Protesters gather at Bastille square during a demonstration over school conditions in Paris, France, on 8 October 2026. [Firas Abdullah/EPA]

Is any nation happy? From East to West, North to South, within countries and between them, we see insecurity, division and violence.

The mass demonstrations in the streets of France, Spain, Serbia, Albania, among others, the steep rise in state violence in the United States, the explosions of personal violence being recorded in China’s tightly-monitored society, are parts of a pandemic of discontent, disillusion. The political exploitation of economic difficulties and immigration strengthens extremist political forces in Europe and America, as was already the case elsewhere. Wars in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in conjunction with the climate crisis, are disturbing production and distribution chains of energy and goods, raising the cost of living, depriving governments of funds and time to deal with problems. The weakening of international organizations makes a difficult situation even worse.

And yet, some people declare that they are happy. The most recent World Happiness Report (2026), compiled by the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (from Gallup World Poll data) ranked Finland in top spot for the ninth consecutive year, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.

Greece was in 85th place out of 147 countries, sandwiched between Bulgaria and Albania. The rankings are determined by respondents’ self-reported well-being and on indicators such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption. The fact that Libya (in 81st place), Venezuela (80), Russia (79), Uzbekistan (53) and Kosovo (16) are among the countries above us, means that we Greeks are either exceedingly critical of our performance, or our society is adrift in an ever more dangerous world.

Seeing as we cannot affect international developments, nor get Europe moving in the right direction, the least we can do is try to fix our own country. We know where the problems lie.

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A pandemic of discontent