Read the rest at Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, April 3, 2012 (IPS) - Which is more important in human life: money or happiness? Can money buy happiness? According to the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan, the time has come for the world to pay closer attention to this age-old question.
"We are starting a global movement on this issue," Jigme Thinley, the prime minister of Bhutan, told IPS after a high-level meeting on "Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm" held at United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York on Monday.
Thinley said he wants the international community to realise that a paradigm shift in addressing the issue of sustainability in both the environment and global development is urgently needed.
The prime minister explained that in his country, "gross national happiness" is a development paradigm that has guided its development for several decades. He said hoped the world community would embrace that model.
The phrase "gross national happiness" was first coined in 1971 by the fourth king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who declared, "Gross national happiness (GNH) is more important than gross domestic product."
That concept implies that sustainable development should not depend solely on economic aspects of wellbeing as it addresses the notion of progress.
Measure Progress in Happiness, Not Money, Bhutan Urges
by Haider Rizvi
7 comments:
The lesson here is, we're never too big to learn something from others, no matter how small they may be.
Pure Folly -- Our Grandchildren will never pay back all the happiness we are having today. They will have to be sad forever.
You know what else? If we exclude the depressed folks from the statistics as 'unhappy', we can make the gleeful look even more happy, --- ensure our happy capacity doesn't diminish.
Lol!!!
one book to read on this subject would be "The decline of happiness in market democracies" by Robert E. Lane.
when i read this a few years back, i was shocked by how much research has actually been done in this area, with the overwhelming majority of it showing a gradual decline.
We never seem to be able to 'harvest' for lack of a better term, any productivity gains we get from the development of new technologies and methods.
We seem to just take these real gains and use them to lower prices and throw people out of their jobs.
Retirement age is never lowered (in fact it is raised by our morons), vacation time is not increased, etc....
If we as a nation are working our asses off to increase productivity, but then policy fails to use these real gains to increase our real quality of life, then we are getting screwed.
Nobody who is continuously getting screwed is ever really happy.
Resp,
very well said, matt franco!!
that was precisely one of the points made in the book i referenced above.
i vaguely remember as a boy back in the '70s hearing about how all the upcoming technological advances would reduce the workday and free up more time for us to do the things we really want to do.
boy, was that a load of hogwash!!
Anon,
I also connect it to our zealousness for Mercantilism (race to the bottom), which today is facilitated by having 'free floating' currencies...
'Free floating' currencies are contributory to this form of self flagellation.
Resp,
Post a Comment