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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28326 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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I’d be curious to know how representative their sample was. (Were the Palestinians included?)

Usually no, since they're not Israelis.

I’d also want to see where Israel has ranked on that same report in previous years.

Israel places high in all those various happiness surveys, top 10 is common.

Israel has been engaged in a decades-long violent campaign, with periodic mass-casualty events on both sides, against a hostile ethnic group within its own borders.

I actually think that's part of it. Americans and Europeans seem to be obsessing over unsolvable low-stakes nonsense, or making new problems up, or generally complaining about richest-country-in-the-world problems (maybe besides immigration, which is a huge deal your politicians don't seem to be taking seriously enough). Having a war once in a while, and especially one where the population is confident in winning, helps keep things in perspective.

Any country where a full one in four of its citizens is from an ethnolinguistically and religiously different group from the other three is, by definition, not homogenous.

Jews and Arabs are very self-segregated though. Each community lives in their own towns, have their own educational systems, their own religious institutions and even get to apply different religious rules on their own communities. Same goes for the smaller minority groups like Druze or Circassian.

Intra-Jewish political friction does exist, but [EDIT] it doesn't manifest itself in actual IRL day-to-day hostility. [/EDIT]

I wonder how much of Israeli happiness is just that it's a young country? Old people are bitter and cantankerous and it's a self-reinforcing cycle. Having lots of youngsters around breaks that up a bit.

Possibly, but that poll specifically is among young people anyway. I also think there’s a chicken-and-egg scenario here where happy, and more importantly optimistic, people will have more children which makes society look happier and more optimistic (and more cute!).

Having a unifying overculture is extremely helpful in forming common identity. Every Israeli is 3 opinions sharing a bipolar body, but one of those opinions is 'our neighbors want to kill us'. It is a remarkably clarifying point that can unify literally every Israeli, from an Israeli Arab Muslim to the gayest Tel Aviv homo.

Except for the Haredi. Were it not for the Arabs, the Haredi might be a sufficient spoiler to break Israel entirely.

Anyways, with a common overculture it is easy to reach a fairly baseline happiness, even in the face of adversity. If the source of unhappiness is a local element within your nation, happiness indices will likely fail. The Arabs all hate the Israelis, but they hate the Shia/Sunni/Deobandi/Kurd/Turk/Khaleeji/Phoenician/Saudi/Azamigh next to them juuuuust a little bit more.

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