The Pursuit of Happiness

Professor Jennifer Aaker of the Stanford Graduate School of Business refers to happiness as an emotional landscape ranging anywhere from “contentment to intense joy.” She teaches a course called “Designing Happiness,” which the future business leaders of America are just clamoring to get into. And who could blame them? Selling “happiness” is hardly a new marketing idea, as your local Mad Men devotee will tell you. Though companies try to espouse the ethos of happiness through commodification (The Joy of Softdrink, etc.), is that true happiness? The fourth Dragon King of Bhutan didn’t think so.

While other countries measured their national strength based on GNP, or Gross National Product, the Bhutanese King doubted that monetary success was the most important goal in the lives of his subjects. As such, when he assumed the throne 1972, he developed the idea of the GNH, or Gross National Happiness. By analyzing factors in life that influence a person’s happiness (access to education, health care, safety), the Bhutanese government was able to develop a series of metrics that could evaluate the happiness potential for the citizenry. Even going so far as abdicating his regal power to the people of Bhutan, maximizing the GNH has been the national guiding policy principle since the introduction of the concept.

Here’s an amazing video explaining the invention and success of GNH.

Happiness extends more deeply than a corporate or governmental interest in our lives. The desire to be happy motivates most individuals on a daily basis. But how can it be attained?

Stay tuned for my next post, where I will reveal the secret of happiness (or at least the science of happiness).

Stephanie Wortel

Stephanie Wortel is a Program Director in the Education and Public Programs Department at the New York Academy of Sciences.

I am a bit of a Renaissance nerd. With my Bachelor’s from Colgate University and my Master’s from Lehman College, I have been an astrophysics research assistant, a classroom educator in the high schools of the Bronx, a museum educator at the American Museum of Natural History, and a tutor to many of the wonderful students of New York City. I also have twenty years of stage experience. Therefore I am just as likely to be practicing my C++ or performing as a mermaid off-off-Broadway. I am also stricken with powerful wanderlust, though where ever you find me I’m sure to have a song in my heart and a book in my hand.