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Bhutan’s bottom line

The tiny nation of Bhutan, located between its gigantic neighbors, China and India, has a different way of measuring its success. Known as gross national happiness, this measurement of the quality of its citizens lives’ as opposed to their productivity, turns the usual economic indicator, gross domestic product (GDP), on its ear.

Gross Domestic Products

Also known as gross national product (GNP), gross domestic product refers to the total value of goods and services produced by a country within a certain time period. This measurement is meant to show the size of a country’s economy, and is sometimes used to track the standard of living, as it is assumed that increased productivity translates into better living conditions for citizens.

There are some flaws to this approach, however. Since GDP does not discriminate between positive and negative causes of productivity, a natural disaster can add to the GDP (because of the resources and work put into counteracting its effects), although the event itself is hardly in the best interests of society. Similarly, environmental catastrophes (such as oil spills) and the ravages of war inflate the GDP while having an ill effect on human life and the environment.

Another deficiency of using the GDP as a measurement of national advancement is that it has an extremely narrow focus. For example, using the GDP measurement, the unpaid work of child rearing and housekeeping has no value, nor do non-monetary transactions such as bartering for goods and services.

In short, the whole sphere of human existence cannot be reflected using the GDP, and in fact, GDP distorts the picture because it counts all economic activity as positive, without the counterbalance of what has been lost in terms of environmental damage and human suffering.

For these reasons, economists have come up with another measure of economic growth—the Genuine Progress Indicator, or GPI. This indicator takes into account both the positive and negative effects of a country’s economic activity, in theory providing a much clearer picture of the well-being of its citizens.

WWBD (What Would Buddha Do)?

In much the same vein, in 1972, the king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, coined the term gross national happiness (GNH) to describe the path Bhutan would take to economic development. Drawing on the spiritual tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, GNH is designed to balance economic progress with the well being of the Bhutanese people.

The four main pillars of Gross National Happiness are economic self-reliance, environmental preservation, cultural promotion, and good governance. These four pillars are further extrapolated into nine domains: psychological well-being, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards.

To determine how well the country is meeting these goals, and to determine future policy decisions, Bhutan conducted surveys of its population in 2008, 2010, and 2015. The results were assessed using the Gross National Happiness Index, which was developed in cooperation with researchers from Oxford University.

In 2011, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution entitled “Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development,” highlighting Bhutan’s focus on GNH as a model for other nations to follow. In 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Bhutan’s Prime Minister organized a High Level Meeting on the subject “Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm” at which the first World Happiness Report was issued. Subsequently, the United Nations designated March 20th as International Day of Happiness.

A Nepal-ing Situation

While Bhutan is held up as a model for other countries to follow in creating a more humane economy, it has not been entirely successful in creating its own peaceful and productive society since Gross National Happiness was first introduced. The government’s concern with conserving the country’s cultural traditions, and restricting outside influences, has led in the past to restrictions on access to media and a traditional dress requirement (although this has eased a bit in recent years).

Of more concern is the mass exodus in 1990 of 100,000 citizens of Nepalese descent and Hindu faith in response to an attempt by the government to assimilate this group into the dominant Bhutanese culture, which led to protests and subsequent harsh treatment in punishment of the protests. These refugees lived for many years in camps in Nepal, while Bhutan, Nepal, and India failed to agree on how they should be accommodated. In 2008 various countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, and Norway—began taking them in, with over 112,000 of the refugees resettled abroad to date.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Bhutan

While the past implementation of Gross National Happiness in Bhutan led to repressive policies, the recent introduction of democratic elements into Bhutan’s government (elections began in 2007) is seen as a positive trend for its living up to the ideal of GNH. And that ideal is still a worthy goal; there is something very attractive about belonging to a society that views the pursuit of gross national happiness as its prime objective. It would be extremely interesting to see a shift to this kind of thinking in other countries: how would our world change if the United States, the European Union, and other large economies implemented this policy? It’s impossible to know for sure, but it’s nice to think about a world in which success is measured in more than dollar signs.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on August 21, 2006.

Image credit: Mario Biondi, Italian writer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

You don’t have to be happy all day today. No one’s going to force you. But the International Day of Happiness, established by the United Nations in 2013, is more than just a pipe dream that people will try to be happier for one day a year. It’s part of a campaign to “end poverty, reduce inequality, and protect our planet,” all things that should be conducive to greater overall happiness. And, just as Bhutan doesn’t measure its progress by GDP but rather Gross National Happiness, today is a day to remember that there’s much more to happiness, and to a fulfilling life, than financial achievement.

Image credit: Juniperusco [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The phoenix of Venice

Throughout the night of January 29, 1996, a fire raged in the center of Venice, Italy, and by morning it had consumed its victim: the Teatro La Fenice, often called simply La Fenice. Luckily, the fire did not travel beyond the walls of La Fenice, but the destruction was profound. One of the great opera houses of Europe was gutted, and the city of Venice lost a treasured civic landmark.

Arriving by chance in Venice just days after the fire, celebrated author John Berendt set out to document the aftermath of the Fenice fire, interviewing local residents and city officials to find out what led up to the fire, and what long-term effect it might have on the city. As with his previous bestseller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which centered around a lurid murder in Savannah, Georgia, Berendt found many colorful characters and community intrigues in Venice to write about in addition to his main story. The result of Berendt’s research is the 2005 book The City of Falling Angels.

The fire of 1996 that Berendt details in The City of Falling Angels is a riveting event, a tragedy on a huge scale. But for the Teatro La Fenice, this catastrophe was yet one more chapter in its long and strange history.

Fire in the Hall

Translated from Italian, La Fenice means “the phoenix,” a reference to the mythological creature that is reborn from its ashes after it is destroyed. Long before the fire in 1996, La Fenice acquired this name because of another fire, one that burned down the Teatro San Benedetto in 1774. In response to the loss of the theater, a group of ex-proprietors of the San Benedetto, calling themselves the Noble Association of Boxholders, decided to sponsor the creation of a new theater, and invited proposals for its design. Completed in 1792, La Fenice was well received and greatly admired by the public and the media.

Only a few years after the Fenice was completed, in 1797, the French army, under Napoleon’s command, invaded and occupied Venice, placing it under both French and Austrian control. Although ownership was retained by those who had built the theater, it in effect became a state theater. In accordance with this, in 1807, La Fenice played host to the now-Emperor Napoleon; a special loggia was built to accommodate him, and the theater was decorated in the imperial colors of blue and silver.

Further changes to the theater were made in 1828, including the hanging of a new chandelier and additions of painting and sculpture. All this work put into the Fenice was destroyed on December 13, 1836, when the theater caught fire, reputedly sparked by a newly installed Austrian stove. The fire burned for three days and nights, and continued to smolder for another 15 days. On the heels of this disaster, reconstruction began quite quickly, under the direction of the Meduna brothers, Tommaso and Giambattista.

Disorder of the Phoenix

After the major rebuilding of 1836, other refinements and renovations were made to the Fenice, most notably in 1854 and 1937. At the time of the 1996 fire, major restoration work was again being carried out on the Fenice, and according to The City of Falling Angels, many believed the chaos that existed inside the theater during this time contributed to its destruction. Indeed, the prosecutor charged with going after those responsible for the fire, Felice Casson, first focused on the city officials he felt were negligent in keeping order on the project. Examples of this negligence included the lack of restrictions on access to the site and the presence of equipment and flammable materials left scattered around the site by work crews. Most critically, response to the fire was hampered by the lack of water in the adjacent canal, drained as part of a canal improvement plan; valuable time was lost in routing water from another canal to the scene of the fire.

Eventually, however, Casson charged two cousins—the owner and employee of a company hired to carry out electrical work on the Fenice—with arson, and both were found guilty of the crime. The motive for arson given by the prosecution was that the men were trying to avoid serious fines the company would have faced if it did not meet an upcoming work deadline.

Out of the Ashes

The mayor of Venice at the time of the fire, Massimo Cacciari, promised that the Fenice would be rebuilt “com’era, dov’era,” or “as it was, where it was.” This was easier said than done, considering the difficulties of construction work in the middle of a city without roads. All the building materials had to be brought in by boat, and a large platform was built in the main thoroughfare of Venice, the Grand Canal, upon which cement mixers and large equipment were stored. After stops and starts, and after the project had changed management mid-stream, the new Fenice hosted its inaugural performance on December 14, 2003.

It was one more chapter in the history of this world-famous opera house, the setting for premieres of works by Verdi, Bellini, Stravinsky, and Britten, and the scene of many notable performances by opera superstars such as Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland. Like a phoenix, La Fenice twice rose from the ashes to continue its important role in the life of Venice.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on October 2, 2006.

Image credit: Youflavio [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Regular readers know of my deep and abiding passion for chocolate. My wife has comparable feelings about caramel, whereas my own feelings about caramel are decidedly “meh.” In other situations, she and I might take a Jack Sprat approach and each eat only the portions of the food we find most delicious, but that’s remarkably difficult (and messy) with the combination of caramel and chocolate. So I think the right thing to do is for us to celebrate National Chocolate Caramel Day as a family. I get the chocolate, she gets the caramel, and we’re both happy.

Image credit: Lee McCoy [CC BY-ND 2.0], via Flickr