True Patriot Love - Canada & The World Happiness Report ft. John Helliwell

00:00:00.000 How do people define what it means to be happy?

00:00:02.840 According to the Webster Dictionary, they say happiness is defined as a state of well-being and contentment.

00:00:08.880 Now, how someone determines their state of well-being and contentment, well, that varies widely from person to person.

00:00:14.060 For me, it's the simple things that make me happy.

00:00:16.940 Listening to my family and friends laugh, drinking coffee, walking my dog, playing hockey,

00:00:22.380 spending time in nature, spending quality time with my partner, laughing at silly movies,

00:00:26.640 And, well, my buddy's sending me not-safe-for-work golf videos.

00:00:30.120 Don't judge me.

00:00:30.780 But all of it makes me happy.

00:00:32.620 And that's the subject of today, the World Happiness Report.

00:00:40.540 All right.

00:00:41.260 Well, to talk more about it, I am thrilled to be joined by John Hallowell,

00:00:44.580 the professor emeritus at UBC and a distinguished fellow at CIFAR,

00:00:49.100 an officer of the Order of Canada.

00:00:51.020 And John has edited the famous World Happiness Report since its inception in 2012.

00:00:56.180 and joins us on TPL Media.

00:00:58.000 John, how are you, sir?

00:00:59.220 Very well.

00:01:00.080 Happy to be here.

00:01:01.480 It's a pleasure.

00:01:02.520 A lot of Canadians were very intrigued with your most recent work.

00:01:06.160 In 2013, Canada ranked sixth on the happiness report.

00:01:10.720 I think most Canadians would think, oh, that makes sense.

00:01:13.520 So this year, when Canada ranked 25th,

00:01:16.060 there was a lot of people who were quite shocked at that steep drop.

00:01:19.620 Why such a drop from number six in 2013 to 25 this year, John?

00:01:25.240 Good question.

00:01:25.880 still trying to figure it out. It's not been in one year, it's been a gradual process

00:01:34.260 over those years so that there's never been a move up except by one or two. It's been a steady

00:01:43.720 decline as others have come up. The thing we emphasized in this year's report is showing

00:01:51.800 the extent to which the drops in Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand were there

00:02:00.480 for the population as a whole, but were dominated by those under 25. So it's the youth populations

00:02:08.320 especially that have become less happy, and we're busy trying to unpack that.

00:02:13.880 So which of the countries where they're under 25 are gaining in happiness over the last few years

00:02:19.560 the trends you're noticing well um most of them if you take 100 and the countries we can

00:02:28.280 get their values at the beginning of the survey and look at 2023 to 2025 say how much have they

00:02:35.400 changed uh there are 136 countries this is now for the young people and 80 of them have had

00:02:43.080 significant increases so most of the world's countries have actually the young people have

00:02:47.560 got happier there are a bunch maybe 50 that have had significant drops uh and canada united states

00:02:56.280 australia new zealand great britain and some other western developed countries have had the biggest

00:03:04.120 falls uh so they had that list of 136 uh canada would be 133 so the only bigger drops or drops

00:03:13.880 it is. Now, I'm not saying our actual levels of happiness are as low as those in Afghanistan and 0.99

00:03:20.600 Lebanon, but those are countries who share with us a really big drop from then to now.

00:03:26.760 And I guess that's why it had such a visceral reaction, John. Your latest report is Canadians

00:03:31.960 have a feeling that we're a happy country, especially in the world rankings, and it kind

00:03:37.320 of shocked us a little bit coast to coast. Whoa, whoa, 25? When did that happen? What happened?

00:03:43.240 And I think a lot of Canadians are still trying to digest that, wait a sec, we're not as happy as we thought we were.

00:03:49.680 And as you alluded to, other countries are getting and gaining happiness.

00:03:54.940 Well, it bears thinking about, and it clearly has to do with what we hear and how we react to it.

00:04:06.000 so that the kind of news we're hearing

00:04:09.040 about how we feel about ourselves,

00:04:11.240 how we feel about our country,

00:04:13.060 how we feel about our neighbors,

00:04:14.980 how we feel about our institutions

00:04:17.360 are becoming more negative.

00:04:19.060 Now, there's a side twist to this

00:04:21.820 that my colleague Heifeng Wang and I

00:04:24.580 have been spending more time on

00:04:26.700 and then doing some work subsequent to the report

00:04:30.700 showing how in Canada especially,

00:04:33.300 but in also to some extent in other countries these worries that are fueling a lower life

00:04:41.380 evaluation relate to will i have a job in the future uh will i be able to get secure housing

00:04:49.460 how how what does my life plan look like and so in particular housing pressures

00:04:55.700 have been bigger in Canada than other countries.

00:05:00.700 And some of our data says that almost half this drop

00:05:06.320 for the young can be explained by these worries

00:05:09.600 about material circumstances.

00:05:13.000 Now, you don't wanna blame all that

00:05:15.600 on the material circumstances themselves,

00:05:18.060 although that's where they start.

00:05:20.740 Part of it is how people feel about it.

00:05:23.580 so as we often say in the science of happiness you don't control the circumstances you find

00:05:29.900 yourselves in but what you do control is how you react to them a great point and and it's

00:05:37.500 something i know as my partner and i we have daughters in their early mid-20s they are in

00:05:41.900 that wheelhouse of what you talked about trying to find their way in their career where are they

00:05:47.100 going to live can they afford something while trying to pay for food and their cell phone and

00:05:52.780 car insurance it all adds up and they looked at their parents and grandparents and saw that they

00:05:58.620 could get a place to live and own a piece of canada and raise a family and they do have

00:06:03.260 concerns like the hundreds of thousands young canadians john if they're ever going to be able

00:06:07.900 to do the same thing that's part of it for sure uh if you then take a look from botswana and say

00:06:16.060 what are you Canadians worried about then that's what you have to do in a sense is to say well

00:06:26.380 we've got lots going on part of it is how you think about things we're having for example families

00:06:32.460 held together in housing not because they want to be but because they can't find another place to

00:06:38.460 live and our colleagues in Latin America say in Latin America we have multi-generational families

00:06:46.060 much much more than you do but we have them because we want to have them not because we're

00:06:51.420 forced to have them so a lot depends on how you react to the situation that for one reason or

00:06:58.540 another you find yourself in and we did find that people are very good that way that often you think

00:07:06.620 you take away what's really important like having a house with a front door in a yard in the middle

00:07:13.260 of a big city and they say that ain't going to happen so easily anymore uh so how we recast life

00:07:20.700 so that we can do well we were astonished and indeed the world was astonished that covid did

00:07:27.100 not drive down life evaluations around the world you say how could that be we've we've torn people

00:07:34.220 we've had a lot of people dying we've torn people's professional lives apart we've taken them out of

00:07:40.540 school, no way they're going to get to Machu Picchu, and yet their life evaluations didn't

00:07:48.680 fall. What did happen is that people could pivot, and at that time, social media, which

00:07:55.800 had been indeed part of the explanation for this decline in youth happiness, during COVID,

00:08:02.420 social media became social media. They were what people could turn to. For people like

00:08:08.880 you and me, our ability to shift from an online mode to a Zoomy mode kept us doing more or less

00:08:18.380 what we were doing differently. And people started appearing in square screens instead of

00:08:24.280 in front of you. It wasn't as good, but it was a really powerful switch. And that shift then

00:08:35.180 caused people to rethink their lives. And so we found that the frequency of generosity to strangers

00:08:44.120 rose by 20% during that period all over the world. And you say, well, how was that? Well,

00:08:50.880 because people weren't going on trips. They weren't going to the office. They were walking

00:08:55.440 around their neighborhood and they were meeting their neighbors and they were doing things for

00:09:00.940 of their neighbors who couldn't get out and so on.

00:09:03.440 And that made them feel good about their neighbors,

00:09:06.060 about themselves, and that that ability to flip and react.

00:09:11.240 And we've seen it, of course,

00:09:12.300 with natural disasters and other things,

00:09:14.280 but COVID showed us that people can find themselves

00:09:17.580 in very difficult circumstances

00:09:19.720 and maintain their life evaluations and say,

00:09:23.060 because I know I'm doing something positively

00:09:26.440 to make the best of the situation,

00:09:29.180 then that's what empowers my feeling.

00:09:32.160 So I think it's that doing things with confidence,

00:09:37.080 even in difficult circumstances,

00:09:39.220 is what on average the Canadian young

00:09:42.080 are not finding themselves able to do at the moment.

00:09:45.960 And what will turn the switch to make them say,

00:09:49.500 well, let's get on with building a better world,

00:09:52.400 not just complaining as it were

00:09:54.540 about the history we've been given,

00:09:57.220 but trying to do better.

00:10:01.140 I will give the Canadian young some credit

00:10:03.900 for trying to find their own happiness,

00:10:06.320 even with their other struggles, John.

00:10:08.360 Knowing you were gonna be joining me,

00:10:10.540 a number of young Canadians, early mid-20s,

00:10:13.400 had some comments about what happiness means to them.

00:10:17.500 Cassandra in Ottawa is hanging out with her mini-Dachshund,

00:10:20.820 spending time with her friends.

00:10:22.260 Adrienne at Edmonton is spending time

00:10:24.960 with her friends and animals,

00:10:26.340 and being in nature, Patricia and Perry sound,

00:10:29.580 her cat or husband, nature, Brady in Northern Ontario,

00:10:33.620 it's sitting by a lake in peace and quiet.

00:10:36.320 And I find the theme of nature had a real underlying tone

00:10:40.300 through all these comments from young Canadians saying,

00:10:42.600 I don't have this and this,

00:10:44.220 but I can get out in nature in Canada.

00:10:45.780 And that seems to kind of tie them all together,

00:10:47.860 no matter where you live in the country.

00:10:50.120 That's very powerful and interesting to get that

00:10:54.160 from the ground evidence, one of the issues

00:10:58.100 what people can note that the Nordic countries

00:11:01.420 are the happiest countries.

00:11:04.040 Finland that was below Canada at the beginning

00:11:06.440 is now for the last half dozen years or more

00:11:10.020 been the happiest countries.

00:11:11.840 And one of the things that our Finnish friends talk about

00:11:15.040 when asked about this is this connection with nature

00:11:18.580 that you're talking about.

00:11:20.380 And the Finns actually spend more time in nature

00:11:25.280 than the other Nordic countries.

00:11:27.440 And it's in a less material way so that you find

00:11:31.140 that it's not the grand summer cottage.

00:11:35.600 It's the small thing by a small lake,

00:11:40.760 camping or whatever,

00:11:42.960 but it's the chance to get out in nature

00:11:45.360 and most importantly with family and friends.

00:11:48.400 And I'll bet the people you've been hearing from, and we found this from other research, to do these things in a lovely natural environment is wonderful.

00:11:58.620 But it's even better if you're doing it with others.

00:12:02.820 And I'm just alluding to a quote you had from about seven years ago, John, from one of your reports about Finland and the Finns.

00:12:09.720 And I thought it was interesting that the immigrants to Finland were the happiest immigrants in the world.

00:12:14.680 It's not about Finnish DNA, but the way they lived in those countries.

00:12:18.800 So it seems to me that the immigrants to Finland adapted to that Finnish mindset of being happy in nature,

00:12:25.680 and then they themselves became happy.

00:12:28.920 Yes, and nature's a good part of it.

00:12:32.400 There's another part that it's immediately apparent.

00:12:36.460 Well, wallets have been dropped all over the world,

00:12:39.540 and they're returned even more in Finland than any other place.

00:12:45.760 And that environment of feeling at ease and safe in that environment

00:12:50.240 is something that immigrants who come from,

00:12:53.520 and in the Finnish case, a lot of the immigrants are in fact refugees. 1.00

00:12:57.120 They're coming from a pretty awful environment

00:13:00.220 and to find that the world is a different place and can be a different place. 0.99

00:13:05.220 Of course, the moral from it all is not to move to Finland. 1.00

00:13:07.820 but simply to act more like the Finns do,

00:13:12.320 as indeed in Canada, we used to do 20 years ago. 0.99

00:13:15.420 I think there's been some drop in that trust in institutions

00:13:21.820 and in pride in what we do, especially in Canada.

00:13:27.780 So that idea of modest, but deep caring for each other

00:13:32.780 deep caring for each other that we all treasure.

00:13:37.480 People are perhaps less confidence of that

00:13:40.180 than they used to be.

00:13:41.420 And I guess the nature of our evidence is

00:13:43.720 they should be more confident.

00:13:45.580 Their wallets really will be returned.

00:13:47.920 Think better of the people around you

00:13:50.060 and that'll lead you to feel better about yourself,

00:13:53.380 but it'll lead you to connect more.

00:13:55.800 And it's these connections at the personal level

00:13:58.700 that are what drive happiness much more

00:14:01.020 than these material issues.

00:14:03.800 And it's funny because I also received some messages from that, you know,

00:14:07.340 those Gen Z millennials, the early, mid late twenties,

00:14:11.260 and they were all commenting and saying,

00:14:13.140 looking forward to hear what you have to say,

00:14:15.240 but they realize that I may not have money for this and this,

00:14:19.120 but they've decided to start doing crafts involved and taking up hobbies that

00:14:25.220 they wouldn't have thought of that. And then they,

00:14:27.800 they said they ended up enjoying it and it made them happy.

00:14:31.020 Absolutely. Well, I mean, you think about it, it's kind of natural. If you're not just

00:14:36.380 sort of following by rote, but thinking yourself of something you can do with others. And part

00:14:42.380 of the magic is doing things with others for others. So it's this work together to make

00:14:49.380 life better for other people. It's the magic sauce when you're trying to help people to

00:14:55.460 feel better about themselves and the world is not to be doing it for themselves, but

00:15:00.220 to be doing it for somebody else it tends to feed back i i do hear from a lot of the people the

00:15:07.680 young people doing the research that getting a job is tough and getting a job you like is tough

00:15:12.920 and it's almost you have to self mentally that you may not like this job now but you're paying

00:15:20.860 the bills and you may find something you like down the road which will make you happier yeah well 0.98

00:15:26.980 Well, it's been true, of course, of standard way of the immigrant experience in Canada,

00:15:33.540 and all of us are immigrants at one century or another, that you typically enter the new society

00:15:43.160 not caring much and end up having to learn your way into a new environment, physical environment,

00:15:50.940 social environment, job environment. And the mindset with how you do that to say that I'm not

00:15:57.820 getting real enough credit for what I already know or my experience or so on. But simply to say,

00:16:05.300 wait a minute, I'm learning about something new. And I can all sooner or later, I'll find a way to

00:16:11.220 use those talents I have and so on. So it once again, it's the reaction to what you get. And one

00:16:17.960 the reasons why immigrants to Canada as well as to Finland end up moving quite quickly up to the

00:16:24.600 Canadian levels of happiness is that they do have their eyes open and are looking for ways to

00:16:34.440 work within the system and to build a better system. And ultimately John doesn't that make

00:16:39.080 this country a better place? Absolutely, no question. A country only becomes a better place

00:16:45.480 and seed to be a better place by us is if we are actively working to make it so it's not going to

00:16:52.360 be given to us on a plate if it was then we wouldn't be happy right i mean nobody wants to be

00:16:59.000 on the dole uh in other words somebody else providing uh things for them they want to be

00:17:06.360 able and willing to provide things for other people i know part of the happiness report

00:17:12.040 is frustration for the under 35 finding a place to live but i'm finding from some of the research

00:17:17.880 i've been doing is they're not looking at big huge homes and that sort of mindset has changed

00:17:23.960 there's a lot of couples without kids or maybe just one kid or they're they've got roommates so

00:17:29.960 the idea of a smaller home or living in a four plex or six plex or an apartment is much more

00:17:36.120 common now with young people than maybe the older generation so they almost change their mindset of

00:17:41.160 the kind of place that would make them happy and ultimately i think that would help the overall

00:17:45.640 happiness of the country john absolutely getting back to what we were saying before that you you

00:17:52.520 can't yourself change the housing situation or anything or the history but you can change how

00:17:59.560 you react to it and the and the answer is just like with colin you find things that you you you

00:18:05.800 can enjoy and do especially for others and you find gosh that was fun if mark carney called you

00:18:15.720 today and said john i i'd like to see canada top 10 and happiness again give me some advice what

00:18:20.600 would your two or three top tips be for prime minister carney to get us back up the ranking

00:18:25.560 from 25 back up the top 10. well uh part of it is and he's been quite explicit about this

00:18:33.960 um you need to have a sense of purpose both at the individual level and the national level

00:18:40.840 and so canadians want to be proud of each other and they want to be proud of their governments

00:18:47.640 and so it's a question of and one of the things people don't like is to live in a fractured

00:18:54.200 society one in which people are at odds with one another there's been quite a lot of oppositional

00:19:01.560 cultures going on on campuses, in schools, in workplaces and in national politics as well

00:19:11.560 that's focused on the negatives and the opposing negatives and happiness is built on creating

00:19:19.560 the positives and the linking narratives and he's been quite explicit about the value of doing that

00:19:26.200 and you can see there's a common thread in what he's done. He's not unaware of this research. In

00:19:32.440 fact, he's been interested in happiness research for the last 25 years, so he knows it. In fact,

00:19:40.120 I think it was he, when he was Sherpa for Canada, had me invited in 2008 to speak to the G20

00:19:48.040 deputies in Adelaide before a G20 meeting in Australia about precisely this. What can we learn

00:19:54.840 from the science of happiness about how governments should be doing things and that

00:20:00.280 ended up being enabling people to open doors to each other and to together construct a happier

00:20:07.480 world. Because I think we we should give young people more credit than we do as a society that

00:20:13.960 they're not overly greedy and they don't want yachts and huge homes they just want good basic

00:20:18.600 things enjoy the nature of Canada and be proud of what they do as I you know if we can provide them

00:20:24.120 that that would help yes and and once again it's not a question of anybody blaming anybody

00:20:33.080 it's each individual saying what's on my agenda what can i do and of course often those of us in

00:20:40.440 the happiness space are saying well the first thing you can do is make sure at the end of the

00:20:48.680 day, you can say, I've had five or 10 interactions with other people, I've deliberately entered them.

00:20:57.240 But I want this to be one where we both go away feeling happy that we've spent that time together.

00:21:03.240 So whether it's what you're buying in a store, the people you meet on the street, what happens

00:21:09.160 in the elevator, all of these opportunities to create positive connections. And that's where

00:21:15.080 happiness is built really it's how you feel about your workmates and your neighbors and

00:21:19.720 and how you feel walking down the street that each one of us has the power to create that

00:21:25.480 and i used to marvel at my wife millie that she had a sort of happiness space

00:21:31.480 that followed her wherever she went and i thought it was unique to her personality it is

00:21:36.760 but and then i said what is she doing how is she how does she do that and it turns out she has this

00:21:43.880 inherent curiosity about other people genuine interest and so she's always

00:21:50.520 making sure uh instinctively and immediately to make social connections with people and she knows

00:21:58.120 everybody's children and relatives and histories wherever she goes and that is something we can all

00:22:06.280 do so it's it's where it's a finished thing if you like the fins don't do that as much as they do

00:22:12.280 other things, but that kind of thing any of us can do. We can warm up and improve

00:22:19.960 the day-to-day life in the streets. Ask yourself, are there more places where going on to,

00:22:29.240 in Vancouver's case, it's the Lions Gate Bridge, the fact that seamlessly everybody just goes one

00:22:35.160 after the other. There's no pushing, there's no shoving. People have a quiet pride in living in

00:22:41.160 in a world where people do care about each other

00:22:44.680 and care about each other and respecting them

00:22:47.660 and going away with the traffic wave, not a traffic finger.

00:22:52.220 If the traffic finger, everybody goes away

00:22:54.920 at the end of the day less happy

00:22:56.440 than they were at the beginning.

00:22:58.100 With the traffic wave, everybody goes away happier.

00:23:01.140 Well, that's got a lot to be said for a wave.

00:23:04.260 If you want a national anecdote on that,

00:23:07.260 anecdote on that when I was talking about this many years ago in Halifax I asked the audience

00:23:15.300 what would you think if somebody gave you a finger in traffic and as Bob Putnam says that's

00:23:22.220 a technical term but most people understand it and the audience was quiet for a moment and then

00:23:28.360 a fellow put in handy he said I he said that would be someone from out of town

00:23:32.600 there's a lot of truth to that i have family in the maritimes there's a lot of truth to that john

00:23:40.840 and that's that tells you that especially in big cities where people are otherwise not so

00:23:50.440 positively regularly continually connections we have to actually make an effort to create

00:23:57.280 small communities within large communities and make them work for each other. So it really means

00:24:04.600 having these built-in politenesses and generosities become natural. So it takes a little

00:24:11.020 pushing and it takes a little bit of saying, hey, wait a minute, I'm not going to overreact here.

00:24:16.580 I'm going to think about the future and I'm going to make sure if something went wrong,

00:24:21.820 It was, it was seen to be my fault, not your fault, et cetera.

00:24:26.340 And it's funny you say that because I've had those experiences with my wife at sporting events, finding out the people you sit beside at music festivals or arts or cultural festivals and you end up meeting and finding out about people like, well, they're really cool.

00:24:40.140 And it turns out to be a better experience than I envisioned going into it.

00:24:44.960 Exactly.

00:24:46.160 And exactly.

00:24:47.660 Exactly. And if you don't go in, everything's better if you're doing it with a friend.

00:24:53.240 But the point is you say, I'm going to be in a lot of situations where I didn't know these people,

00:24:59.060 so I'm going to make them friends. And you find out that's strikingly easy to do.

00:25:05.780 The number of positive interactions that can become really interesting very quickly is surprising.

00:25:12.120 and i would imagine too i think it's i would think it's natural john that in your 20s and

00:25:18.360 your 30s and your 40s and whatnot there's different stages of your life where

00:25:22.280 the definition of happiness evolves or changes over time yes there's a lot of interesting research

00:25:30.120 on that that we discovered there used to be not the young sort of drops or the least happy group

00:25:35.960 in the country but before that there was kind of a u-shaped and happiness you start out young

00:25:41.080 and you get into midlife pressures of one kind and another you're less happy and then you become

00:25:45.960 happier towards the end there was always this puzzle why were people getting happier as they

00:25:50.600 got older and yes there were fewer pressures but on the other hand their health wasn't as good and

00:25:56.200 their social circles became smaller but they were still happier and the answer is that everybody

00:26:03.000 starts with what's called a negativity bias you respond to bad news you remember the bad news more

00:26:09.400 than the good news and this was sort of what you call fast brain thinking don't step on snakes

00:26:17.560 that had an evolutionary purpose at one time but it's out of date now because we're operating in

00:26:23.000 a society where you need to cooperate and connect with other people so it really pays to do that

00:26:31.400 so people need to work together and collaboratively i i agree and you had alluded to earlier about

00:26:42.280 how social media played an important role in keeping people happy and connected

00:26:47.640 during covet and i know for my friends i have a group of friends in different provinces in the 0.59

00:26:52.600 country and i'll admit we send each other stupid videos on instagram where hockey and golf or just 0.87

00:26:58.440 you know being a dad and it makes us laugh and brings us happiness but that's the good of it but 0.97

00:27:03.400 i i find for a lot of young people social media can be a bad thing and a negative thing especially

00:27:09.320 in late teens early 20s trying to give you an unrealistic view of what you should live like to

00:27:14.520 be happy and and i and that's something we have to figure out in canada to make sure young people

00:27:19.560 aren't affected negatively by the computers and the technology all around them it's true and i

00:27:26.440 I, when thinking about this,

00:27:28.980 well, we've been studying it a lot for this year's report.

00:27:32.640 And one of the things we looked at

00:27:35.140 is a sense of school belonging,

00:27:36.960 which is after all about the connections

00:27:38.620 of the sort we've been talking about, right?

00:27:41.980 Is school home.

00:27:43.440 And it turns out that's really important

00:27:45.660 for how students feel about their lives.

00:27:49.560 People who overuse social media

00:27:51.960 tend to be less happy with their lives.

00:27:54.980 but the magnitude of that is only a fifth or a sixth as big as the school belonging so it then

00:28:03.440 leads you to think well what would build school belonging and the answer is doing things with each

00:28:08.760 other for others and so you then say well if we've got a collective problem and surveys among the

00:28:16.640 young suggest they see it as a problem then it's up to them the most effective solutions are going

00:28:24.740 be the ones developed by the kids themselves as to as to thinking of things they could do

00:28:31.940 to stop the worst uses and to create alternatives that have them less on their screens and more with

00:28:39.380 each other and that that's more likely to work than the top-down closing of doors and saying

00:28:46.820 you just can't use these because we did find with social media and most uses of the internet for

00:28:53.220 for reasons we've already talked about,

00:28:55.440 that there is a Goldilocks principle,

00:28:58.060 that some access is better than no access,

00:29:00.800 because it's one more way of connection.

00:29:04.340 But that like a lot of things, too much is too much.

00:29:08.560 And so a blanket ban for those under 16

00:29:11.740 is most unlikely to be the way

00:29:13.880 that produces the most happiness for young people,

00:29:17.240 either now or in their future lives.

00:29:20.020 What you need to do is energize, encourage,

00:29:23.340 enable the young to sit down with each other

00:29:27.300 around the table, real life, and say,

00:29:30.380 let's think of a way in which we can exploit

00:29:33.200 the advantages of social media

00:29:35.560 and protect ourselves mutually from the risks of,

00:29:41.100 it's sort of like social users anonymous.

00:29:44.380 It doesn't mean you have to go off them completely

00:29:46.680 you do with other addictive substances but you learn how to use them more wisely.

00:29:53.640 You know John and I think a lot of young people and my daughters and their extended friends,

00:29:59.640 I wasn't sure when they were teens what they were going to socially get into but both of them in

00:30:05.080 their own way have got quite involved with helping other charitable events, research,

00:30:11.640 walk-a-thons or they're trying to get the word out about social injustice and

00:30:16.860 that's I had nothing to do with it that was all them and all their friends kind

00:30:21.120 of working together and a common goal and I think that goes back to what you

00:30:24.420 said that's a happiness well we have a bunch of people a diverse getting

00:30:29.020 together for a common goal whether it's making sure indigenous Canadians are

00:30:32.640 taken care of or there's research money for cancer and they're just doing like

00:30:37.120 a grassroots thing all on their own. Wonderful. That's the source. And it's happening

00:30:44.320 quite a lot. Maybe part of the issue now is there's been a lot of these common cause things

00:30:50.960 have been objecting to something, opposing something, regretting something, exposing

00:30:56.940 something rather than building something. And among the examples you gave, some of them were

00:31:03.080 in the early truth-telling episode,

00:31:06.640 let's examine the evils of the present and the past.

00:31:11.340 But then it's the constructive part

00:31:16.140 that really produces the happiness.

00:31:18.820 We're not busy investigating the wrongs of the past,

00:31:22.700 we're building the promises of the future.

00:31:25.720 And whatever your interpretation of the past,

00:31:28.580 people can collaborate in having a common view about what will make life together happier in

00:31:36.580 the future. And so that twist to these ventures hasn't fully happened in all walks of life. It

00:31:46.320 certainly hasn't happened on the campuses fully yet. To think of them as places of building

00:31:52.460 happiness rather than uh managing the the characteristics of dispute before i just a few

00:32:00.860 more before we wrap up professor um i think about your work at ubc so you must get feedback from some

00:32:06.220 of the students um obviously there's they're a much different generation what are some of the

00:32:10.940 feedback you're getting from students you work with at ubc about their happiness well i we in

00:32:17.500 our research of one kind another we run across a lot of students a lot of them in their projects

00:32:21.900 we've been looking at in Saskatoon about young students being taught in an elder care facility

00:32:27.980 and that kind of intergenerational link turns out to be really important, really valuable.

00:32:34.380 Unfortunately, it's hard to get that generally done because people are scared about what might

00:32:40.140 go wrong. And universities are increasingly finding themselves risk averse. They don't want

00:32:50.140 things to go wrong so they put up signs about what happened what who you should call when you're in

00:32:55.980 mental distress who you should call if you see uh some kind of abuse going on uh and that leads

00:33:03.420 people to think there's a lot of bad things happening when the sign should read uh here

00:33:09.420 here are the best ways of coming together and joining a group so as you say about it's not

00:33:17.100 about waiting until someone's lonely and then trying to cure it. It's about providing friendships

00:33:23.020 and positive things right at the beginning of that freshman year so that people immediately

00:33:28.780 become engaged. So you don't need a cure for loneliness, you need a vaccine. And the vaccine

00:33:34.860 is a friend. And so we should be thinking more at the universities about this. Second point on the

00:33:42.220 universities is that as in schools as in life people learn faster together than they do separately

00:33:51.740 so it's not a competition to get your answer before the other person gets their answer it's

00:33:57.260 bringing people together to work together to understand something to explain it to build

00:34:02.940 something together because that's what life's going to be about so we should be having a lab

00:34:09.100 in a practical lab in social relations in every class we teach and uh attempt i mean i think i

00:34:17.420 could apply that to adults in the workplace as well part of their work week that would actually

00:34:22.220 help do wouldn't it absolutely um what makes you happy professor uh the more i learn about

00:34:32.380 the possibilities for that we have to create a better world the happier i am obviously because

00:34:39.260 you like to think there's a good way and of course i've learned enough from my wife's spreading of

00:34:46.540 happiness that i'm her student and i go out much more than i used to 25 years ago and actively

00:34:53.900 engage with people uh and it's wonderful and so it's something everybody can do so it makes me

00:35:01.660 happy so i naturally talk about it uh and we can try to convince other people they should give it

00:35:07.740 a go it worked for me so you're obviously a very worthy recipient of the officer of order of canada

00:35:14.060 but you've also in your stellar academic career you've lived in different parts of the world in

00:35:19.020 different cities in different countries now back in ubc back in canada in over the course of time

00:35:27.020 do you have a different appreciation for the country in a view of Canada after all your years

00:35:32.220 of travel and different things you've experienced? Well I've always gone back and forth so that

00:35:37.420 as in a sense Vancouver's always been my home although I was sometimes away for four or five

00:35:41.740 years at a stretch but it's very enriching to actually live in other social spaces other

00:35:50.780 geographic spaces because it leads you to see what is in common and what differs and to

00:36:00.320 gives you new ideas about how to make things better wherever you go.

00:36:06.500 Yeah and you know the best thing about this wonderful conversation we didn't mention Trump

00:36:11.440 we didn't mention America because I think if we focus on Canada and ourselves we can be happy

00:36:16.980 forgetting about some of the noise elsewhere and just thinking about each other John.

00:36:20.780 Absolutely. And it's unfortunately true that with your program as an honorable exception, there are increasingly fewer ways in which young Canadians can learn about themselves and each other.

00:36:39.940 And hence, they have less knowledge about what they can do, less knowledge about what is important and positive about what we have in Canada.

00:36:49.380 And so they then acquire negative images that are essentially driven by other periods of history or other countries.

00:36:57.600 And so we have to somehow make sure that we connect with each other through the modern media in a way that it's always been a struggle for a country.

00:37:08.220 that's geographically north-south pretty thin,

00:37:12.940 right on top of a media-rich southern neighbor.

00:37:18.540 So to establish that and maintain that positive Canadian identity

00:37:23.140 is not becoming easier.

00:37:26.340 So it will require more deliberate attention,

00:37:31.060 starting at the local level.

00:37:33.200 Indeed, I think we learned a lot from you today

00:37:35.080 about waving at people in the car,

00:37:37.800 not giving them finger. It's striking up conversations with people in different scenarios.

00:37:44.120 You might enjoy it more and enjoy the simple things in life and enjoy what Canada has to

00:37:48.400 offer. And then we can see that happiness quotient climb the next time, John. I can't thank you

00:37:53.340 enough for your research and the work you do and some of the themes that you've talked about. It's

00:37:58.360 been greatly appreciated. Thank you. Well, thank you for your interest and thank you for the

00:38:02.900 wisdom you've passed on from the various people you've consulted that's inspiring well they were

00:38:08.020 quite excited to get your feedback they just knowing that they were talking to you but thanks

00:38:11.540 Thanks, John. I appreciate it.

True Patriot Love - May 22, 2026

Canada & The World Happiness Report ft. John Helliwell

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