The beautiful photograph you see behind these posts is one of Bhutan by an amazing photographer from California. She has kindly given me permission to use the photo. Please check out her website at:
www.taipowerseeff.com
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Intentions behind this blog
In a few months, I will likely depart Canada to begin a posting with the United Nations Development Programme in Bhutan, as a Junior Program Consultant in the field of Communications. While I have recently completed an MA in the International Studies field with a focus on Development, my background is more in religious and cultural studies, and so this placement is perhaps a bit of a stretch for me, though I am confident I can fulfill expectations, and excited about the prospect. To tell the truth, Bhutan may be the perfect place for me to study and practice development. Bhutan’s unique approach to development, made famous to the world through its contribution to the measure of development through the use of Gross National Happiness, rather than the strictly economic measures of Gross National or Domestic Product, is inherently conservative. At least two of the four pillars of this approach (preservation of cultural values and conservation of the natural environment) are undeniably conservative, while one of the other two is at least partially (sustainable development), and the last is neutral and context-specific (good governance). In the Bhutanese context, this fourth pillar is also quite conservative (Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy after all, and the people practically had to have democracy forced upon them as recently as 2008).
The title ‘Conservative Development’ is intentionally something of an oxymoron, though I don’t personally understand it that way. Development is something that is continuously being redefined, and as we approach an era when continuous growth increasingly seems like the eighteenth and nineteenth-century pipe-dream that it surely is, based entirely on our ‘smoking’ of fossil fuels, you might say (destroying our collective global lungs, that is the forests and the water and air cycles, in the process), the need to redefine the goals and even the definition of development becomes more evident daily. I would like to think, and in fact hope dearly, that there can still be a place for conservative values within this field. That is, I hope that we can still remember, as the Bhutanese seem to be so capable of, the need to preserve the environment, human culture, traditional ethics and religious values, pre-modern life-styles, ideas, and ways of living (if that is even still possible, perhaps ‘non-modern’ would be a better adjective here), as well as economies/economics that are neither wholly capitalist, communist, or lost in the abyss between them (I think of the great EF Schumacher’s ‘Buddhist Economics’ here, more on that to come). Of course, the term ‘conservative’ is evolving too, and while I am someone who increasingly thinks of himself as conservative at heart, there are for me probably no political parties left that actually represent conservative values, which have been replaced with hard-line economic conservatism and soft social ‘post-Christian’ conservatism, at least in most of the West. But the focus here is on development itself, what that is, and why it has become (in my mind erroneously) synonymous with that dying golden cow of modernity that is ‘progress’ (can golden cows die?).
To go a little deeper, into the second part of the title, I claim to be a ‘Western Oriental’. Now, I am of Euro-North American stock entirely, French Canadian for many generations on my mother’s side, and Catholic-German on my father’s side, his family having emigrated/fled East Germany after the Second World War. So how am I Oriental exactly? This claim betrays my interest in metaphysics, and the worlds beyond the material, and so I am speaking symbolically here of the Orient by which we orient ourselves (the etymological meaning of the orient), the place that is ‘the source of light…the point toward which we turn in our journey in life, the point without which there would be no orientation’ (Nasr). I am of the humble belief that the ‘West’ has too often forgotten how to orient itself, due to its lack of a center (how can one orient themselves without a place to start from?), and is now drowning in the ubiquity of its own material excess. This is what the Occident means symbolically (the great Sufi Shaykh Suhrawardi, amongst others, dealt with this theme in his ‘Recital of the Occidental Exile’ long ago), and for me the importance of conservativism is to preserve some of this connection to the Orient, though admittedly it now exists probably almost as little in the geographic orient as it does in the occident. I hope some of it still exists in Bhutan, but I’ll have to find that out for myself. I’ll let you know. And whether development can be balanced with this sort of orientation is another matter, but it is one which I hope to explore in this blog.
The third part of the title touches on the diversity of themes that are certain to come and go as this blog evolves. Faith, preservation, and progress I’ve already touched on, the last in a sense being in many ways the adversary of conservation, at least in my mind. Happiness of course refers to the Bhutanese goal of development (which is ‘Gha-Key’ in Dzongkha, Bhutan’s national language, a word that encompasses both happiness, ‘Gha,’ and peace, ‘Key’). For me, this is already a much better goal for development than what we are used to, though I certainly reserve the right to be more skeptical and critical once I see it in practice. But happiness as a goal makes much more sense than endless growth and consumption, especially when you see how the Bhutanese define it, and realize it’s not just some colorful metaphor or poetic fancy. They’ve spent a lot of time thinking, and they continue to think, about what happiness really means, what it is composed of, and how it can be adequately measured, and I am happy and honored that I will get to play a small and humble role in the ongoing development of that concept and how it is presented to the world. But to me what is so important is that, for the Bhutanese, and perhaps they are the only ones left, at least at the level of the state, for whom the material world is considered as subsidiary to the inward world, the state of mind, health (at least in the sense of the wholeness of the person), and spirit (what else can happiness and peace refer to?).
For the Bhutanese, and I am romanticizing to a certain extent here, but I do believe that this is at least the goal, the environment, traditional culture and values, and religion must all be preserved for the well-being, wholeness, and happiness (and thus peace) of the people. Now that’s development, and it is what the ‘human development’ of the UN aims towards, though doesn't quite go far enough in its outlook in my opinion. So, ‘human and economic development and conservation’ is what is being compared and contrasted with the Bhutanese approach, and there is a certain balance and understanding between them that must be found. This, I believe, is something the UN faces on a daily basis in its work in Bhutan. Hopefully these different ways of defining development can learn from one another, and offer insights to each other through how they have come to be, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and by sharing what is needed for a healthy, prosperous, and above-all, happy future. Certainly we could all use a little more happiness and peace in these troubled times.
The title ‘Conservative Development’ is intentionally something of an oxymoron, though I don’t personally understand it that way. Development is something that is continuously being redefined, and as we approach an era when continuous growth increasingly seems like the eighteenth and nineteenth-century pipe-dream that it surely is, based entirely on our ‘smoking’ of fossil fuels, you might say (destroying our collective global lungs, that is the forests and the water and air cycles, in the process), the need to redefine the goals and even the definition of development becomes more evident daily. I would like to think, and in fact hope dearly, that there can still be a place for conservative values within this field. That is, I hope that we can still remember, as the Bhutanese seem to be so capable of, the need to preserve the environment, human culture, traditional ethics and religious values, pre-modern life-styles, ideas, and ways of living (if that is even still possible, perhaps ‘non-modern’ would be a better adjective here), as well as economies/economics that are neither wholly capitalist, communist, or lost in the abyss between them (I think of the great EF Schumacher’s ‘Buddhist Economics’ here, more on that to come). Of course, the term ‘conservative’ is evolving too, and while I am someone who increasingly thinks of himself as conservative at heart, there are for me probably no political parties left that actually represent conservative values, which have been replaced with hard-line economic conservatism and soft social ‘post-Christian’ conservatism, at least in most of the West. But the focus here is on development itself, what that is, and why it has become (in my mind erroneously) synonymous with that dying golden cow of modernity that is ‘progress’ (can golden cows die?).
To go a little deeper, into the second part of the title, I claim to be a ‘Western Oriental’. Now, I am of Euro-North American stock entirely, French Canadian for many generations on my mother’s side, and Catholic-German on my father’s side, his family having emigrated/fled East Germany after the Second World War. So how am I Oriental exactly? This claim betrays my interest in metaphysics, and the worlds beyond the material, and so I am speaking symbolically here of the Orient by which we orient ourselves (the etymological meaning of the orient), the place that is ‘the source of light…the point toward which we turn in our journey in life, the point without which there would be no orientation’ (Nasr). I am of the humble belief that the ‘West’ has too often forgotten how to orient itself, due to its lack of a center (how can one orient themselves without a place to start from?), and is now drowning in the ubiquity of its own material excess. This is what the Occident means symbolically (the great Sufi Shaykh Suhrawardi, amongst others, dealt with this theme in his ‘Recital of the Occidental Exile’ long ago), and for me the importance of conservativism is to preserve some of this connection to the Orient, though admittedly it now exists probably almost as little in the geographic orient as it does in the occident. I hope some of it still exists in Bhutan, but I’ll have to find that out for myself. I’ll let you know. And whether development can be balanced with this sort of orientation is another matter, but it is one which I hope to explore in this blog.
The third part of the title touches on the diversity of themes that are certain to come and go as this blog evolves. Faith, preservation, and progress I’ve already touched on, the last in a sense being in many ways the adversary of conservation, at least in my mind. Happiness of course refers to the Bhutanese goal of development (which is ‘Gha-Key’ in Dzongkha, Bhutan’s national language, a word that encompasses both happiness, ‘Gha,’ and peace, ‘Key’). For me, this is already a much better goal for development than what we are used to, though I certainly reserve the right to be more skeptical and critical once I see it in practice. But happiness as a goal makes much more sense than endless growth and consumption, especially when you see how the Bhutanese define it, and realize it’s not just some colorful metaphor or poetic fancy. They’ve spent a lot of time thinking, and they continue to think, about what happiness really means, what it is composed of, and how it can be adequately measured, and I am happy and honored that I will get to play a small and humble role in the ongoing development of that concept and how it is presented to the world. But to me what is so important is that, for the Bhutanese, and perhaps they are the only ones left, at least at the level of the state, for whom the material world is considered as subsidiary to the inward world, the state of mind, health (at least in the sense of the wholeness of the person), and spirit (what else can happiness and peace refer to?).
For the Bhutanese, and I am romanticizing to a certain extent here, but I do believe that this is at least the goal, the environment, traditional culture and values, and religion must all be preserved for the well-being, wholeness, and happiness (and thus peace) of the people. Now that’s development, and it is what the ‘human development’ of the UN aims towards, though doesn't quite go far enough in its outlook in my opinion. So, ‘human and economic development and conservation’ is what is being compared and contrasted with the Bhutanese approach, and there is a certain balance and understanding between them that must be found. This, I believe, is something the UN faces on a daily basis in its work in Bhutan. Hopefully these different ways of defining development can learn from one another, and offer insights to each other through how they have come to be, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and by sharing what is needed for a healthy, prosperous, and above-all, happy future. Certainly we could all use a little more happiness and peace in these troubled times.
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