Don’t forget ignorant!! You can only delude most people because they don’t know any better. Saying an ignoramus is stupid is like saying a car without gas is slow. Might be, but you’ll never know will you? I won’t post the whole thing again but a 90’s NSF study found 55% of Americans didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun once a year. Those people are easy to bamboozle.
Piketty: the poorest half of Americans saw a "total collapse" in their share of the country's wealth
1 Like
It may be ahead of its time, but IMO a lot of the appeal to the leadership of Bhutan was rooted in the fact they were literally the poorest country in the world by GDP per capita for many years.
So, in an hereditary monarchy, if you don’t like facts, come up with ways to measure ‘alternative facts’. Thgus, Gross National Happiness. It also appeals greatly to our own Crunchy Granola types and the deep rooted Orientalism in much of our culture (if it is from Asia and old it is therefore wise and good).
All that said, we can learn from everything, and finding out what makes people so ‘happy’ in Bhutan isn’t a bad place to start.
3 Likes
Unfortunately, it looks like one of the things that makes Bhutanese happy these days is the ethnic cleansing of their Nepali minority.
4 Likes
3 Likes
This was the impression I got as well. Not knowing anything about Bhutan, I did some quick reading and I don’t think I’d be very happy there. (Institutionalized homophobia, prohibition-style outlawing of tobacco, ethnic cleansing of minorities - doesn’t sound very happy for people who aren’t in the in-group.)
Found via wikiclicking: “In 2016, the government of Dubai established the Ministry of Happiness and referenced GNH as the background for the initiative.” A ‘Ministry of Happiness’ sounds positively Orwellian.
That said, the idea of an attempt to measure success by happiness rather than just income still sounds useful. Of course it’ll get corrupted and abused sometimes. Socialism and communism have been horribly abused, but the underlying idea that a society of people can work together and help each other out so that there’s some safety net and societal support for everyone is useful.
2 Likes
That was in the 90s under the previous king, iirc, and it was exile to Nepal, not a genocide that the term “ethnic cleansing” suggests.
Besides, maybe those people were dicks. I know I’d be happier if certain people were exiled from here.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
