Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The point of GNH and HPI is to measure a country's success more by how people feel about
their lives and circumstances and less by consumption (which is what GDP does, in effect). Happi-
ness metrics are kryptonite to consumerism, which has been shown time and again to make people
less satisfied with the circumstances of their lives. A wholesale official adoption of GNH or HPI by
the world's nations would ultimately lead to a profound shuffling of priorities. Governments would
have to promote policies that lead to more sharing, more equity, more transparency, and more cit-
izen participation in governance, since it is these sorts of things that tend to push happiness scores
higher.
The guardians of the consumer economy are not stupid. They will not permit the wholesale in-
troduction of happiness metrics absent necessity. But, as we've seen, necessity is coming. As the
current consumer economy frays and sputters, policy makers will need increasingly to find ways to
pacify the multitudes and give them some sense of direction. Beyond a certain point, promises of a
return to the days of carefree shopping will ring hollow.
Happiness indices may constitute a collective adaptation that could ease the transition from one
economic mode to the next, reducing the trauma that will likely accompany the demise of con-
sumerism. GNH or HPI may be effective packages in which to “sell” sufficiency to policy makers
and citizens; they may also be pathways to a genuinely superior mode of human existence.
— JULY 2013
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