Melinda Tuhus Photo
Karma Tshiteem
The keynote speaker at the first Gross National Happiness USA conference told his audience – right off the bat – that “responsibility for happiness rests with each individual.”
What a bummer…just the same old, same old about how nobody else can make us happy.
I felt like walking out the door right there straight down to Lake Champlain (to relish its beauty, or perhaps even take a swim – not to drown myself). This was a reason to attend a how-to-be-happy conference?
But I stuck out the day at Champlain College, in Burlington, Vermont. And I heard some of the world’s top authorities expound on the concept of shifting from measuring our “progress” through gross domestic product (formerly gross national product) to “gross national happiness,” measured by what are called Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI).
And I learned at this conference last week— despite one participant’s rhetorical question: “Who could be against happiness?” — that happiness is controversial.
It’s controversial because of corporate forces trying to promote unhappiness in the form of dissatisfaction with our status quo, so we’ll buy more of whatever we think we need to make us happy.
It’s also controversial because the guy who thought up the concept of gross national happiness was a young king from Bhutan, aka “His Majesty the Fourth King”.
He’s also the guy during whose reign one-sixth of the nation’s people – Nepali-speakers from the south of the country – were expelled from the Buddhist kingdom despite their families’ having lived there for generations. Some of them,; now refugees living in the U.S., were protesting outside the conference, calling for reconciliation and the opportunity to return home.
Though such conferences, inspired by Bhutan, have happened elsewhere in the world, this was the first in the U.S. with this moniker. The goal was to plant a seed that would sprout around the country.
“This is our work,” wrote GNHUSA president Linda Wheatly: “to shift the present economic emphasis on consumption and financial wealth to a focus on sustainable human well-being…to give priority to values of social, environmental and cultural aspirations.”
Gross domestic product, or GDP, measures all economic inputs and outputs generated within the borders of a nation. “GDP is not an indicator but an accounting system,” said Ron Colman, founder and director of GPIAtlantic in Nova Scotia.
For example, any expenditures resulting from the catastrophic oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico will be added to this year’s GDP. Growth of GDP is always considered a good thing by government officials and most economists. Enough said.
The keynote speaker at the start of the conference, Karma Tshiteem, is secretary of the Gross National Happiness Commission in Bhutan. He coordinates input from all government departments to accurately measure the inhabitants’ level of happiness. “The king said, ‘gross national happiness means development with values.’”
Out came the PowerPoint. Tshiteem showed us a colorful wheel with nine components: ecology, psychological well-being, community vitality, health, education, standard of living, good governance, time use and cultural diversity. (Those protesting outside would have a bone to pick with him on that last one.)
That wasn’t all. The nine areas are broken into 72 indicators: For example, psychological well-being includes stress, compassion, calmness, generosity, frustration, jealousy, selfishness, frequency of meditation, and consideration of karma in daily life.
The commission conducted a poll in Bhutan – a small but representative sample – that turned up a few surprises. One question asked about frequency of meditation; 90 percent of respondents said they “never” meditated. What a scandal in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country!
Aside from all the nitty-gritty questions was the “duh” – “Are you happy?” 97 percent responded that they were “happy” or “very happy.”
Tshiteen said government officials are using the results of the survey, in conjunction with the U.N.’s Millenium Development Goals, to build a management framework “that will focus on outcomes and not just inputs.” For example, to increase levels of meditation they’ve introduced two minutes of meditation at the start of each school day. (As a sometime-meditator, I’ve often thought that such a policy – as distinguished from prayer – could have a salutary effect in American schools, though ACLU types consider that a slippery slope and are agin’ it.)
But if almost everyone is already happy without meditating, maybe meditation doesn’t need to be part of the mix.
Connecticut writer Gary Greenberg (pictured) is the author of Manufacturing Depression; he said jokingly, that he was representing the “other side” at the conference. “’Happiness’ is another way to enforce your ideology,” he argued.
At the end of the day I asked Tshiteen about it.
“We know the very therapeutic effects meditation has on inner happiness,” he said. “This is something very strong in our tradition. So not withstanding the results of the survey, we thought it would be good to promote meditation as a part of a good, healthy lifestyle, and hopefully [people] would be more happy.”
He said results among teachers and schoolchildren, after just a few months, indicate that they are.