Invoking the Nobility of the Noble Sector
- notes for a dialogue
India Research Centre, ESSEC Business School, France
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I like the idea of a university – it lifts your mind and expands your heart, but when I accepted your invitation, I had no idea of what lay before me. And discovering that ESSEC Business School ranks eighth in the world, I am already disarmed. How would a GNH idea fare in a Business School in one of the most advanced countries in the world? The only consolation has been that the foundational vision of ESSEC was very close to the ideal of Gross National Happiness. 
There is much we need to be thankful for in life. The genius of the human race has laid down the foundations of our many civilizations and extended the frontiers of knowledge to a level unprecedented in history. The promise of unlimited progress, unimpeded dominance of nature, hitherto unknown material abundance, and the new-found personal freedom, among others, have made our race the undisputed masters of the universe and ushered in a brave new world.
We have built smart service delivery systems, fashioned state-of-the-art tools and technology; we live longer and more comfortable lives, enjoy a far greater range of choices than our parents could ever think of. Our world is more educated and the people better informed. Judged by these standards, we should have legitimate reasons for satisfaction, even happiness!
Despite all these achievements, however, our world seems an anxious place. The comfort of earlier certainties are no longer so. We have managed to pollute the land, sea and sky to a level never known before. Our formidable-looking financial systems show their limits as do political and social arrangements. With all the progress we have made, we have reasons to worry. In the language of the Nobel Prize winning Albert Schweitzer:
Man has become a superman. But the superman with the superhuman power has not risen to the level of superhuman reason. The degree to which his power grows, he becomes more and more a poor man… It must shake up our conscience that we become all the more inhuman the more we grow into supermen.
It is not much of a flattering statement on the human condition. Where did the rains start beating us? With all the discoveries and inventions, expanding knowledge and accumulated wisdom, our lot might have been much better! How did our world manage to get the way it has? What happened to the Shakespearean vision of man being “…noble in reason, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like and angel, in apprehension how like a god - the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals…”
We seem to have Faustian knowledge, Faustian science and Faustian technology. But our world looks devoid of Faustian music. Things fall apart and the centre does not seem to hold! “Sharpening of tools and confusion of aims is characteristic of our age” This warning by Einstein looks far more dire today than it might have been when he made it.
Do we have an alternative? Can our having mode also include a being mode? Let’s follow Voltaire and move on: “Life is thickly sown with thorns and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us…”
For a world long accustomed measuring progress by the linear, uni-dimensional economic yardstick of GDP, any suggestion to the contrary might smack of the pious and the philosophical, too idealistic for a time largely defined Dickens’ Fagin:
“In this world, nothing counts,
But in the bank large amounts”!
But Bhutan’s fourth King, His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck, saw life and saw it full. The youngest monarch in the world then articulated a fundamental fact about all of us humans when he declared that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” Having gone through a catharsis of sorts, a more chastened world seems to be listening. Bhutan’s proposal to include the pursuit of happiness as a goal for the UN family of nations having been endorsed by the General Assembly, the human race might find itself engaged in more sublime preoccupations.
The ideal of Gross National Happiness is rooted in the belief that:
· The ultimate desire of all human beings, on all parallels and meridians, regardless of time and space, is to be happy. This being the case, it is the responsibility of governments to create the necessary conditions to support the experience of happiness.
· The profound needs of human beings are not necessarily material or physical, but that there are other deeper dimensions of life – natural, social, cultural, spiritual, psychological, aesthetic, moral that make life worthwhile and meaningful and that they need to be nurtured.
· There is no necessary relationship between the level of material wealth and the level of happiness – they could in fact be antithetical to each other.
· The goal of life cannot be limited to an endless cycle of production and consumption and more production and more consumption…
· The conventional, linear, uni-dimensional measure of progress, otherwise called GDP, is too limited and reductionist as it leaves out other significant, non-economic or non-material factors. Gross National Happiness is, therefore, a more holistic, integrated and balanced approach to development.
“GDP does not register the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, or the integrity of our public debates. It measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile”. So said Robert Kennedy. “Material things were necessary but subordinate and fell by the way... There were limits to material resources. It stands to reason that material things do not last a thousand years…”. This comes from an old Japanese belief.
There is an urgent need to advance an alternative paradigm that ensures a more balanced and equitable socio-economic development, that supports the integrity of our natural environment to support life, that acknowledges the wisdom and value of our heritage and culture, that promotes good governance at all levels - personal, family, institutional, social, national, international.
Archibald MacLeish had said: “There is no possible way of getting world peace except through education” In the same vein, we can say: How do we advance the goal of GNH except through education?
If a nation has a dream, its education system must own it and advance it. What kind of education are we talking of? Not the kind that is limited to churning out thousands of graduates every year who are unsure of who they are and where they are going; not the kind that produces people who are merely career-conscious and character-oblivious; certainly not the kind that sends out young men and women who are devoid of the virtues either of usefulness or gracefulness. A lot that goes on in the world in the name of education today hardly has anything to do with education!
Bhutan expects its education system to support and serve a goal that is allied to the goal of the nation – we are educating for Gross National Happiness by nurturing green schools for green Bhutan. We are invoking the nobility of the noble sector.
What are the elements of a green school, a green college or a green university, for that matter?
The elements of a green school are the same elements that make us who we are. And because the society is an aggregate of each one of us, it is these elements that make the society what it is. Our green schools therefore, encompass natural or environmental greenery, intellectual or mental greenery, academic greenery, social greenery, cultural greenery, spiritual greenery, aesthetic greenery, moral greenery.
This programme of educating for GNH is in essence a call to return to the core purpose of education, its true function. We owe it to our young men and women to show them that life is more than qualification and careers as important as they are. We owe it to our societies and our nations to provide a vision of the future and build personal and intellectual foundations.
We are looking at a new ethic of education, indeed a new civilization, call it an educational civilization, if you will. It is instructive to listen to the young hero in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain; “For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thought”
GNH has been the North Star for the Land of the Peaceful Dragon. It can be an answer to the need of our times, an anodyne to “still the tooth that nibbles at the heart”.
The dream of one man, the dream of all humanity – GNH is an act of faith, an appeal, a prayer.
Young scholars of ESSEC, even as your world is opening up and expanding, may you all be happy and be the cause of happiness wherever in the world you may be!
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