GNH not GDP

    

Photo courtesy of
christopherbpearman.wordpress.com

     How would you define prosperity? By the amount of money you make or the fact that you have a roof over your head? By the size of your car or the fact that you have food on your table each night? As an American, living in a well-to-do area of New York State, coming from an upper middle class family, I am definitely guilty of measuring my happiness from an economic and materialistic standpoint. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
     But does measuring prosperity economically actually mean anything? Cool you have a nice car. Awesome, you make more than $100,000 a year. But can money and materialistic items buy us happiness? If I've learned anything from this semester of writing these well-being posts, I have definitely learned that the answer to that question is a big, fat "no."
     It seems a bit silly to think of any other way to measure a country or a person's prosperity than by looking at things economically - gross domestic product, GDP, is probably a terms most Americans over the age of 15 have heard before whether they understand what it means or not (I still get confused sometimes...). But there actually is another way to consider the prosperity of a country - through GNH. No, I didn't type that wrong - GNH, gross national happiness.
     First coined in Bhutan in 1972 by King Jigme Singye, this small country set out to change the consideration of the world in terms of how to measure prosperity. With a goal to share prosperity from another viewpoint across society and the world while "preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government," the idea of GNH has taken off.
     And the idea has taken off so much that the Social Progress Imperative, an organization looking "to advance global human wellbeing," published its first Social Progress Index report this year. The report takes a look at the non-economic needs of the citizens of the world and then compares each country's offerings in terms of non-economic needs with one another.
     This year, in its first report, the index placed the United States as sixth out of the 50 countries surveyed in terms of providing for its citizens with Sweden taking first and Ethiopia taking last.
     Just like the  Gallup-Healthways report done on the well-being of each state, this report could be extremely interesting to look at, and I know much will be taken away from this report which will spur positive change.
     But what I took away from the index at first glance, and what I hope others will take away from it, is the consideration that so much more than materialistic items influence our happiness and well-being. It might be worth even measuring our happiness and well-being without considering materialistic items at all ... what a fun challenge that would be!
    It's worth looking into, though, for a number of reasons - it could give you a chance to truly evaluate your life, it could help you see what's most important in life and it could even change your outlook on life and how you live it. The possibilities are endless and differ for each of us, but taking the time to consider our own GNH instead of our own GDP would definitely be worth the time.