How Happy Can You Be?: The Economics of Happiness.

To some, the title of the new documentary film, "The Economics of Happiness" is an oxymoron that attempts to reconcile "the dismal science" of economics with the rather upbeat topic of human happiness. And yet, as the filmmakers, Helena Norberg-Hodge, John Page, and Steven Gorelick of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), point out over the course of the film, we've increasingly narrowed the sum total of human experience to a single economic measure: GDP or gross domestic product. Says the film:

"It's as if every problem we can have can be increased by solving GDP - poverty, unemployment, environmental decline…. using GDP as a measure of societal progress is little short of madness, if there's an oil spill, GDP goes up, if the water is so polluted we have to buy bottled water GDP goes up, war, cancer, and epidemic… GDP goes up."

To illustrate this idea, and the film's larger point - that societies should be grounded in the things that make its participants happy, and that we can craft a society that is less resource intensive but far more satisfying - the film opens with an image of Ladakh or "Little Tibet", a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It then takes us through a sweeping narrative of a region that was, previously, perhaps cash poor but rich in the substances that make life worth living - food, culture, community. During the later half of the twentieth century, however, Ladakh was catapulted into 'modern' life via subsidized roads and fuels into a cash economy. What resulted was poverty, rural migration, hunger and social isolation that occasionally erupted into violence.

It's easy to dismiss this sort of before and after as sheer romanticism, but the film backs up its central point - that in endless drive of consumption we've actually decreased well being. In the US, the number of people who declared themselves very happy peaks in 1956 and has steadily declined despite the fact that we've gotten significantly wealthier. Says Vindana Shiva "The only people who are deeply happy are people who know that they can depend on other people - lonely people have never been happy people. Globalization is creating a lonely people."

And though, it's difficult to sum up a nearly two hour film in a handful of points, that may be The Economics of Happiness's most salient point: that in our relentless drive towards accumulating stuff, we've left our own personal happiness by the wayside. We've also created a maddening system in the name of efficiency. One in which fish harvested on the eastern coast of the United States are shipped to Japan for processing and then returned back to the United States for consumption. It is one in which nations engaging in trade find themselves exporting near identical packets of goods that they are also importing. It's as though I mail you a book you already own and then ask you to mail me your copy of that same book.

I could have just kept the copy I sent you in the first place.

Yet, unlike many other films that illustrate a problem without a solution, The Economics of Happiness has a solution: localization - local food, local businesses, local banking. Localization is not isolationism, says the films authors, it is the removal of fiscal and other supports that currently favor giant transnational corporations and banks allowing communities to reduce dependency on export markets in favor of local production. It's a systemic far-reaching alternative that's about reducing the scale of economic activity. It doesn't, however, mean total self-reliance or an elimination of global trade, but it does mean that trade will be in accordance with the basic principle of trading (which modern globalization has eradicated): countries will trade only when both sides benefit. It allows each of us to have a say how we shape sustainable development. Says Vindana Shiva "Global economy is like our arms have grown so long we can't see what we're doing. When we localize things we can see if chemicals have polluted our water or if workers are being exploited. Non-local business is a fundamental dead end."

Picture Credit: the_moment