That healthy people are happier and vice versa are obvious. So why don’t people guard their happiness?
Staying physically healthy requires the discipline of regular exercise, along with controlling dietary intake and choice of foods. Numerous studies have shown that physical exercise enhances mental fitness.
Being fat is a choice. At least 40% of the world’s population is overweight. ~13% are obese. Global obesity has tripled in the 45 years since 1975.
Staying mentally healthy necessitates swatting away troublesome thoughts thrown up by a miscreant mind feeding off worry and fear. Though the benefits of meditation and the path to spiritual enlightenment has been aptly taught since antiquity, only ~3% of the world’s modern people at most practice meditation.
Contrastingly, the foolishness of faith-based religions is no safeguard against anguish. ~70% of the world people are religious rubes.
The Collective in the post-industrial era are too lazy and/or stupid to safeguard their own happiness. This bodes ill for a species that has the power to wreak havoc on Nature out of self-indulgence, and goes a long way in explaining why a frowning humanity will extinct itself by the end of the century.
References:
Ishi Nobu, “The Collective,” in The Echoes of the Mind (2019).
Ishi Nobu, The Hub of Being (2019).
Kostadin Kushlev et al, “Does happiness improve health? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial,” Psychological Science (24 June 2020).
“Obesity and overweight,” World Health Organization (1 April 2020).