Gross National Happiness

If the rest of the world cannot get it right in these unhappy times, this tiny Buddhist kingdom high in the Himalayan mountains says it is working on an answer.

“Greed, insatiable human greed,” said Prime Minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, describing what he sees as the cause of today’s economic catastrophe in the world beyond the snow-topped mountains. “What we need is change,” he said in the whitewashed fortress where he works. “We need to think gross national happiness.”

The notion of gross national happiness was the inspiration of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the 1970s as an alternative to the gross national product. Now, the Bhutanese are refining the country’s guiding philosophy into what they see as a new political science, and it has ripened into government policy just when the world may need it, said Kinley Dorji, secretary of information and communications.

“You see what a complete dedication to economic development ends up in,” he said, referring to the global economic crisis. “Industrialized societies have decided now that G.N.P. is a broken promise.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07bhutan.html?pagewanted=al...

http://globalsystemchange.com/GSC/Articles_files/GNH%20Bhutan%202-4.pdf

http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
http://smallisbeautiful.org/pdf/buddhist_economics/english.pdf

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/bhutan/larmer-text

http://www.gnh-movement.org/

http://www.pc.gov.bt/

http://www.alternet.org/environment/21083

http://www.bhutanstudies.org.bt/main/index.php

http://www.gpiatlantic.org/conference/media/nyt1004.pdf

http://www.gpiatlantic.org/conference/media_clips.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98JCsS_gRs