Gross National Happiness: The Cat’s Meow

As Alice remarked, she had seen a cat without a smile before but never a smile without a cat. Gross National Happiness, the wonderful new and improved measure of national well-being about which I wrote the last time, is according to James Elliot, like the cat’s meow but with no cat in the background to back up the meow. James posted a comment which I thought was significant enough for all to ponder. Thanks for carrying the discussion forward.

{Disclaimer: The following views belong to James and I while I concur with them largely, there are points that I may differ on in detail.}

I find GNH creepy too.

We’ve been having a discussion about this on a Buddhist site. Apparently some think GNH is the cat’s meow. Maybe so, but where’s the damn cat?

As you have pointed out, GDP is not a measure of how well of people are, but rather how robust a certain sector of the economy is. It was invented, as I understand it, right after the depression in order to give early warning signals in the event that the same started happening again.

That GDP is used by politicians to say how well off we are, I attribute to it’s slowness, i.e. you can say something about it and it’ll still be true several months or so down the line. Other economic indicators are either more obtuse or more frenetic and unreliable… for politiking.

But it’s not a tool that was ever meant to indicate how well off one country is compared to another. There are other indicators for that. It’s just a basic indicator of a certain aspect of economic health.

There are at least two things that disturb me about the attempts to usurp GDP with GNH (other than the buddhist community I’m involved in seems to think it’s a good idea).

One, is that happiness is relative. There have been sociological and economic studies done that make it pretty clear that human beings decide whether or not they are happy based on how well off they are compared to others. Perhaps one of the best kept secrets of the fashion industry. There is always a loser in that.

This is perhaps what Buddhism excels at working with. From one point of view only, Buddhism helps to transcend the efforts to compare ourselves with others in order to determine whether or not ‘I’ am happy.

(I’m mentioning this, because Bhutan’s state religion is Buddhism.)

As such, when happiness is defined, measured and, quantified in the ways indicated by GNH it is very likely a guarantee for unhappiness, because it intensifies the dynamic of relative comparisons of happiness in a very big way, by bringing it onto the national level, and by using the very same kinds of statistical measures and comparisons it is claimed has caused so much trouble. It’s using different statistics, one’s that may well need to be measured for some other reason, but we are talking about happiness here.

The only way it could maybe hypothetically succeed in creating happiness, if it’s not about undermining the ‘I’m better off than so and so’ mentality is by achieving total equality in all things, including income, PPP, opportunity, etc.. Not going to happen. So their efforts, while superficially heartwarming, are not likely to succeed, but rather intensify the unhappiness of those who are not… happy.

It has to be said here, that Bhutan is also having problems within their borders which some international human rights groups consider to be ethnic cleansing. A good chunk of their population it would seem, that has been contributing to the GDP for decades, apparently wasn’t contributing to the GNH, so they are being deported. “Cultural cleansing” is what the Bhutanese have called it. They do seem to have a way with words, the Bhutanese. So I can’t discount entirely that GNH is a bit of a ruse. Sort of like dropping the unemployed from the roster in order to come closer to full employment.

The second thing that makes little sense, is that I have never felt that my values around happiness, contentment, or well being, ever revolved around any notion of GDP. I don’t know anyone who would say it did.

But one of the basic premises of GNH, is that if the government measures those things deemed to create happiness instead of GDP which clearly doesn’t, then I, and all the other citizens will in some way be happier. It’s taking a statistic I may not fully understand and which has very little if any direct relationship to my attitude about life, and trying to replace it with a statistical construct that takes in so many things it no longer has any relationship to me the individual.

I don’t believe people work like this. I think people are both dumber and smarter than that. The only thing I can imagine such statistics are good for then, is to say, “Not only are we better off, but we are so better off, we measure things that other countries don’t even think are important.” or something like that.

And actually, as far as I’ve been able to tell, all the things contained within GNH, are already measured in devloped countries anyway. They just aren’t being used to crow about it, they are used to improve services when possible.

So, where’s that cat?

Author: Atanu Dey

Economist. View all posts by Atanu Dey