GNH

What is your country's GNH? Are you a stumped? I' not referring to the Gross National Product, the universally watched standard by which countries are measured as to their prosperity level. The GNP measures total amounts of goods and services produced in a country every year. But the GNH is a newer measure that determines how well people live in a country based on their Gross National Happiness level.

In 1972 the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, came up with that measure as a way of determining how happy his subjects were apart from a purely economic based measurement. Other nations liked the idea and the GNH son became a, if not mathematical, accepted way to determine how nice it is to live in any one country. The GNH takes eight things it classifies as contributors to happiness. They include physical, mental and spiritual health; how effectively time is balanced; social and community aspects; cultural vitality; education; the standard of living; government; and ecological status.

Anyway, it's a strange way to determine who is happiest and too complicated to discuss or evaluate. But it's nice that economics alone. Living in a wealthy nation and being wealthy does not ensure happiness. Happiness can surely be achieved independent of economic status. Just for your information, in the 2011 GNH results just released at the United Nations, Bhutan finished ahead of all Asian nations in GNH scoring. The wealthy countries of Scandinavia were at the top of the GNP list and the poorest nations in Central Africa were at the bottom, proving that economics does have a strong affect on happiness. Yet, social factors were even more important in the scoring.

These indexes, whether they be the GNP or GNH are really only useful as a year to year increase or decrease measurement within each country. Few of us would be happy living in Bhutan even given the high score Bhutan achieved. Also, people achieve happiness for different reasons. One person may be happy living in a situation that would make another miserable and vice versa. Uh, even the happiest fundamentalist Muslim would be uncomfortable in Bangkok an you and I both would be miserable living in Saudi Arabia.

I think that these measurements the world loves to use to assign rank are more likely to make us unhappy than happy.