I just learned about Sustainable Seattle’s Happiness Initiative. Riffing on Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness philosophy, this brilliant project attempts to measure success more broadly than GDP. They offer this survey measuring nine domains of happiness. The domains include things like health and free time, and yes, financial solvency. But money is only one of the nine measures that contribute to well-being.
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| Bhutan photo from AsiaNews.it |
Their hope is that the survey can be used to inform policy decisions. It might be a hard sell when governments are having to cut critical programs, but the survey results could provide a tool to remind politicians that green-lighting development projects purely for the tax revenue they will generate is not necessarily supporting the well-being of their constituency. Or, conversely, it could give forward-thinking civil servants some of the concrete numbers they need to support them in implementing the kind of progressive government existing requirements don’t allow.
I love that there is finally some recognition in the public sphere that more money cannot be measured as a proxy for more happiness. Everyone already knows that the U.S. has the largest GDP in the world. By traditional standards, that should translate to Americans being the happiest people in the world. Anyone who has traveled knows that is not the case.Now, with the help of the happiness survey, we have a concrete indicator that we are not doing so well with Time Balance, Environmental Quality and Community Engagement.
Sustainable Seattle pulls no punches about the importance of changing how we as a society measure success:
Our very lives are at stake. We cannot continue to march on with the overwhelming evidence of climate change, the growing evidence of people living unfulfilled lives even when they buy the latest toys, and the crushing toll of feeling isolated and disconnected. We as a people need to change our priorities to be more in line with our best interests.
