by Hannah Kolk

October 14, 2014

Three esteemed leaders, James Galbraith, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Jigmi Thinley, Former Prime Minster of Bhutan, and Menas Kafatos, Professor at Chapman University, took on the challenge of defining happiness and how to pursue it through a series of conversations at the 15th World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, South Korea.

Each of the happiness gurus offered his take on happiness. Mr. Kafatos urged society to live in the present moment to find happiness.

“In modern society, we keep saying we are running out of time. But when we keep saying that, one day we end up dead. So let’s live in the present,” he said.

Mr. Thinley added that society consistently works towards becoming happy. Speaking from his personal experience, he said that since the day his father suddenly passed away, he discovered as a young king that his people did not want modernization. Rather, they wanted to continue to be happy.

“Development must have an end or a purpose beyond simply economic growth and the government must create the conditions that will allow the people to continue to be happy,” he said. As Bhutan’s former Prime Minister, Mr. Thinley consequently created the Gross National Happiness as the main indicator of Bhutan’s development, rather than the GDP.

Mr. Galbraith, on the other hand, had a very different view on happiness.

“There is no political document that guarantees happiness,” he said. “The Declaration of Independence is an assertion of a universal human right, and among those rights are the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Mr. Galbraith asserted that people must be able to identify evils in the world and be prepared to resist them and to fight for happiness.

In attempting to define happiness, Mr. Thinley, who is a Buddhist, said that if people can attend to and meet the needs of their bodies and minds, they can find true happiness.

“I believe that happiness is our natural yearning to search for happiness and to want happiness. As human beings, we all have this ability to achieve happiness. It is in the nature of our mind. That is why it is a universal yearning,” he said.

He went on to specify the nine domains that he believes make up happiness: good health, education, standard of living and income distribution, cultural diversity, emotional and psychological well-being, community vitality, balance of time, stability and vitality of the environment, living in harmony with nature, and governance that will be able to ensure human rights, freedom and a sense of security.

For Mr. Galbraith to achieve happiness, he cited his own privilege of being able to pursue his own path in a decent and notable way.

“Happiness is built on having a group of friends or an association or a community whose common purposes you are trying to articulate and trying to achieve,” he said. “And you will feel, over time, that you have made your life worthwhile if you have maintained a sense of purpose and goals.”

Mr. Kafatos suggested that people are intrinsically happy, posing the question, “So, why are you not happy?”

“When we make another person happy, we’re happy.” he said. “The natural state for humans is for us is to pursue happiness together.”

Mr. Thinley fully agreed. He shared an anecdote about the happiest moment of his life, which mirrored the sentiments of both Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Kafatos.

 “It was not when I met my wife or got married. It was actually much later, when both of us made the effort to make our marriage meaningful. When I discovered one day that here is somebody who would do anything for me and here is somebody who trusts me, who loves me,” he said.