And we finally have a nation that's taking that reality to
heart.
What makes us happy?
In America, we’ve been asking this question ever since 1776, the year we
declared for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Back then, Americans
seeking more happiness had little more than guesswork to go by. Now we have
help: a new science of happiness with years of research findings behind it.
The documentary
filmmaker and author John de Graaf has done as much as any American to share
what this science has to offer. De Graaf, co-founder of The Happiness
Initiative, recently returned
from Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan nation that has become the first society on
Earth to make the pursuit of happiness its prime driver of public policy.
The Bhutanese, de Graaf tells me, are directly challenging our conventional political wisdom on happiness. To become happier, this standard wisdom holds, we just need to grow economically. Higher GDPs will bring us higher levels of “life satisfaction” and “subjective well-being.”
In fact, beyond a
certain level of Gross Domestic Product — about Portugal’s current GDP — we
actually have no research backing up the notion that countries
grow happier as they become richer.
“We do have evidence
that other factors — reduced stress and greater leisure time, good health and
social connections — do contribute to greater happiness,” de Graaf adds. “And
so does the opportunity to do meaningful work and live in a democratic society
that fosters trust and personal safety, with access to education, arts,
culture, and nature.”
Which societies rank
highest on factors like these? The world’s most equal nations. These societies
discourage the flaunting of wealth and encourage social connectivity.
In our society,
nothing signals status and success more than personal wealth, and people labor
ever longer hours to grab as much of it as they can. But chasing after fortune
undercuts our ability to take the satisfaction that comes from leisure time,
purposeful work, and all the other quality-of-life dimensions so critical to
happiness.
This preoccupation
with accumulating evermore is also endangering our environment. Americans are
already exhausting the world’s resources more rapidly than they can naturally
replenish. If everyone on Earth lived the American consumer lifestyle, the
Global Footprint Network details, we’d need five planets to provide the resources and find
enough room to absorb all our industrial and consumer waste.
“We simply cannot grow
on like this,” says de Graaf, who makes this case in books like his
co-authored What’s the Economy For, Anyway? “We need to find a different
approach to well-being
for the sake of the future.”
In Bhutan,
policymakers are exploring different approaches. They’re working to nurture
those dimensions of our daily lives that make us happier. The nation, for
instance, ensures all workers a month of annual vacation. Small touches matter
for happiness, too. In winter, workdays run from 9 to 4 to keep workers from
having to travel to and from work in darkness.
The Bhutanese are now
asking the United Nations to explore new progress markers — linked to
sustainable well-being and happiness that can replace traditional GDP measures. In June of 2014, the young king
of Bhutan will travel to the United States to help make that case.
Will anybody listen?
De Graaf certainly hopes so — and thinks a little basketball game might help.
Turns out that Bhutan’s 33-year-old king plays a mean game of hoops, among the
best in his country. A game on the White House court with the king and
President Barack Obama, says de Graaf, just might attract some global media
attention.
“Add a few celebrities
and NBA stars to the game,” he dreams, “and you could have an international
event of great import, an event that could get people talking about measuring
‘equitable and sustainable well-being’ instead of GDP.”
And that would be
something to truly get happy about.
OtherWords columnist Sam
Pizzigati is an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow. His latest book
is The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over
Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class. OtherWords.org