“Brazilians need to be studied” is a frequent phrase in political speeches, social media comments and street corner conversations. How can a people with so many needs also have an enormous capacity to laugh at themselves and find a way out of everything?
In his new book, “Sofrendo Feliz da Vida” (editor MM), he tries to follow the motto to the letter and will “study” what really exists in the cliché that Brazilians always find a way to survive the inclement weather of everyday life. .
“We have no shortage of problems. We are a poor country and we are among the eight most socially unequal nations in the world”, says Figueiredo. “However, in the two best-known international happiness rankings, we have a prominent position”, he adds.
The author refers to the Global Happiness, which named Brazil as the fifth happiest country in the world, and the World Happiness Report, in which the country appears in 49th place, a much better position than its
“Are we tens of millions of naive Alices seeing wonders in a country so full of mishaps and injustices?”, he provokes.
In an attempt to explain the phenomenon, he mixes statistical data with old academic discussions.
For example, he uses Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in which he discusses the concept of “cordiality”. “The cordial Brazilian, deeply emotional, abhors coercion. He is civilized more because he ‘likes’ it than because society establishes that he ‘needs to be'”, theorizes Figueiredo.
He also drinks from the fountain of “Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had already discovered happiness”.
The concept of happiness, says Figueiredo, is something that several authors have tried to define throughout history, starting with the writings of the Greeks Thales of Miletus and Socrates, centuries before Christ.
Common sense would say that happiness has a close correlation with the feeling of well-being: the better the health, education, safety and other indicators, the happier the person feels with life.
The book shows that this is only true to a certain extent, and demonstrates this phenomenon with a survey by the Ipsos institute on the concepts of satisfaction and happiness in different countries.
Brazilians were criticized by the people who said they were happier in life than satisfied with the conditions of their daily lives, a difference of 16 percentage points.
In comparison, in the USA this range is 5 points, and just 1 point on average for the locations surveyed. In other words, the world follows the logic that anyone who is satisfied with their life also claims to be a happy person, but Brazil does not. “We live badly and we feel good”, summarizes the author.
At this point, Figueiredo risks cultural hypotheses to define the situation. To do this, he uses an amusing arsenal of public and private anecdotes in different areas, from
Figueiredo, at the end of the work, enters into the spirit of self-irony and surrenders to the difficulty of explaining the Brazilian spirit in a scientific way. “Why are Brazilians happy? Because they are happy. Period.”
