Kia Ora,

Interesting short documentary...Bhutan measures prosperity by gauging its citizens' happiness levels, not the GDP.


The west could learn a lot from Bhutan....
Metta Zenda

We can only hope I suppose.

It's very beautiful. As it receives TV and Internet.

It's also a wee bit ominous that this was happening over 13 years ago

Quote from: Zenda on January 19, 2013, 01:13:21 AM
Kia Ora,

Interesting short documentary...Bhutan measures prosperity by gauging its citizens' happiness levels, not the GDP.


The west could learn a lot from Bhutan....
Metta Zenda

And how many Noble laureates in chemistry or medicine does Bhutan has? How many technological or medical advances have been conducted in Bhutan?

Yet, they own at least part of their happiness to the Western medicine!

A failure on my book, if we have follow their example we will still be living in caves...ah but so happy 

With respect, I don't get the impression they or anyone else is seriously suggesting anyone follows its example.

May sound nice to some, but not very practical.

Do have to say though, history seems to suggest that these small, independant societies, tend to be overrun and destroyed. Even when there is no apparent motivation.

There is a small independant, island country off the coast of France called Sark. Not as idylic as Bhutan, but fiercely independant, feudal, with the interesting features of no tax and no cars.

That has mostly been changed now. Not because anyone living there wanted it, they didn't. Not because resources were available to exploit, there aren't. But only because a couple of mega rich business types decided they wanted to impose their views.

Hawaii seems to be another example. Nepal, Tibet. Each traditional, idylic and unique, kicked into the modern era by little more than those that can.

Bhutan seems to be ripe for a Disney style makeover.

Kia Ora,

The interesting/amusing thing about the documentary was the guy talking about the pigs and marijuana..."Hence Bhutan is a country where pigs 'do' fly !"  I thought it was quite witty of him...

However, homosexuality is illegal in Bhutan, punishable by imprisonment ranging from one month to a year, but according the H R watch, to date there's been no convictions...No doubt an old colonial law left over from British rule, like in India....

I know the documentary is old and some things have changed in Bhutan , but I still think the "Gross National Happiness" as opposed to Gross National Produce is a better way to go...

Metta Zenda

Quote from: peky on January 19, 2013, 08:36:10 AM
And how many Noble laureates in chemistry or medicine does Bhutan has? How many technological or medical advances have been conducted in Bhutan?

Yet, they own at least part of their happiness to the Western medicine!

A failure on my book, if we have follow their example we will still be living in caves...ah but so happy 

Kia Ora Peky,

Each to their own Peky...Each to their own....

Metta Zenda

I do too.

I used to support capitalism, but it's obvious it has failed, simply because it has forgotten it is about the people. It's evolved into a modern day feudal system.

While Bhutan is very nice, it a local solution, applicable to that society.

But that place still needs to stand up the an onslaught of capitalism. The Sark experience has demonstrated that it doesn't need to have any gain for the community, its about winning. And capitalists know how to do that.

Quote from: spacial on January 19, 2013, 02:19:09 PM
I do too.

I used to support capitalism, but it's obvious it has failed, simply because it has forgotten it is about the people. It's evolved into a modern day feudal system.

While Bhutan is very nice, it a local solution, applicable to that society.

But that place still needs to stand up the an onslaught of capitalism. The Sark experience has demonstrated that it doesn't need to have any gain for the community, its about winning. And capitalists know how to do that.

Kia Ora Jill,

That's so true, I guess only time will tell...Sadly it could end up becoming "Gross National Greed!"

Metta Zenda

Well, while of course some things will only work in Bhutan — like direct democracy, which only works for the Swiss — the overall idea of Gross National Happiness apparently has been used, at least on a local scale, on bits of Canada and Brazil (the latter being an unusual country where there are more Buddhists than Jews and Moslems added together!).

What this tends to show is that the idea of measuring technological and social progress in terms of the citizens' happiness, instead of how wealthy they are, is probably transcultural and crosses borders, ethnicities, and social backgrounds. After all, we're all humans

Being somewhat cynical, however, I see that in the West the idea of GNH might be more interesting for countries (or localities within countries) with low incomes and general poverty, below the norm, because politicians can then claim that they're poor but happy. This is pretty much a perversion of the system. Bhutan is, indeed, one of the poorest countries in the world when measuring the wealth of individual citizens; however, what they have is enough to provide them with decent lives. That's why the "poverty limit" is differently set for each country/region. The "perversion" of the system comes into play on a country, say, where the poverty limit is set at $500/month, and a certain region knows that, on average, more than 20% of its inhabitants are below that limit, so they try to apply the idea of using a GNH to evaluate the inhabitants' unhappiness to cover up political failure to erradicate poverty in the region... so I'm a bit wary of politicians using a "happiness index" in the West.

While, of course, in Bhutan things are different. The average Bhutanese lives on a pitiful income which would lead to immediate starvation in the West. But, for them, it's more than adequate for the needs they have. They just have far less needs — and far less expensive things to pay for — than an average Westerner. How exactly to replicate that in the West, while refraining from collapsing our own systems (which will definitely lead to general unhappiness — precisely the opposite of what's intended!) is much, much harder.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try