Happy now?
I happened to leaf through the Financial Times today and came across this very interesting piece of news. Apparently there has been a bunch of people working, led by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Armatya Sen, trying to figure out a more meaningful way to measure and assess economic progress than this reflected by the all-important GDP growth. Of course, in many ways the flaw is an obvious and glaring one, and has been pointed at many times already. Gross Domestic Product that GDP stands for is a general and aggregate metric that simply reflects the monetary value of goods produced and services rendered within the borders of a nation. And while in general it is certainly true that there exists a positive correlation between high GDP value and high standard of living, the relationship is not a trivial nor a direct one. For one thing, GDP measure completely neglects the dimension of distribution of wealth and value created in the society, and while it may be tempting to claim that “rising tide lifts all the boats”, in practice it is a fact of life that some boats get lifted more than others. Another well known fact is that in terms our personal happiness, the absolute amount of money (or goods, or whatever) we happen to possess is quite a bit less important than the relative wealth compared to that of our immediate social circle, or society in general. And so, what Sarkozy was suggesting is that measuring the success or failure of economic policies based on GDP growth leads us astray – and therefore that measure should be dropped and replaced with a more meaningful one(s), that would take into account things like availability and quality of health care, or time available for leisure, etc.
This all reminded me immediately of my trip to Bhutan last year. Bhutan has long been famous for pursuing GNH instead of GDP. GNH, a shorthand for Gross National Happiness, is a complex metric that is meticulously traced and aims to reflect a wide range of different aspects of society and thus provide an overall view of human happiness instead of narrowly focusing on the creation of financial wealth – which from the Buddhist point of view is, if anything, detrimental to the project of being happy. Bhutanese holistic approach to being happy consists of 72 different components and includes things that would probably seem rather esoteric for most westerners, such as “Frequency of prayer recitation”, “Ability to understand lozey”, “Zorig chusum skills”, “Knowledge of mask and other dances performed in tshechus” and “Purchase of second hand clothes”. But in general, this all further underlines the point that being happy is something that is inevitably grounded in local circumstances and is difficult to directly convert into dollars or ngultrums – although it clearly seems to be the case that while being rich is no guarantee towards being happy, it is easier not to be unhappy if you have more money rather than less.
It remains to be seen what comes out of this – and whether it is simply another knee-jerk reaction to the anniversary of the financial crisis (though it seems that Stiglitz’s workgroup got started already 18 months ago, therefore predating the onset of meltdown by about half a year). I for one remain skeptical to the demise of GDP as a measure of economic performance – we have had things like Human Development Index and so on for many years and while there is no serious doubt to their usefulness, they haven’t came to replace the hard and easy applicability of GDP. But I guess we’ll see, and I would be rather glad to be wrong on this account.
For humans only
A few months ago in Los Angeles I was rather baffled when driving from the airport to the center I noticed public benches along the road with big signs painted on them, saying “FOR HUMANS OLNY”. Tonight I went to see Neill Blomkamp’s movie District 9 and suddenly realised what this all was about.
Let me first get this off my chest : District 9 really is a good movie, easily one of the best I’ve seen this year – and I have seen a few pretty good ones. It excels in a number of different ways and is a very thought-provoking, relevant and deeply ironic piece. The camerawork is particularly good, and the way how different formats such as newscast, interview or hand-held camera have been used is nothing short of genius. Although the movie has a couple of sentimental slips they didn’t really distract from the overall experience – which is pretty bleak and disturbing.
But more about the way the movie works: while the mockumentary and mock-newscast formats have became kind of popular recently in Hollywood movies (see “Sweet and Lowdown” and “Syriana”, for example), D9 takes it to a new level. Not only does the movie itself play with formats we are used to acquire and digest information with, it also expands the same thing into areas such as outdoor media (such as park benches in LA that I mentioned), websites (see MNU and Non-Human Rights movement site, for example) and social networking sites (on Twitter and Facebook). In this way, D9 is critical towards both modes of engagement with the world – the purportedly objective gaze of CNN/BBC as well as their hundreds of smaller and local off-shoots, as well as Facebook- and twitter activism (which all too often boils down to statements such as “non-humans are humans too” – something that Ali G has already parodied earlier). It is precisely that kind of an “objective reporting” and armchair activism that allow us to distance ourselves, not only to objectivize what’s happening but also objectify those it is happening to. Because ultimately this is the only thing, the modus vivendi that allows us to see and realize everything that’s going on in places like Darfur, Palestine, Rwanda, and indeed, often in our own cities, and still go on seeing ourselves as moral subjects. It is only possible through dehumanizing the other in our minds, both collective and personal.
[*** MILD SPOILER ALERT ***] It is also interesting to note how the camerawork changes from detached newscast format into a hand-held camera akin to this used in Blair Witch Project once the protagonist moves into the D9 and becomes an alien (both literally and metaphorically) himself. Losing the professional editing and voiceover, what we see suddenly becomes a lot more subjective, and this inevitably changes also the way we see those it is happening to – they become human, in the deep sense of that word. Actually, even the mockumentary/newscast-format parts have a layer of this self-awareness, with a couple of scenes left in which are being referred to as something that will have to be edited out later. And then, before the movie returns to newscast format at the very end, we have a short patch of rather typical Hollywood-type view of heroic battle and self-sacrifice that appears to be the usual mode in which we conceptualize heroism.
Oh, and as far as I’m concerned, Sharlto Copley’s performance as Wikus van de Merwe is absolutely amazing.
So if you haven’t, do yourself a favour and go see it.
