国民総幸福度-フィリピンの場合
-ＧＮＰ・ＧＤＰだけでは計れない国民の幸せ度の基準
Gross national happiness
By Joeber Bersales
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 11:28:00 11/15/2007
Filed Under: Lifestyle & Leisure
Theologians say Adam and Eve were Pinoys,? went the text message Louella ?Loy? Alix, our indefatigable and passionate colleague in the curatorial board of the Cebu Cathedral Museum, sent me the other day. ?Why?? the message continued. ?Because they had no house, no job, nothing decent to wear, no rice and still thought they lived in Paradise!?
Whoever thought of this quote had a fairly good understanding of the well-spring of optimism that pervades despite the atmosphere of despair and sense of helplessness that seems to put the country in a tight grip for decades now.
I didn?t quite get the source of the other night?s ABS-CBN news on the results of a so-called happiness survey that put the Philippines in 6th place, ahead of our coveted land of green pastures, the United States (which landed 8th). But such surveys are bound to be subjective, as was the survey of 80,000 people conducted by researchers at Britain?s University of Leicester and released in July last year which put the Philippines in 78th place (the US ranked 23rd).
There is a strain in cultural studies that leans on the view that cultures with no time for laughter and the appreciation of a leisurely pace in life tend to be more successful in the capitalist world. These countries, like Japan and South Korea, for example, are often replete with traditions of seriousness in dealing with the challenges of life, and literally move fast and have no patience for the unpredictable nor any capacity to react lightly to difficult circumstances. In this view, Filipinos will never make it big in the world of capitalist cutthroat competition, given our lightheartedness and our innate capacity to find something to laugh at even in the worst of situations.
Fortunately for us, in 1972 the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, decided that the Gross National Product (GNP), or the values of goods and services produced by a country in a given year, was not an adequate measure to determine quality of life. He began redirecting the efforts of his development ministers to pursue an economy built on four principles which became measures of what he termed ?Gross National Happiness.? These are the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development; the preservation and promotion of cultural values; the conservation of the natural environment; and the establishment of good governance.
While easier said than done, I think it is time for Cebu to be a model to explore the possibilities of expanding development policy in the Philippines to include measures of GNH. A study done in 1987 by social psychologists of Ateneo de Manila University found that Filipinos have an unlimited capacity for joy and humor, which helps prop them up even in times of extreme difficulties. We have a psyche that helps us overcome difficulties. This is one step in the direction of GNH. The way forward now is to make sure we are up to the challenges of achieving a positive GNH over the more successful industrialized countries whose suicide and depression rates are skyrocketing.
