B Happy

At http://www.happyplanetindex.org you can find out about a new metric to measure Happiness vs Ecological footprint.

It’s a new attempt to come up with a more optimal, comprehensive and overarching set of  measurement than traditional GDP index.

As a result, Honduras, Brazil and Costa Rica made the top 10 along with a bunch of L.A .countries. The majority of European countries and the USA are in the middle.

This reminds me of how a world map looks like, depends on which continent you are living in.

e.g. if you lived in Greenwich GMT, your baseline is zero hour.

Vietnam and Cameroon possess the same ecological footprints, but the former has a higher HPI, almost twice.

Nothing said about when they held a soccer match though.

I suspect we will find Afghanistan and N Korea not too far from the bottom.

Former President Bush had his own index about countries of the world. He called them “axis of evil”.

An equivalence of modern day Witch Hunt. The political model gets theologized, while theologies sometimes get politicized.

It’s true that countries which are ranked at the top of the HPI list found their people with a higher degree of optimism.

Sort of living more with less philosophy. In possessing less, they have more time for each other. To attend to the needs of the elderly and children . In case you don’t notice, materialism has a life of  its own: more closet space, more discarded items ( no longer useful, or in style). More dust, more cleaning and ironing. The shopping list goes on and on: fixed phone, mobile phone, Jupiter Jack, fixed charger, mobile charger, pre-paid SIM, bluetooth etc….

And of course, let’s not forget the law of diminishing return i.e. the second steak, the third steak doesn’t taste as good as the first one.

Before the credit crunch, we were living with an illusion that the more we charged the happier we became.

Turned out that the opposite was true (Meanwhile,  Master and Visa still reported their high earnings since they know how to stay in the middle of every electronic transaction, debit or credit!)

Maybe people on the A list of the Happiness Planet Index were ignorant . And Ignorance is bliss.

Or maybe there are more than meet the eyes.

And the law of diminishing return kicks in the realm of knowledge as well. It’s a dangerous thing to know just a little.

Should we then be safer on the  B list of the Happy Planet Index? Sort of a happy medium ( a little knowledge, a little happiness, lots of material possession?)

In the end of the Godfather movies, Marlon Brando fell to his death from a garden chair, while baby sitting his grandchildren. The endgame, after so much bloodshed, market manipulation, and of course, rivalry among the “families”. To Be Happy, that’s an offer one cannot refuse. But at what cost?

Obesity is a plague in the West, while hunger is a routine with the bottom billion.  The more given, the more accountable. If giving makes one happy, then Santa must be the happiest man ever lived. He must be a saint.