Over the past five years, Italy
has gone from 50th place to 25th in the World Happiness
rankings, the president of the Ernesto Illy Foundation Andrea
Illy told ANSA, noting that "thus I think something is
changing".
"I think that there is a new sort of awareness," he added, "in
part because of the crisis, since Italians express a great deal
of solidarity among themselves in moments of difficulty."
The latest World Happiness Report shows that, despite the severe
consequences of the pandemic, in a single year the country rose
three places in the rankings, from 28th to 25th place, and over
the past five it halved the distance between it and first place.
The Ernesto Illy Foundation and IllyCaffe are among the
supporters of the report, which is the result of an annual
survey by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, chaired by the US economist and essayist Jeffrey Sachs.
Illy noted that he had previously stressed in a book of his
published a few years ago the "markedly individualistic behavior
of the Italian population, which does not manage to work as
teams.
This creates problems in complex organizations like the public
administration, as well as private enterprises, compared with
the effectiveness in dealing with daily problems of other
populations that, through altruism, manage to have a more
collaborative attitude".
However, Illy said, "I also said that altruism is nothing but
another form of egoism. In Italy, in serious crises, solidarity
surfaces" and the country changes considerably.
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