A day of happiness is not an elusive concept for a country like the Philippines. We, Filipinos, are generally a happy people, with an amazing ability to generate laughter even during the direst circumstances. It doesn’t get much easier for millions of Filipinos eking out a living, but day-to-day they manage to find time and every reason imaginable to be happy.
Which is why, we suppose, Filipinos would find the International Day of Happiness worth celebrating.
Since 2013, the United Nations has celebrated the International Day of Happiness every 20th of March, as a way to recognize the importance of happiness in the lives of people around the world. According to the UN, it is a day to remember that “the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal,” as well as to recognize “the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the well-being of all peoples.”
It is not a bad idea for happiness to figure in a nation’s bottom line or even to use happiness as a measure of a country’s progress. The UN gives the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan credit for the idea.
In 1971, following the wishes of Jigme Singye Wangchuck, its fourth king who ruled the kingdom until 2006, Bhutan started rejecting conventional yardsticks like the GDP and gross national product (GNP) as ways to measure a country’s progress.
Bhutan came up with its own concept, called Gross National Happiness (GNH), an alternative and unconventional development philosophy that measures prosperity by gauging its citizens’ happiness levels.
The GNH recognizes that development has many more dimensions other than those associated with the GDP and GNP, and it should be understood as a process that seeks to maximize happiness rather than just economic wealth.
Bhutan uses a more comprehensive measure that incorporates the four pillars of GNH: economic development, environmental preservation, cultural promotion and good governance. Its Constitution mandates that all Bhutanese laws subscribe to these four pillars.
Are GNH indicators specific enough or even measurable enough to use as bases for government policies?
Well, the UN certainly thinks so. In 2011 the UN General Assembly, adopting Bhutan’s call for a holistic approach to development, passed a resolution inviting member-states to consider measures that could better integrate the “pursuit of happiness” in development. Endorsed by 68 countries, the resolution was a validation of Bhutan’s GNH model, as well as an endorsement for its replication across the globe. The first UN World Happiness Report was released a year after in 2012, with Bhutan topping Asia and Denmark topping the list overall.
We, Filipinos, do not need to be told that happiness is not always about money. Our people’s perpetual optimism, despite most of them living in abject poverty, is proof enough. We also know that, in measuring national success, GDP numbers are not the end-all and be-all of everything.
GDP is simply a measure of the money that changes hands within the economy, typically used by investors, businessmen, economists and policy-makers as an indicator of a country’s economic health. There is nothing wrong with GDP. But we cannot expect its numbers to mean more than they can.
Irresponsible miners can pay millions in mining taxes, for instance, and these will certainly boost GDP, but it cannot make up for ruined lands and poisoned waters that also cause untold misery.
GDP numbers may be a good measure of wealth, but they don’t tell us whether this wealth is going to most of our poor citizens or only to executives of big companies and the rich who live in exclusive villages. GDP does not show the record remittances, which make our economic figures so rosy but also leave a heavy social toll in terms of broken families.
Our country’s GDP numbers have been good enough to maintain our status as one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia. But there is also something to learn from the Bhutanese way.
In the end, numbers are just numbers. There are other costs and factors that should count when you’re calculating the economics of a country and the happiness of its people.