The verdict is in, folks: Bangladeshis have officially been branded the least emotional people in the world. The whole world! Chew on that for a second. Of all the people on planet Earth -- the suits, the Nazis, the hippies, the pop-stars, the dweebs, it’s the people from a still relatively small-time South Asian least developed country who are the most emotionally bankrupt.
While you’ve been too busy acting like Droopy dog on downers on the National Month of Mourning, still wracked with guilt over how you let the Father of the Nation down by letting him get killed, the research and opinion poll wizards at American outfit Gallup recently revealed their findings of a global study they’d made, conducted over a staggering sample of 1,000 adults from each nation (will someone ever think of the children?), finally concluding that Bolivia is the most emotional country in the world.
Fair enough. Guess there’s some merit behind the popular “inexplicably festive Latin American” stereotype after all. The casualty in this study is, of course, Bangladesh, which has been ranked as the least emotional nation -- the least! Sakes alive! Learn to emote, fellow average-Bangladeshi-pedestrian-stuck-in-godawful-traffic-every-day! Would it kill ya to curl the corners of your mouth and/or brows once in a while, at least on those rare, fleeting moments when the weather is not “melt the pavement hot” or “drown your mouth wet”?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t refresh your mind and point out that our stoic little nation was, not too long ago, counted as “one of the happiest countries in the world” (official ranking at number 11 in the Happy Planet Index … heh). I wonder if that’s the key then? Hrrm ... no attachments, no sentiments, nothing holding you back, no “emotion” must equate to “happiness.” That just blew my mind. I’ll be honest, that made a scary amount of sense to me, and I’m not even trying to be facetious anymore.
But you see, neither are we the happiest nation nor are we the least emotional, if anything we’re at the opposite extremes of both.
We are a nation where people will defend already deified individuals to their own death-beds out of sheer sentimentality, a land where someone can threaten to organise an entire human chain for ignoring petty demands, where the peanut gallery starts to “rabble rabble” over something awful that keeps happening to some other people in some sandy hell-hole every other year. A lack of emotion? Someone needs to give David Cage a call and let him know about this whole spit-show.
I’m not going to divulge into the nitty gritty of Gallup’s extensive survey, but the skewed kookiness of some of the questions left me scratching my head, both wildly confused and mildly amused (those are emotions, right?). I can already imagine a telephone conversation that went on between the surveyor and a surveyee:
Gallup-man: “Did you feel well-rested yesterday?”
Average Bangladeshi schmoe: “Let's see. I started the day by being all but forced to walk all the way to the other side of town to my job. Went home after hours of back-breaking menial work, for which I get paid peanuts. Came home to a screaming baby and a nagging wife whom I can barely keep fed. And finally found out that the prices for gas and electricity had been jacked up by a few notches. Long story short: No. I did not feel well-rested yesterday.”
Gallup-man: “I see. Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?”
Average Bangladeshi schmoe: “...”
There are far too many things wrong with Bangladesh for us to either be too happy or too emotionless, let alone both. Despite cheery prospects from government flunkies and glorified bean counters, the fact of the matter is that we are still rather poor as a nation. Education is still woefully lacking among the majority, and our overall polity is the equivalent of an entangled Ouroboros -- those are not exactly the ingredients that make for a “happiest nation,” but they do mix well enough to concoct a powder-keg of raw, emotionally-charged frustration, the kind of frustration that you can’t help but visibly vent.
Are we the least emotional nation in the world? I can’t really say. I haven’t really explored the behavioural minutiae of people who are not from Bangladesh well enough to make a judgment call yet. I wish we were though -- we could benefit greatly if we were a little less emotional and a little more pragmatic than we are right now, letting go of a lot of the baggage which has held us back from progressing into the future. We need to actually earn the honour of being the least emotional country in the world.
