In early 2003 I was invited to take part in a series of meetings in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The gathering was held to explore the practical operationalisation of the country’s development goal, Gross National Happiness or GNH. For approximately 20 years this small and self-sufficient nation has been quietly working on this initiative, one established by the fourth king of Bhutan His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck in the late 1980s. I was asked to review the current understanding of happiness in the Western scientific literature in order that this be included in the deliberations on GNH and how it might be achieved. This task was not overly problematic given the increasing level of theoretical convergence in happiness research but when brought into the context of Buddhist culture, it exposed layers of underlying assumption and fundamental differences in the meaning of happiness between Western material culture and the on-going traditions of Mahayana Buddhism. On returning to New Zealand, I was struck by the enthusiasm that GNH evoked in almost everyone I mentioned it to. This approval generally ignored critical connotations however, and as such the real implications of Bhutan’s aspirations tended to missed, and indeed continue to be missed. For the Bhutanese, to seek happiness is to simultaneously seek moral maturity while for the majority in modern society it evokes simpler notions of mere good feeling.

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It has been said that the Dalai Lama often begins his speeches with the statement that everybody wants to be happy, and no one wants to be unhappy. As Aristotle also affirmed, happiness is for most, the ultimate goal in life, the one that all other apparent goals come to serve. Riches, fame, beauty - each acquires its allure by virtue of its ability to confer happiness. For most cultures and for most of history, Being happy has rested upon the foundations of a well-rounded personal development and in this sense has long been seen as the final flowering of a virtuous life.

However, as we shall see, this essential connection between feeling good and being good has not survived the disruptions of modernity and particularly those of consumer culture. We live now in a period where the cultural framework of market society demands that any necessary connection between morality and pleasure be severed. It is a fatal flaw in the structuring of market societies, for in shaking off the shackles of personal restraint, commercial culture induces a narrow individualism that denies the legitimacy of any larger ends. As this attitude has become entrenched, collective values have been realigned and the moral connotations of terms like happiness been slowly but surely excised. This paper is an attempt to chart some of these basic perceptual changes and use them to shed light on the particularly provocative case of Bhutan, a Himalayan country that has rejected GNP as an ultimate social aim. As we shall see, this move opens up valuable space to consider new developmental priorities and in particular offers useful insight into just how far from responsibility our own culture has been allowed to drift under the influence of economic doctrine. Bhutan’s search for happiness represents a timely challenge to contemporary economic liberalism, and viewed in light of a litany of unfolding global crises it offers us a practical thematic guide on how we might more wisely secure an advance that is simultaneously happy and responsible.

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In the history of Western civilisation, happiness begins conscious life as a fickle state of visitation, one largely driven by the whims of fate. This interpretation of happiness as lying beyond the intentional grasp of humanity is particularly apparent in the great Greek tragedies where the interventions of the gods come as unexpected and often undeserved blessings. It is for this reason that the Greek derivative for happiness ‘hap’ literally means luck or good fortune and the Latin equivalent ‘felix’ has a similar origin. This opaque understanding slowly evaporated as Europe moved towards the Christian era in which happiness was made attainable through the rigorous cultivation of moral goodness. In Christian doctrine, the highest bliss comes from being in harmony with, and of service to the collective. It comes from learning to minimise personal greed and maximise generosity. Through developing these aptitudes, happiness is secured both in this life, and most importantly in the next. The spread of this doctrine gained significant impetus following the conversion of the Roman empire in the 4th century CE and effectively dominated European civilisation until the Enlightenment.

Throughout the Christian Era of Western history, ultimate happiness was promised, and still is to contemporary believers, in Heaven. Here, everlasting fulfilment comes to those, but only to those, who led lives of exemplary virtue. The Bible lays out the origins of humanity, our future fate and the principles of a well-led life. The desirable virtues are codified, as in the Ten Commandments, along with the vices to avoid - most noticeably in the form of the Seven Deadly Sins. Such teachings aim to instil a basic morality of self-control and care for others. For Christians then, the message is clear, if one wishes to find happiness in this life and the next, one must aspire to virtue.

In providing structure and direction to the search for happiness, Christianity reflects the patient labours of all the worlds great religious traditions. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and a host of indigenous forms provide a similar guiding function for the collective. Each specifies helpful codes of conduct to facilitate self-control and all promise punishment for those who fail to seek their good feelings through morally sound actions. For millennia, religious cultures have sought to pull humanity towards goodness by offering instruction on how to avoid conflict and suffering. Christianity accords with this general pattern, but its influence has declined significantly from the period in which it could authoritatively shape public culture. The shouldering aside of religious constraint and the embracing of a secular reinterpretation of happiness have been phenomena of enormous significance in shaping the modern world. In charting this trend we can begin to appreciate the extent of the gulf that separates Bhutanese aspirations from our own.

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At its heart, the history of the secularizing West is the history of a search for moral independence driven by a conviction that individual rationality represents the most powerful force for positive collective change. In large part, the hankering after a greater freedom gained its momentum as a fight against unreasonable religious moralising. And indeed the emergence of a cultural philosophy centring upon the freedoms of man as a consumer and citizen could not have been possible within the doctrines of the traditional church. Within these walls, individual freedom had long been likened to a wolf that the church held firmly by the ears. If individuals were granted excessive moral autonomy it was argued, the wolf of selfishness would savage the public interest and it would be almost impossible to bring to heel again. But through the fatal divisions of the Reformation, this beast did step free - in the form of a new man liberated from ‘religious superstition’ and authorised to deny the gravity of any force aimed at his moral improvement.

In many ways the decline in authority endured by the church was the direct result of its own indiscretions. A flagrantly corrupted papacy, an avaricious network of opportunist bishops in the provinces, its bloody military campaigns - these and other indiscretions undermined its legitimacy and sentenced it to a rapid downfall. But equally, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, a new scientific understanding was demonstrating its utility, and discoveries in astronomy, geography and geology were eating at the foundations of an overly-rigid institution. With a rising faith in the human potential to forge its own decent advance, secular demands coalesced around the search for philosophical, political and economic liberty. The latter was particularly contentious as the Christian marketplace had long been governed by a straightjacket of conditions ranging from bans on lending capital to legislated prices for goods and wages. As the pressure for economic liberation built up and the discoveries of major trade routes and new resources stimulated local appetites, the push for emancipation became an unstoppable force. Thus, in a short period of decades, Western society moved from being theistically accountable to being largely personally accountable for the moral quality of its actions.

The philosophers and policy makers who cemented this revolution in place firmly believed in the rational potential of the individual and their natural preference for an improving morality. In fact it is fair to say that the whole granting of greater freedom was premised upon this faith. Thus, Thomas Paine believed that citizens would diligently monitor political developments and force progressive political change. Adam Smith and other advocates of the free market genuinely believed that ‘human heartedness’ would prevent markets from spreading suffering and harm. We could build a better world through engineering and commerce. We could achieve better justice through a science of politics and morals. Hence, the liberation of the individual was intended not to promote a hedonistic anarchy, but rather to secure a greater maturity. Unfortunately however, lurking behind the benevolent face of eighteenth century philosophy, were the less elevated calculations of self-interest in all spheres. These constituencies were, and still are keen to throw their weight behind any grand-sounding theory that offers cover. The release of the ideal rational individual was thus accompanied by the release of a less than ideal shadow, one hampered by the usual tyrannies of moral small mindedness - ignorance, greed and a wholesale disregard for others.

For such types, the ideal endpoint of post-religious ordering comes when moral restraint is rendered irrelevant to the calculations of self-interest. In contemporary commercialised culture we are moving towards this point as our explanations of moral purpose and meaning have become increasingly obscured - to the point that no construction seems inherently more valuable than any other. In the personal and particularly in the market realm, to restrain or indulge, to support fair trade or unfair trade, to pursue a sustainable or unsustainable lifestyle, these are to vary real degree, moral equivalents in modern culture. The only tangible metric that we share is the degree to which phenomena generate good feeling for the individual. Thus, in current parlance, whatever makes you happy must be good.

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This troubling trajectory represents a radical departure from the rational ideal and from patterns observable in most traditional forms of culture. In these, the reverse tends to be held true, that what makes you good must make you happy (in both the causal and imperative sense). This formulation forces a moral engagement as a pre-requisite for fulfillment, while its opposite obliterates its relevance. In non-market cultures a systemic divorce of responsibility from freedom would be viewed as being automatically problematic. And indeed our faith in their separability has not been borne out as we have successively witnessed the spread of a wholesale disregard for the well-being of the collective. A morally narrowed mentality now constitutes the most fundamental hurdle to our achieving the happy goals of a progressive society. But despite this, or indeed because of this, it is being actively cultivated in market culture as it provides the ideal psychological grounding for expanding demands and reaping the unrestrained profits that lie in ‘satisfying‘ them. When the universal search for happiness is divorced from morality much individual profit can be gained, but ultimately only at considerable cost to others. This being so, economy must be restrained by an overarching set of virtues strong enough to actively counter its moral myopia.

In the modern era however, these restrictions have been directly challenged as markets have sought to secure greater freedoms through a radical reinterpretation of the meaning of business in the public mind. Beginning in the eighteenth century writings of the new economists, the market has been reconfigured to constitute an inherently moral force, one whose mechanisms are capable of transforming the questionable commercial motive of personal gain into a force for inclusive social benefit. As long as competition is encouraged within the marketplace, selfishness can be released in the certainty that any harmful effects will be redirected by a ‘market mechanism’ resulting in a general benefit (primarily in the form of ever-more high quality goods delivered at ever-lower prices). Contrary to traditional Christian wisdom then, the way forward to an inclusive and happy world lies in releasing, rather than containing self-interested appetites. This on-going ideological push is aimed at loosening social constraints on economy and the long-standing connections between feeling good and doing good.

In assuming that liberation from religious restraint would help us find a more direct route to happiness, the main movers of the Enlightenment believed that the majority would come to exercise considerate choices that would balance personal outcomes with those of others. Thus, accompanying the rapid political and economic freedoms of the new era was a vigorous outpouring of moralizing aimed at ensuring the basic need for civility. However, rather than stemming from a singular source, the debate over where society and its individuals ‘ought’ to head descended rapidly into a virtual Babel of disagreement. For a while though, and at least up until the demise of the Victorian era, familial socialisation continued to be guided by an essentially Christian morality. It was only with the relative decline of this institution that individualism was released in its present full-blown form. Liberated from effective familial socialisation, the aptly named ‘me generation’ in particular, spawned a radical shift in global politics during the 1980s and 90s, one manifested by the rolling back of government regulation and the further release of market forces.

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All economies exist within the context of culture and as such, they are shaped and defined by its priorities. But just as culture influences markets, markets can come to profoundly influence their hosts in order to make them more accommodating. That the Enlightenment idealists failed to foresee the impacts of modern marketing is deeply unfortunate as much of their optimism might have been accordingly tempered. Today, legions of the worlds best psychologists work with singular intensity to identify and exploit the weakest points in our rational defences against commercial manipulation. New value-shifting techniques are tested on the public every day and in ever-more aggressive forms. However, all of these techniques employ one central and constant technique - that of incessantly associating increasing consumption with increasing feelings of happiness. Through targeted psychological marketing, influence is continually applied to expand consumer appetites and then profit from satisfying them. With the central moral restraints of religion and central government significantly weakened, the market has now extended it’s reach deep into the public mind to shape a consciousness perfectly adapted to its own needs for expansion. The spread of market acceptance into popular culture demands an intensification of greed, ignorance and a lack of concern for others. Accordingly, the popular search for happiness has been redirected towards these immaturities as a function of their supposed utility. At this point we can see once again, how far commercial culture has allowed happiness to drift from its moral moorings.

To briefly summarise the above argument then, it seems that happiness in Western culture has shifted in meaning, from being associated irrevocably with being good, to its contemporary meaning where it implies only feeling good. This shift has been driven in large part by a market ideology notable for its naïve faith in the power of freedom to forge a decent order. Under it‘s influence, insatiable desires have been released in the false belief that pursuing these will lead ultimately to the greatest fulfilment The spread of materialism has only been made possible by the relative demise of restraining culture and its ability to transmit moral attitudes of care and cooperation. Religious authority was shouldered aside long ago, the secular institutions of family authority and hands-on government only more recently. Having legitimised self-absorption, western culture now finds itself seeking to secure happiness through enacting a fateful trio of tendencies, greed, ignorance and a lack of concern for others. This does not represent a happy development.

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Bhutan is a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas, a place as yet largely free from major commercial intrusion but one facing rapid change nonetheless. If events in the broader region had not reverberated against her borders, it is likely that Bhutan would still be largely removed from the global scene quietly pursuing the conscious isolationism it cultivated for centuries. However, with the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s, Bhutan’s sovereignty was actively threatened and so began a programme of rapid integration into a globalising world. Bhutan joined the worlds major international institutions, in large part to enhance its status as an independent nation. But to feel ultimately secure against Chinese expansionism requires aligning oneself with the other regional superpower, India. Thus, in 1961 Bhutan began a slow process of integration with its southern neighbour, including signing agreements to coordinate defence and trade. From this point on Bhutan has been subjected to an inrush of foreign institutions and ideals - into a country that had no national currency nor capital until 1961. The Bhutanese now find themselves in the front line of globalisation complete with it’s distractions and temptations. Being still steeped in an overwhelmingly Buddhist culture, much of the insistence of market temptation induces good humoured rejection to begin with, but it is typically a short step from this to full embrace. For a culture that has long sought to encourage virtues of generosity, compassion and wisdom, the temptation of a dissolving materialism presents a profound challenge in its celebration of greed, carelessness and ignorance. These vices are known in Mahayana Buddhism as the Three Root Poisons, as they are viewed as constituting the fundamental source of all destructive and damaging behaviours. They represent a recipe for embedding misery and not happiness.

When modern market culture contacts its indigenous counterparts the philosophical underpinnings of conflicting worldviews are rarely debated with much public intensity. Rather, in most instances, globalising markets effect their de-moralising influence by distracting from existing understandings, not engaging with them. This is most effectively achieved by narrowing concern away from the connected whole towards the disconnected self, away from the public realm towards the private; and away from improving moral reasoning towards intensifying amoral feeling. The deeper debate over whether happiness is morally founded or not is effectively sidelined in the process and deemed irrelevant to the simple business of getting on with feeling good.

As individuals fall into the habit of consuming market-based messages they gradually lose sight of larger visions that extend the gaze beyond the limited arena of personal material gain. In the process, the inspirational heart of any traditional culture tends to lose its traction on an increasingly distracted public. Materialism signals a morally convenient option in which good outcomes can be assumed regardless of the virtue of any individuals actions. It is tempting in that it avoids the unpleasant necessities of learning to limit ones appetites through frustrating them and sharing the things you value rather than commandeering them for yourself. Globalising markets spread a pliable culture in which the ultimate freedom lies in the right to be free from both social and personal moral scrutiny. Globally, feeling good for oneself as opposed to doing good for others has proven to be a remarkably popular choice. But fortunately as yet, it does not represent the universal choice.

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Bhutan’s response to the challenges of material culture has been unique and of enormous importance in retaining some critical alternative space in the international debate over the national end points of development and how they might be achieved. As economic globalisation spreads it’s influence to shape accommodating attitudes and institutions, it has largely secured Gross National Product as the sole acceptable measure of any societies progress. To represent Bhutan’s intentions in the form of Gross National Happiness is to directly challenge not only an inflated measure but the whole mindset that lies behind its inflation. To guide national policy towards Gross National Happiness is to openly declare the insufficiency of economic expansionism as a sufficient measure for human development. In so-doing, the Bhutanese have struck a deeply intuitive chord, as attractive to the harried modern consumer as it is to the quietist monk. Economics, Bhutan reminds us, is not a goal but a process. It is a means and not an end.

It is a wise perspective to adopt as it is indeed true that when one looks at the empirical relationship between happiness and GNP any straightforward correspondence between the two is difficult to find. Hence, for example we note that the Australian economy has doubled in size since the 1980 with no corresponding increase in happiness. The post war period has seen the American economy grow four-fold and the Japanese five-fold but in neither case has skyrocketing consumption increased collective happiness. In fact the best indications are that overall happiness levels are decreasing in the advanced economies largely due to the stresses attendant on a materially competitive lifestyle.

Indeed there is now an extensive academic literature that convincingly demonstrates that financial wealth and material consumption are singularly profitless means to securing happiness. To the extent that market driven societies accept the connection between having more and feeling happier, they undermine any real prospects for fulfillment as these lie not in competitive isolation but in cooperative engagement with others. Current work on the correlates of happiness highlights, marriage, friends, health, optimism, a sense of purpose and self-acceptance as primary factors promoting happiness. Money has little purchase in most reviews of the literature. There would seem to be mounting empirical support then to validate Bhutan’s relegation of economic materialism to a strictly secondary status.

There are deeper benefits that also stem from deposing economic growth from its self-proclaimed eminence. Viewed as only a contingently beneficent phenomenon rather than a necessarily beneficent one, market expansion can be gauged by its critical impacts not only on collective happiness but also on other related outcomes of importance - ones like global justice, collective harmony and ecological health. When outcomes in these realms are included, the shaping of consumer culture takes on an ominous hue. Globally the expansion of market culture has led to a distribution of well-being that is enormously polarised with billions suffering inexcusable privation while millions enjoy unbelievable excess. Looked at in terms of its effects on the global ecosystem, market culture is having disastrous impacts, destroying habitats and species at a truly alarming rate. In the space that a deposed economic hegemony creates, it is possible to view markets as manageable processes capable of producing a variety of results in a variety of spheres. In order to make sense of these impacts and so judge the proper place of economy, an integrative morality must be brought to bear on the problem of development and the proper ends it should serve. In opening the way to reconsidering these questions, Bhutan has usefully highlighted the critical need for a more coherent moral response to expanding market destructiveness.

Fortunately for Bhutan, it has a living cultural framework that is more than capable of orienting itself with regard to these difficult challenges. In Mahayana Buddhism the basic principles could not be clearer - that true happiness comes from overcoming self-absorption and in learning to be appreciative and helpful to the greater wellbeing. Buddhism has long taught that any individual or culture dominated by greed, ignorance and lack of care will spread, and ultimately reap a miserable harvest. To date, the limited intrusions of marketed media have only had some effect on Bhutanese sensibilities, in part because much of the country remains unplugged from television. Buddhist institutions continue to thrive, emphasising the need to overcome selfishness through the cultivation of morally considerate thought, speech and action. For Bhutan then, the primary issue is one of cultural containment. Of how the country can most effectively derive genuine benefit in granting some specific freedoms while avoiding the disastrous collapse into moral oblivion unrestrained consumerism normally breeds. To manage this will require strict control of the market and its influence on public culture. The Royal Government has enacted a number of policies in this direction, limiting the spread of television, banning tobacco products, removing stationary advertising, forcing land reform and so forth, but much more needs to be done in order to contain the expansionary pressures of the private sector.

Accompanying these initiatives are continuing moves to ensure that the moral underpinnings of existing culture continue to authoritatively guide the collective away from an isolated individualism. The collective consciousness is still pervaded by a fundamental conviction that happiness lies along the path of doing good with, and for others. The mechanisms of the market, the dynamics of greed, the temptations of ethical avoidance, the futility of materialism - all of these can be contained easily within the Mahayana tradition. The real battle is to retain its relevance as an overarching framework amidst an increasingly clamorous cacophony of distraction.

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In taking a stand on Gross National Happiness then, the Bhutanese have created the opportunity for alternative priorities and policies to emerge. The happiness that anchors national policy represents no simple policy choice. It involve a national commitment to building and maintaining the structures that facilitate growth towards maturity and responsibility. It requires that wisdom be constantly cultivated through a mindful appreciation of the complex inter-dependencies of society and nature. It must employ techniques aimed at expanding the capacity for material moderation and for a corresponding willingness to share. Above all, Bhutan’s national agenda must retain the sovereignty of moral development in any real advance towards collective happiness. It is thus a courageous course for any elected government to set itself in an era of overwhelming consumer temptation.

Still, the task before Bhutan’s politicians pales compared with the difficulties faced by the leaders of the so-called ‘free world’. Not only must similar policies of economic containment be brought to bear in order to the reduce the demand for shared resources here, but this must be done against a backdrop of intensive commercial socialisation and a long-standing acceptance of the basic right to reject moralising authority. That freedom should reign is now an accepted principle, that it must be married to responsibility its neglected counterpart. To try and bring the latter back to prominence is to challenge the very foundations of commercial modernity. Governments in market driven societies have been singularly reluctant to challenge the unwise indulgences of the modern consumer. Commercial interests fight tooth and nail to continue feeding off the moral myopia that is materialism. The challenge to grow up and take responsibility for the impacts of the modern lifestyle will not go down well with the average motorist, airline passenger or taxpayer. Against a backdrop of the right to choose, policies aimed at containing economy within a broadened consideration must be persuasive enough to force the willing inclusion of global interests in the individuals search for happiness. Such policies seek no less than a moral reconstruction of culture and demand that we challenge the problems of greed, ignorance and lack of concern head on and in these terms. Free market culture attempts a grand lie when it claims that moral disengagement can secure a genuinely happy advance as the parlous state of the contemporary world more than adequately demonstrates. Yet it still remains an untruthful convenience for governments and individuals alike.

We can then understand the dilemma not only of Bhutan, but of the whole global community in these relatively simple terms. The expansion of global economy represents the spread of a collapsing morality and its effects are disastrous for the non-material ends it tries to render invisible. We now need to rapidly correct the ideological naivite that has allowed us to accommodate such a slide into unmonitored over-indulgence. In a world rapidly approaching its ecological limits, aiming to maximise GNP (and so the rate and extent of resource use) is madness. The deeper challenge faced by all nations at this point in history is how to reign in the moral liberties that have been granted but which now require strict qualification. This will be no easy task.

There is one major factor that offers help in this regard though, that being the sheer urgency of containing our rates of consumption under current conditions. If one attends to the latest science on climate change, it promises to deliver intergenerational misery on a monumental scale. The need to reduce our load on the planets' regenerative capacities is now so pressing that it pushing against even the narrowest interests of the most detached consumer. Humanity currently faces a massive challenge that is fundamentally moral in form. It calls upon us all to begin seeking our happiness in ways that are considered and restrained.

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All in all then, Bhutan’s experiments with increasing national happiness expose deep cultural differences over the meaning, means and ends of social development. In the space its formulations create, a non-hegemonic market can be judged by its contributions to a variety of more integrative and adaptive ends. When justice, sustainability and happiness are co-joined, as co-existent ends, the moral dimension so lacking in consumer society re-appears along with its potential to guide us towards a sustainable and just happiness. The Bhutanese search for GNH then offers a timely opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of separating a desire to feel good from the larger goal of becoming good.

That we should take advantage of this opportunity is obvious upon sober reflection, but the problem we face is one of resuscitating sober reflection per se in a culture drunk on its own fun-filled freedoms. To return to the start of this essay, I mentioned that many I encountered on return from Bhutan were delighted by the good sense of a focus on Gross National Happiness. However, in the minds of most, this no doubt implied a enhanced capacity for exactly the type of irresponsible happiness Bhutanese policy strongly opposes. Our misreading of the deeper implications of Bhutanese intent is testimony to the collapse in meaning happiness has endured at the hands of modern individualism. For a Western audience then Bhutan’s focus on maximising happiness should be translated into less convenient, yet more constructive terms. The Bhutanese are in reality seeking to find happiness in a material moderation that allows others, both human and non-human to thrive and find their own way to happiness. As friends in Bhutan constantly remind me, in Mahayana there is no prayer for a strictly personal outcome as all are dedicated to the ‘happiness of all sentient beings‘ This is ultimately the level of moral connection we all need to aspire to if we are to have any chance of securing a genuinely happy world.