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Is the US, the world's most industrialised nation, and the most powerful, happy ? Or is hermit kingdom,
Bhutan, happy and prosperous? Economists often use GDP as a short- hand for
the well-being of a nation.
Yesterday
this column pointed to the world's 25 top countries with high rates of
organic atheism or agnosticism as among the societally healthy. Remote and
impoverished Bhutan pursues gross national happiness GNH, not GDP as a
benchmark. Today, the world sees Bhutan among the happiest countries on
planet. Sweden and Norway, with high rates of organic atheism or
agnosticism, have the highest incidences of suicides and divorces.
Social scientists seeking alternative models
to map progress often get stuck in the economic paradigm, blaming
spiritualism for the fall of Man. For countries like Bhutan, steeped in
spiritualism, the happiness quotient is immeasurable against official
statistics. happiness, in the civilisational context, can't get stuck in
money. Let's take the debate further and say, happiness, as a by-product of
spirituality, is beyond the boundaries of the state. Spirituality, as we
understand it, starts the moment you derecognise society. Spirituality is of
the self; it's to do with the individual. And it is in this context that
society starts and ends at the level of individual as an unintended and
unmapped by-product of people coming together.
In the material sense, we read of societal
progress and decay to arouse our voyeuristic senses. We talk of death as
devastation, by removing the backdrop against which events occur, but we
never mourn the death of our neighbours. Nor do we account for the number of
daily deaths across the world, to view death in its right perspective.
In measuring wealth, or Lakshmi, we often look
at the cash in hand of individuals, societies and nations. But Lakshmi is
much more than that. In the ancient spiritual traditions of the people of
the geographical approximation we call modern India, Lakshmi has been
variously described in her eight manifestations. Material wealth or
Dhanlakshmi, is only one of them, and the lowest in the ladder of spiritual
quest. The concept of Ashtalakshmi, embodoes the manifestations of
Aadilakshmi, Dhanyalakshmi, Dhairyalakshmi, Gajlakshmi, Santanlakshmi,
Vijaylakshmi, Vidyalakshmi and Dhanlakshmi. Let's not reduce our quest for
societal progress to a never-ending chase of material wealth. |
