Gross National Happiness Index – a True Measure of a Nation’s Worth
Alexander Geyman
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Imagine a country not torn by partisan strife or stressed to the point of depression because some artificial goals were not being met. Imagine instead a country which bases its success on the Gross National Happiness Index rather than the Gross National Product – and has codified this attitude.
Such a place exists in the mountains of Asia and the “developed” world could certainly learn a thing or two about national health by studying the ways of Bhutan. And Sahoja offers a first step in this journey through The Dragon King of Happiness, a blog on its site by Rajesh Rai.
Rai wrote, “Bhutan’s first legal code, written as long ago as 1729 contained the provision if the Government cannot create happiness for its people, there is no purpose for the Government”, and ‘since the founding of Bhutan, spirituality and compassion have been integrated with governance.”
Sahoja – a new social media community dedicated to connecting good people to share good ideas, buy from companies dedicated to doing good and helping good causes – offers tips for living healthy and productively, unique stories and perspectives on life by world-renowned experts on its blog site.
In these troubled times, Sahoja offers tips on making the most of being homebound by the pandemic; ways to help reduce the earth’s carbon footprint; harnessing one’s true potential, and this latest entry focusing on happiness.
As Rai wrote, “Measuring happiness is always going to be difficult as happiness is a state of mind. It’s very much a subjective concept . . . But in 1998, this tiny Kingdom established The Centre for Bhutan Studies and Gross National Happiness, to look into measurable factors that promote happiness. This inquiry led them to create metrics around the four pillars of Gross National Happiness and an index of nine domains to measure happiness.”
Jigme Singya Wangchuk, Bhutan’s Dragon King, understanding the unique attributes of this policy, decided the world needed to move in this direction so in 2011 he presented it to the United Nations.
Since 2012, the U.N. has published The World Happiness Report and for 2020 the top 20 happiest countries are:
- Finland
- Denmark
- Switzerland
- Iceland
- Norway
- The Netherlands
- Sweden
- New Zealand
- Luxembourg
- Austria
- Canada
- Australia
- UK
- Israel
- Costa Rica
- Ireland
- Germany
- USA
- Czech Republic
- Belgium
According to Rai, “The root of wellness is happiness and the growth of the wellness industry has mirrored the growth of a simple idea, shared by a tiny Kingdom, and now adopted by global institutions; that the measure of happiness for a Government should be more important than the measure of how much money you have.”
About Sahoja
Improving society overall through common positive goals are key factors for Sahoja (Sahoja.co) – a new social media community dedicated to connecting good people to share good ideas, buy from companies dedicated to doing good and helping good causes. And providing complete privacy and transparency in all interactions.
Sahoja is at its core a social media platform but goes beyond simply providing a forum for conversation. It offers ethical products, healthy advice and the ability to directly benefit worthy causes.
“The meaning of Sahoja is ‘stronger together,’” explained Rai, a Sahoja co-founder. “All the aspects of our platform, or more precisely, platforms, combine to improve the world around us in many ways.”
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