The Economics of Happiness

An Interview with Helena Norberg-Hodge

by Brian K. Mahoney, January 28, 2011

We talk a lot about localism in Chronogram. We explain its value, feature its adherents, and extol its virtues each month in ways explicit and implicit. For the most part, we discuss localism on a purely economic level, reporting on its salutary monetary benefits: Locally owned businesses keep more of the money spent on goods and services in our communities actually in our communities, they create sustainable jobs that pay living wages, they tend to reflect the real costs of goods, and source locally.

In The Economics of Happiness, linguist, writer, and activist Helena Norberg-Hodge explores an oft-ignored aspect of localism— its benefit to our general well being, and the social and psychological costs of the globalization-driven consumer culture. The film, created by the International Society for Ecology and Culture (Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of ISEC), argues that an economic model based on endless consumption is not only ecologically unsustainable, its also causing an epidemic of depression and societal breakdown across the globe.

A case in point for Norberg-Hodge is the region of Ladakh, in northern India, which until the mid-‘70s was largely untouched by modern economic development. Once the region was opened to outside consumer goods by the Indian government, Ladakh inherited problems typical of any developed country—unemployment, stress and anxiety, loss of social focus—that did not exist there before. Norberg-Hodge’s work with the Ladakhis over the past 30 years has convinced her that localism, or localization as she terms it, is not only crucial for ecological and economic reasons, but that it is vital to our very happiness. “Instead of a global economy based on sweatshop in the South, stressed-out two-earner families in the North, and a handful of billionaire elites in both, localization means a smaller gap between rich and poor and closer contact between producers and consumers,” Norberg-Hodge says. “This translates into greater social cohesion: A recent study found that shoppers at farmers’ markets had 10 times more conversations than people in supermarkets.”
Why is fostering conversation so important? According to Norberg-Hodge, community is a key ingredient to happiness, and that on a structural level, economic globalization undermines genuine human interaction in order to makes us better consumers, grasping after material goods in the belief they will provide the love and appreciation we crave. The choice is clear to Norberg-Hodge: We can continue down the path of greater economic globalization, which threatens our very survival; or, we can rebuild our communities and economies on smaller scales and try to find the foundation of happiness that seems so elusive to us.

You’ve spent a lot of time in the Ladakh region. What first brought you there and what keeps bringing you back?
I first went there with a film crew in 1975, when the area was still sealed off from the outside world. I was only supposed be there for only six weeks but I became absolutely enchanted by the people and the place. The Ladakh people were very interesting, and among the most chilled out, relaxed, deeply contemplative and actively, vitally joyful people that I’ve ever met, full of humor and lightness. Also, the Ladakhis were better off materially than I had been taught to believe was possible without development or Western-style progress. They didn’t know hunger, and there was no unemployment.