00a0relationships\u00a0and\u00a0social connection, the positive effects of\u00a0optimism. This sort of research gets a lot of attention when it comes out, as unhappy or even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere Life Has Meaning: Poor, Religious Countries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Much ink, film, and many ones and zeros have been spilled on the topic of how to be happy lately. 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