Gross National Happiness
At a meeting at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, economists and political philosophers discusses social measures of happiness beyond economic indicators. The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, for example, has made increasing happiness its goal since 1972.
“We have to think of human well-being in broader terms,” said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan’s home minister and ex-prime minister. “Material well-being is only one component. That doesn’t ensure that you’re at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other….”
“Some types of societies clearly do a much better job of enhancing their people’s sense of happiness and well-being than other ones even apart from the somewhat obvious fact that it’s better to be rich than to be poor,” Dr. Inglehart said.
Even more striking, beyond a certain threshold of wealth people appear to redefine happiness, studies suggest, focusing on their relative position in society instead of their material status.
Nothing defines this shift better than a 1998 survey of 257 students, faculty and staff members at the Harvard School of Public Health. In the study, the researchers, Sara J. Solnick and David Hemenway, gave the subjects a choice of earning $50,000 a year in a world where the average salary was $25,000 or $100,000 a year where the average was $200,000. About 50 percent of the participants, the researchers found, chose the first option, preferring to be half as prosperous but richer than their neighbors.
And this caught my eye as well:
John de Graaf, a Seattle filmmaker and campaigner trying to cut the amount of time people devote to work, wore a T-shirt that said, “Medieval peasants worked less than you do.”