Happy Planet...(12/7)

At the same time when the bomb attack took place in Bombay, New Economics Foundation (NEF) released its Happy Planet Index. Based on a formula of life expectancy multiplies life satisfactory and divided by ecological footprint, the index depicts according to NEF a measure of how happy people are in different nations... It measures the ecological efficiency to deliver human well-being in different parts of the world. Assuming this is a sensible and fair perspective to look at our life, the research appears to conclude that wealth is not necessarily correlated to happiness and satisfaction.
Interestingly, the tendency of the capitalistic economy approach at this stage of human history has formulated a "world order" based on the nations' economic development and wealth. The index calls for a totally different order system. As quoted, "high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being". Perhaps it is true, though not many people would agree. Apparently happiness is relativity, and it is rated according to expectation and experience. I have no idea how we can compare our degree of happiness with our ancestors. One century ago, people might be very happy to get on a plane to travel, and now this needs not be true. Fifty years ago, people were extremely happy owning a TV at home, and the fantasy of media spectrum was the flying colours. It is a different story now. When I was in Kenya, I saw their children smiling wholeheartedly when they received souvenirs of pencils and sweets from the tourists. This is happiness to them, and this is a matter of expectation and experience. Those tourists might be happy too, as the donation fulfilled their willingness to give and offer. Based on our scope of knowledge and sense of value, we define what we named to ourselves satisfaction, disappointment, happiness and fulfillment. This may be a meaning of life. When the French team lost the World Cup, French people were sad because they had expected victory to be brought back to Champs-Elysees. The disappointment would be forgotten, though some may not go away. Simply, definition becomes a norm to an individual, a community and a nation on how each of them values themselves and weights their meaning of life. Perhaps this limitation should sometimes be taken away, and by all means, satisfaction is always a very personal treasure.
As happiness is relativity, all elements of trend and development, expectation and anticipation, experience and knowledge build up a curve of ups and downs. Human becomes emotional.
The Happy Planet Index takes into account the environmental factor. Me too. Environment shapes a mind, and changes a mindset. This is a topic of psychology perhaps. Drugs are another extension to stimulating our extent of imagination and feeling. People work on psychopharmacology, and this may be a further research to the coefficient between satisfaction and ecological footprint named by NEF.
Having my time in Europe, the people I met demonstrate to me the variance of happiness definition, and this is inspiring. Travelling to different nations with varying definition of satisfaction and experience enable me to taste the different form of happiness and unhappiness. In the actual world, globalisation is like a go-or-not-go paradox and it is far more complex than we are thinking of about the pros and cons of the unification. The Global Manifesto of NEF remains as always a utopian statement...wealth distribution, recognition of social classes, environmental concern and balance...these are still the terminology we can find in books of economics, geography or sociology.
We still have the smiling faces in chatrooms and email boxes though.
Check out the HPI report at http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/dl44k145g5scuy453044gqbu11072006194758.pdf