Running a country is not easy. As hard as you try, you simply can’t make everyone happy. Or can you?
In the late Eighteenth century, Englishman Jeremy Bentham suggested a Utilitarian approach –governments should aim to bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. His contemporaries in the New World agreed and declared “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right. They were off to a good start.
But this focus on good feelings was not to last. The new nineteenth century thinkers found happiness too hard to measure and thus an impractical way to judge progress. Governments backed off and shifted their focus to less subjective metrics like economic growth and crime rates. And that might have been the end of it if not for another Englishman, a Psychologist named Adrian White. In 2006, Mr White published a surprising study. Using data from 80,000 respondents, he ranked all of the countries of the world on their peoples’ relative happiness. It didn’t shock anyone that Denmark, with their high standard of living, came out on top or that a war-torn country like Burundi came last. But what confused many people was that the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan came in 8th place, a comfortable 15 places ahead of the United States.
Bhutan did this despite ranking near the bottom of the world on quality of life measures. Bhutan comes 134th out of 177 countries in the Human Development Index rankings, for example. To put that in context, people born in Bhutan die about 20 years earlier than those born in Canada. The difference, I suppose, is that in Bhuan they’re dying a little bit happier.
So how do they do it?
Quite simply, the government in Bhutan targeted the increase in their people’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) with a single-mindedness that would actually make us in the western world a little bit uncomfortable. Not only do they measure alongside Gross National Product (GNP), they put people’s happiness above everything else.
The government and the people of Bhutan deliberately sacrifice economic growth, tobacco, plastic bags, foreign investment and television –just to name a few– because they are seen as impedements to contentment.
Clearly these kinds of limits wouldn’t be easy for us to swallow in the west and yet we’d like the government to do more. A BBC survey recently indicated that 81% of British people think the government should focus more on making us a happier, rather than wealthier. But again, I might not want them to go as far as taking away my TV.
I’ve been reading a lot about Bhutan, trying to figure out what lessons we could practically apply over here to give us a bit of the happiness they enjoy. The best thing I’ve uncovered is summed up in this quote by a western-educated Bhutanese man; he says, “the real appeal of Bhutan is that we feel human” (Frontline). To me that says a lot.
When you have a community of people committed to an ideal, even something as simple and obvious as trying to make their country a happier place, that’s a powerful thing. Part of that power is the willingness to make sacrifices.
World Map of Happiness – Top 10
- Denmark
- Switzerland
- Austria
- Iceland
- The Bahamas
- Finland
- Sweden
- Bhutan
- Brunei
- Canada
Source: University of Leicester
