Bhutan is a unique country to give importance to Health and Happiness over Money and Development, at least, that is the official stance. Any write up about Bhutan is not complete without a discussion on Happiness.
It is not that other countries or for that matter individuals do not want happiness. After all America in particular and the western democracies in general, value Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness to be fundamental rights.
The major difference is that , in the West, money and development of infrastructure are considered absolutely necessary for happiness whereas Bhutan probably recognizes that , however temporarily, health and happiness cannot be put on hold for the sake of Gross National Product.
Incidentally, as per World Happiness report from UN, Bhutan stands 97th among 156 countries
We’ll look at this anomaly later.
Happiness is an intriguing subject for psychologists and philosophers alike. I don’t claim to be an expert nor am I an expert on Bhutanese culture. After a trip to Bhutan , many questions cropped up in my mind and am just trying to find answers. So, let us have a look at some of the issues before considering if Bhutan indeed is a land of happiness.
Presuming that one has gone through all these links , where does Bhutan stand in its progress towards happiness ?
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- Bhutanese culture lays a lot of stress on preservation of culture and alignment with environment as against the western concept of Equality and Individual Freedom(both these values are contradictory , study of which will require another post by itself) As I understand Bhutanese culture accepts inequality and promotes peace and harmony through cooperation and preservation of nature. This aspect is poignantly explained through the story of Four Friends from Jataka tales. The picture of Four Friends is found at many Dzongs, homes and public places. It guides the national policy.
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- Material comfort is less but essential facilities like good network of roads and reliable Water and Power supply are provided by the government. Education and Basic Healthcare are free for all citizens and that takes the stress of people to a great extent. One is not under pressure to amass wealth for children’s education or the health care of elderly.
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- There is emphasis on self-discipline, healthy life style and spiritual practices which aim to attain a perpetual state of joy rather than getting trapped in a continuous and relentless chase of sensual pleasures.
The debate will go on as to what would be right approach; to become a buddha finding Nirvana by treating pleasures and pain alike or building up material comforts to minimize pain and fill up every moment of life with pleasure and more pleasure. Bhutan certainly seem to be going the Buddha way.
Why does Bhutan rank so low in happiness index ?
Mostly happiness is evaluated based on certain parameters like life-expectancy, infant mortality, employment opportunities, individual freedom to choose your job or your partner , ownership of material comfort enablers like a house, car, house-hold gadgets and so on.
Many Senagers ( sixty plus with disposal income , looking for adventure and behaving like teenagers) today, who have the money but not the health and wish, that , in their younger years, they could have focused a little less on money and a little more on health. Then pursuit of happiness would make more sense today. But then that is hindsight; we also see a number of retirees who wished that they had made more money in their productive years or wished they had been born in a period when there was a better infrastructure for air travel , Tele communication , medical facilities and general facilities that contributed to physical happiness.
Does a long life necessarily mean a happy life ? Does a ride in a bus to school mean a happier way to commute rather than a walk through the hillside in a pristine environment ?
Is physical comfort everything ? I never cease to wonder how some people can keep smiling even while engaged in mundane monotonous jobs like mopping floors or washing utensils.
During my stay at Bhutan, I did not see many school buses but saw many children in groups of twos and threes merrily walking along. I did not see the monstrous school bags that we are used to in India.
While automobiles were not seen as an everyday requirement, good road network and provision of reliable power supply did make a lot of difference in happiness quotient.
Another issue is freedom of choice to evaluate happiness. The current generation is realizing that your freedom to choose / change your spouse also means your spouses’s freedom to do so. Even within the country , the states leading the suicide numbers are not impoverished , less literate states but the other way round. The young people with maximum freedom to choose are also maximum insecure. It doesn’t mean that arranged marriage is the best option followed by ’till death do us apart’. But some consideration of concepts like culture and ethos as against merely swearing by individual freedom would lead to more stable state of happiness.
Such nuances are not considered while ranking the countries on the happiness index.
A traditional family puts happiness of the community first. So you have an hierarchy in the family or the village. There are strict dos and don’ts, the elders benevolent control is always felt, at whatever age or stage of life. generally we hear (or say) “It is for your good that I scold /beat/restrict you, “. Doesn’t such an environment impinge on individual happiness ?
The present generation focuses on individual happiness. Every being is responsible for his or her own happiness. Does it work ? Are individuals happier with all family-fetters broken ?
Both these ideas are contradictory unless you can find a fine balance. Bhutan certainly falls under the first option.
So, What brings happiness ? Happiness comes from having something; like buying a guitar, doing something like playing a guitar and finally being someone like a musician. It is said, the degree of happiness increases from having to doing to being.
Happiness is said to a fleeting feeling related to some pleasurable physical experience like good food , sex , touch, sight , sound or psychological like appreciation.
Joy is a more stable state resulting from a feeling of self worth, contentedness, knowledge of oneself, understanding of the environment etc. Loosely , it may be said that happiness is related to physical well being while joy is related to mental well being.
I presume Joy is superior to Happiness.
Approaches to Attaining Happiness
Epicurean:- A philosophy advanced by Epicurus that considered happiness, or the avoidance of pain and the emotional disturbance, to be highest good and that advocated the pursuit of pleasures that can be enjoyed in moderation. Most people take it that just chasing activities that fills every moment of life with good wine, good food and sartorial pleasure is what an Epicurean does. Epicurus himself warns that it is not easy to pursue pleasure and he advocates moderation leading to almost an ascetic life. For more …
Biological
Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: ‘Happiness Begins Within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.(Yuval Harari)
Is it possible to pop a few pills and feel happy.
In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, published in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, happiness is the supreme value and psychiatric drugs replace the police and the ballot as the foundation of politics. Each day, each person takes a dose of ‘soma’, a synthetic drug which makes people happy without harming their productivity and efficiency. The World State that governs the entire globe is never threatened by wars, revolutions, strikes or demonstrations, because all people are supremely content with their current conditions, whatever they may be. Huxley’s vision of the future is far more troubling than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley’s world seems monstrous to most readers, but it is hard to explain why. Everybody is happy all the time – what could be wrong with that ? (from Sapiens by Yuval Harari)
The Buddha Way
Buddhism teaches that understanding the fleeting nature of happiness or sadness leads to freedom from suffering.
Buddhism shares the basic insight of the biological approach to happiness, namely that happiness results from processes occurring within one’s body, and not from events in the outside world. However, starting from the same insight, Buddhism reaches very different conclusions.
According to Buddhism, most people identify happiness with pleasant feelings, while identifying suffering with unpleasant feelings. People consequently ascribe immense importance to what they feel, craving to experience more and more pleasures, while avoiding pain. Whatever we do throughout our lives, whether scratching our leg, fidgeting slightly in the chair, or fighting world wars, we are just trying to get pleasant feelings.
People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. (Yuval Harari : Sapiens)
Roseto Effect
This is not exactly a path that one can pursue, but it does make a difference to live in a close knit community to attain happiness. The Roseto effect is the phenomenon by which a close-knit community experiences a reduced rate of heart disease. The effect is named for Roseto, Pennsylvania. The Roseto effect was first noticed in 1961 when the local Roseto doctor encountered Dr. Stewart Wolf, then head of Medicine of the University of Oklahoma, and they discussed, over a couple of beers, the unusually low rate of myocardial infarction in the Italian American community of Roseto compared with other locations
Happiness Enablers and happiness Killers
There are any number of philosophers , self-improvement gurus and scientists who put forward any number of theories; but what does it all mean to a common man? How does he apply this concept in his own life ? I am sure one can identify the activities , people, possessions that make one smile to himself and there are situation that makes one frown or tense. An effort to generalize these happiness enablers and happiness killers:-
happiness enablers
- Being in control of self or discipline.
- Doing something one is good at.
- Company of people on same frequency.
- Being prepared for any foreseeable situation.
happiness killers
- Guilt feelings (A good Conscience is a continuous Deepawali)
- Feelings of Fear and hatred
- Insecurity about future.
Applying to everyday life would be different for different people. For example, let’s take the first battle of the day is what I call ‘the battle of mind over mattress‘ . When the alarm goes off in the morning and it is still cold and dark outside, the Epicurean in you loathes to trouble the body ; but when you think of the good feel you get at the end of an hour and a half walk, the self-control muscles play up. Another thought is that guilt of missing the exercise for the day might keep nagging you the whole day. So, the simple act of getting out of the bed in time earns you a few units of happiness!.
Then if you can make a short list of things to do for the day and actually doing those things gives you many more units of happiness by the time you go to bed.
Unfortunately, happiness cannot be stored ; one needs to be constantly doing things that needs to be done and being what you want to be all day and every day.
The Western society believes values equality and individual freedom a great deal. The republicans focus more on individual freedom and end up creating a more unequal society. The democrats believe in taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor ,thus ending up violating the individual freedom of the rich. The west believes in competition and promotion of merit, thus contributing to individual aspirations. In a way, it is the Darwinian Survival of the Fittest in the corporate World. It has a plus point that the capabilities of a person is stretched to full potential. The flip side is that , it creates a very very unequal society , so unequal that it also impinges upon the other main value of a Western Democracy, Individual freedom. What does a single mother do with individual freedom when she is constantly struggling to meet the essential requirements of herself and her children?
In Bhutan , there is an image that is ubiquitous, be it homes or dzongs. It is an image of an elephant, monkey, hare and a pheasant. There are a number of interpretations to this starting from basic physical level to subtle spiritual level. But all interpretations are about Harmony and cooperation .
The four animals are anything but equal and for a simpleton the obvious attributes could be strength of an elephant, flexibility of a monkey, speed of a hare and the capability to fly of a bird.
For the philosophically inclines the image depicts the harmony between various elements in one’s own nature; physical, mental, intellectual and spiritual. It may sound like a tale from Kathopanishad. The elephant represents body, monkey the mind, the hare emotions & bird the soul.
In Bhutan, the story gives a national identity for people to live in harmony with nature, for people to co-operate with each other even with cultural differences, and for families to work together. It is believed that Bhutan code of ethic bought in by the unifier of the Country “Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel” and Bhutan’s national policies is based on it that influences.
The four animals represent the different habitats of the animal world—the sky, the trees, the ground, and underground.
For more about this fable click here, here , here and here
Nice blog. Happiness and it’s pursuit are, two my understanding are two different issues. Happiness, as I see is about keeping in control of things around you, generally. Problem, starts when we pursue happiness and find ourselves in a labyrinth. And, our such endeavours would spurn unhappiness in some corners. That’s the whole dynamics of happiness, to my mind.
Read somewhere; US constitution guarantees right to pursuit of happiness , but not happiness itself. I suppose everyone would have a different idea of what constitutes happiness and how to attain it.