GNH, Spirituality, and the Environment

One of the big questions I have to ask from Bhutan when I go there - from its government, its institutions, its people, society, culture, and in particular from its definers of its unique approach to development - is: Is happiness simply another level of development, a more dynamic and holistic approach than current definitions of economic and human development?  Or is it something more?  Is it something that fundamentally challenges Western notions of development as material progress?  Is it something so different that the two should be contrasted and opposed rather than compared?  I ask in particular because I have a particular interest in environmental issues (who doesn’t these days?), and I tend to think that the ideology of materialistic progress is irreconcilable with truly addressing these issues in any sort of meaningful way, which I will explain shortly.

 

It seems to me that ‘happiness’ is indeed something so different from ‘progress’ that the two are too different to place in the same boat, that they are like a lion and a lamb so to speak, who cannot lie down together, unless we are able to tame that terrible lion somehow, a proposition I humbly believe may be impossible.  The two approaches begin from such fundamentally different ideologies and assumptions, in particular because the Bhutanese approach is inherently spiritual, in that it strives for an awareness and protection of this particular dimension of being.  In contrast, the Western approach mostly attempts, if only implicitly, to eradicate this under its fundamentalistically materialist, secular, and scientific assumptions.  This, for me, is one of the great problems with modernity, that it is as fundamentalist as anything, all the more so since its purveyors tend to deny this fundamentalism under a guise of egalitarianism and secularism, under a proclaimed ‘objectivity’ that is really only objective for one who starts from these assumptions.  But isn’t secularism a type of fundamentalism that destroys any sort of meaningful spirituality?  Now, this is why I have trouble comparing our Western notions of progress with the Bhutanese concept of happiness, which is explicitly Buddhist, spiritual, and thus necessarily cognizant of aspects of human being beyond the material, the material to which we are all too often limited by modern definitions of who we are.  My plan for my next post is to cover some of the historical roots of these assumptions, and the blindness, myopia and fundamentalism that goes with them, so bear with me if you are not following my argument.  For now, let me continue with where I was meaning to head in this post, that is, towards an important connection that is too often ignored, this being the connection between the progressing secularization of the world, and the environmental crisis that now seems to grow more evident daily.

What the Bhutanese approach offers, or so it seems to me, is a notion of humanity that is not limited to the material, and an attempt to measure human development on more than just the material plane.  As long as we define ourselves strictly in an individualistic sense, as material beings somehow separate from our environment, it seems increasingly unlikely that we will be able to sort out the problems we face.  People tend to think that somehow science and scientists can come up with solutions for our environmental issues, and that they will solve the problems we face, even as their complicity in the problems grows ever deeper, and studies show that for every solution they come up with, ten more problems are created (now I’m making fun of this type of scientistic thinking by playing a game a friend of mine taught me long ago, that if you qualify any statement by saying ‘studies show’ at the beginning, people are far more likely to believe it .. of course, I believe this statement that scientists create more problems than they solve, but I have no actual studies to support it .. but this is the point.  Studies will support anything, if they try hard enough: it’s this type of thinking that is the problem, not the provider of solutions.  Einstein himself said that the type of thinking that gets one into a problem can never provide solutions for it.  Thus, science, at least as we currently perceive it, that is, as somehow ‘neutral’ and ‘objective,’ is never going to solve our problems.  Because it is part of the problem.  Anyways, sorry for the long digression).  

The problem itself is deeper, and some lonely few voices have been saying, since at least as long as scientists have been putting forth solutions, that the problem is spiritual, and not material.  The problem is a lack of connection to natura naturans and not only natura naturata.  The problem is in our souls as much as it is in the world.  And until we address the problem at its root, all we are going to do is keep coming up with superficial solutions that don’t really get us anywhere except deeper into this mess of our own making.  All of the capital vices, which are still essentially religious/spiritual whether we like it or not, are at the root of the problem, are they not?  Greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, is this not a perfect description of the roots of the ecological crisis?  And if the problems are vices, than the solution ought to be spiritual virtue, right?  Of course, that’s a whole lot to ask of most people, and it’s certainly easier for them to expect somebody in a white coat with a string of letters after their name, to do the work for them.  But until we address the vices in ourselves, which are at the root of the vices in our societies, how can we really expect to solve our problems?  

 In Bhutan, they have a sort of implicit recognition of this, and put forth the proposition that only by allowing and supporting others to live spiritually, harmoniously, peacefully, HAPPILY, can we find these qualities within ourselves, our societies, our institutions, our traditions, and our governments.  I believe that there were times when this was a common approach, when spiritual values kept humanity humble and living in harmony with its environment, at least for the most part.  It wasn’t that long ago actually, at least in most of the world.  It’s only been a few centuries, even in the West (though the roots go back further), since we’ve fallen so entirely out of balance with our environment that we have forgotten not only how this could have happened, but also how to find our way back.  Any breadcrumbs we may have left behind were mostly paved over long ago.  Anyways, the point is that there are ways back, and they probably don’t follow the path of recycling, cloth grocery bags, hybrid cars, or the various other scientific quick fixes that are really just excuses for more and more consumption and waste.  But the work is not easy and begins within the self.  How can we find happiness any other way??

So, I guess I have somewhat answered my own question, that the Bhutanese approach at least has the capacity to define development in a way that recognizes the multi-dimensional nature of human beings, and that can thus address some of the problems of its making, of our limiting of ourselves to a materialistic definition, and thus failing to see that our falling out of harmony with the environment is rooted in nothing less than our falling out of harmony with the fullness of ourselves.  That an approach to development exists in the 21^st century that so fundamentally challenges our own understanding of who we are and our place in nature and the cosmos is a wonderful and astonishing development, and almost seems to turn things on their head like some ancient Tibetan madman who points out our mistakes by exemplifying them, while simultaneously pointing the way towards something more, something better, and something more in harmony with the world around him, the world on which he is still entirely reliant even despite his mad dream of greedy, jealous, and prideful individuality.