Just how did they find Happiest Person and determine that he is indeed happiest person in America? The USA Today research team appears to have used an elegantly simple three-step process.

First, they identified "the world's leading authority on happiness", Martin Seligman ... which must have come as a wee bit of a surprise to several of his equally well-known and equally well-respected peers. How they picked Seligman remains more of a mystery than how a land-locked nation of mountains and yodeling became home to holy grail of yachting, but we are working feverishly to crack code.

Next, they asked Seligman to name six principles of happiness. Seligman listed couple strengths, a win-win approach, savoring success, playing to one's strengths, opening doors to opportunity and finding meaning in life.

Finally, they applied Seligman's principles to determine who best matches them. Naawww, just kidding. That would make way too much sense. Instead, USA Today created a make-believe process of its own that stands out from Seligman's list like Jolly Green Giant at a dwarf convention. Here is USA Today process.

Geography. It seems that Happiest Person must live in best place to live, which is Virginia Beach, in case you didn't know. If somebody even happier than Happiest Person lives in San Francisco or Vermont, USA Today research team does not want to know.

It is becoming clear that way a country or society is, kind of “psyche” it has, depends on way people relate to each other one-to-one, at day-to-day level of life.

At this one-to-one level there are very simple “Rules” of behaving.

It is these Rules that determine how things happen at large scale of society, no matter how much people try to impose outcomes from “above” – this can only distort outcome.

This creation of large scale by small scale is one of fundamental understandings of new field of study called “Emergence Theory”.

This may seem simplistic, but there is increasing evidence that much of what happens in life comes about in this “Emergence” way. (Biology, Mind, Ecologies, Universe, Internet, etc).

The rules that a majority of our current society seem to have unconsciously agreed to act on are:

1.Get as much as you can for yourself from those you have anything to do with in your day-to-day world.

2.Make sure you don’t take so much from those you deal with and relate to, that they won’t have anything to do with you anymore.

It is suggested, that if we would like a more enriching and supportive world, we can create this by putting in place and acting on, a new set of simple Emergence rules: