Happiness is a state of mind that everyone wants to achieve. How happy are people? Who are the happy people?
What does it mean to be happy? What makes a person happy - being rich? being in a powerful political position? having a good family life? having a good social network? being healthy? being glamorous? being popular? There are umpteen questions on the idea of happiness.
Some people say happiness is a state of mind when a person feels satisfied. Then the question is what makes people feel satisfied. Does it mean that a person must have his or her physical, emotional and material needs fully met to be satisfied? There are many billionaires in the world who can afford to pay whatever it costs to buy anything they want. Some of them have broken marriages. Are they happy? Can they buy their emotional needs? It is perhaps an unfair attempt to define happiness as happiness appear to be a mixture of feelings and emotions which cannot be measured. Further the idea of happiness for a Chinese would very much be different from the idea of happiness, say for a Russian or a Sherpa in Nepalese Himalaya.
Happiness is a state of mind which everyone wants to achieve. But what is the state of mind and how do we measure it, let alone achieve it and measure it? Happiness is also not a static state. People are happy at one time and the very next moment may become unhappy due to various events surrounding them or for no reason at all. Is it a metaphysical state of the human mind?
The idea of happiness is not new. France has had the idea of happiness in its constitution since 1793. It says ‘Le but de la société est la bonheur commun’ (the goal of society is general happiness). The United Kingdom, France, China and Australia have considered using the ‘happiness index’ in addition to the conventional economic index as a measure of prosperity. However, we do not hear much about it in public. Is it because of difficulties in defining indicators of happiness and their measurement criteria?
Maybe we could define the idea of happiness by reversing the question – what makes people unhappy? There can be many reasons for people to be unhappy. One of the main reasons for unhappiness is that people compare themselves with others. People often look up to someone who earns more, better looking, has a nice family, good health, physically & mentally strong and possibly asks why am I not like this ‘other person’? People are stuck in their invisible comfort zone and are unable to get out of it as much as they would like to, to be like this ‘other person’. This could be just one of the many reasons.
The idea of happiness is now supported by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This network has been supported by a number of academic institutions since 2012. The academics have realised the limitations of GDP as a measure of human well-being. This team has developed a set of indicators which integrates economic, social, and environmental dimensions to compliment GDP data to measure human well-being. The idea is to take into account our outer ambiance such as the functioning of the government on rule of law, security, environmental factors, health care, education and individual freedom. These indicators assess the functioning of governments as custodians of its citizens.
The reality with us today is that we are enjoying the most sophisticated technological development in the history of mankind and soaring heights of productivity but it is also creating extremes in terms of living standards and inequality in every aspect of people’s welfare; at the lower end we are stuck with poverty and at the top end we are stuck with diseases associated with affluent societies. There is unhappiness at both ends. The issue of poverty, anxiety and inequality is everywhere – among the poor and among the rich. The middle-class people who are stuck in between are equally unhappy as they can’t go down and no opportunities to move up! Where is our happiness?
Bhutan first instituted the concept of Gross Happiness Index (GHI) instead of the GDP/GNP to measure the country's progress. The nine domains are: psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. The is now adopted by the UN SDG. see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=2212
ReplyDeleteBhutan called it its Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index then.
DeleteThanks Peter for your observation. Yes, I am aware of Bhutan’s ‘gross national happiness’ index introduced in 1972 with 33 indicators in nine domains. As many of these indicators are subjective there are several methodological and reliability issues. How is cultural diversity in Bhutan measured when men and women are required to wear Gho and Kira outside their homes since 1989 and there are also other linguistic issues.
ReplyDeleteThe ‘Happiness Index’ adopted by Sustainable Network is led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs at Earth Institute in Columbia University, sponsored by 18 different organisations. It uses similar indicators as used in Bhutan (income, work, governance, religion, mental health, family experience, education, gender issues, freedom, corruption, etc.). The Earth Institute is asked to contribute to assist in supporting SDG but it is not part of the UN or SDG. Since it is highly academic in terms of methodological and data analysis procedures it is best left in the hands of the university rather than making it part of the UN system.
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