Published on Thursday, June 10, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

by John de Graaf

The following is adapted from a speech John de Graaf delivered to the annual gala of the Northwest Progressive Institute on Mercer Island, Washington, June 9, 2010.

You may have noticed that the subject of happiness is hot right now. In the past year and a half, more than 27,000 books and articles have been written on the subject. But the interest in happiness is not entirely new.

Once upon a time, in a far-off land of green valleys and soaring mountains, a boy of 16 was crowned King—and began in a quiet way to change the world. The year was 1972—not so long ago. The faraway land was a tiny Himalayan Kingdom called Bhutan, thought of by many as the model for Shangri-La. And the 16-year-old king was Jigme Wangchuck, who, when asked what he would do to increase Bhutan’s Gross National Product, replied that, as far as he was concerned, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” And Gross National Happiness would be the goal of his reign.

Now if any leader, young or old, had made those remarks here in the United States, he or she would have received a few polite chuckles perhaps, then a collective yawn, and an exhortation to get real and get back to making money. But the people of Bhutan take their kings very seriously, and slowly over the next 38 years, they began to put a little meat on the concept of Gross National Happiness. They wanted to figure out how to measure it, how to enhance it through government and social policies, and how to educate themselves about the behaviors that lead to greater joy. So they invited leading “happiness scientists” to their once isolated land—psychologists and economists and ecologists and philosophers and sociologists and experts in health and in the creation of scientific surveys.

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