I just returned from traveling through Bhutan and my visit produced many transformational moments, not just because this enchanting journey gave me spiritual insights and feelings of joy, but also because Bhutan’s culture and government stands in stark contrast to an American government flooded with greed and meanness, and blinded by the struggles of those who live on the economic fringes.
Bhutan is one of the least visited countries in the world. It is a spiritual oasis nestled in the foothills of the snow-capped Himalayas. This tiny nation’s guiding principle is “Gross National Happiness.,” a Buddhist philosophy that puts the emotional and spiritual well-being of the Bhutanese people at the center of their culture and governance. They live what they believe.
The belief that happiness is the most important ideal in Bhutan might sound absurd to American capitalists. Although there is the “pursuit of happiness” line in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, America is firmly rooted in the value of individualism. As a result, Americans value individual rights over adherence to a strong cultural and spiritual norm. We call ourselves united states, but we are not united on a common ideal of how it feels to be American.
Yet, happiness as a guiding principle should not be mutually exclusive to the way American capitalism functions. Of course, there have been times in our governance when capitalism has been tempered with kindness and a generosity of spirit by all citizens. When money wasn’t the centerpiece of our society, when money wasn’t the American God, it felt good to be a part of a kinder and gentler nation.
I don’t feel any joy in today’s America. Every morning I wake up fearing the worst, another story of meanness, of fabrications, of lies and deception, of rank incompetence and deflection, blame, and bullying. However, every day in Bhutan, I felt a sense of joy and hope. My mind, body, and spirit were engulfed in a rarefied sense of confidence in human nature.
It’s difficult to mentally and emotionally dissect the state of a divided America. Everyone’s perception is their reality. Everybody’s defense is the best defense. Where are the shared truths and values – generosity, goodness, fairness and equality? Is a rampant capitalism causing us to ignore the pursuit of happiness? There is so much chaos in our society that it is difficult to get through our crisis-oriented day-to-day issues: an opioid epidemic, low wages, affordable housing, poverty, and homelessness, social and educational inequality to name just a few of our social problems.
Our president provides no leadership, no decency, no value-oriented ideal of living happily in America. He is a perfect example of greed. Trump has a vast global empire of hotels, real estate, golf courses and other businesses that are infused by foreign money. He stepped away from the day to day management of the Trump Organization, but he keeps an eye on his son’s management. His participation in these markets, particularly hotels and restaurants, compete disproportionately with other businesses within his markets, exposing him to obvious ethical problems.
Business people and lobbyists stay in his Washington hotel and curry favor. Foreign entities hold leases in his hotels, and he fawns over the Saudis because they support his properties. He is a money-obsessed deal maker who does not have the public’s best interest. His only interest is his profit margin. His primary allegiance is to his own financial fortune. I call that greed.
As president, Trump has shown no aptitude for governance. On the contrary, he governs by temper tantrums, tweets, illogic, sabotage, and ignorance. Because of his spite and ignorance, Trump eschews the details of health care and social and economic issues, deliberately hurting millions of people as well as businesses and industries.
Both houses of congress are complicit with Trump’s mean-spirited trajectory with their disregard for the common man, creating a degrading health care system and a tax plan that benefits the rich. Health care and tax legislation have been created in secret sessions without negotiating with the minority party. Drafting behind closed doors is a dodge, a way not to engage in civil discourse, a way to give lobbies what they want, to give the rich their corporate and personal tax cuts, and smugly ignore the rest of the needs of the electorate.
Campaign donors and business groups cultivate power on the hill. It’s a false equivalent that congress legislates for the common man. They create bills for industries and businesses, they deregulate to add more money into their coffers, they kill unions so workers have little power to negotiate a decent wage (hello, truckers), and they favor deep tax cuts to businesses under the pretext of income gains to middle class workers. Trickle-down economics has been debunked for decades. While the tax plan is worth billions of dollars to business, it serves exponentially to increase the national debt. The new American mantra seems to be: All for one and none for all.
As I trekked up a steep path to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery at 11,400 feet while listening to the chants of the monks in the temple far above in the clouds, I entered a rarified environment where happiness seeped into my soul and gave me the courage to look inside myself to reflect on my values and to forgive. Gone was the chaos, the crisis-ridden and abjectly mean-spirit of today’s America. Gone was the gross skin of greed. Gone was a hopeless feeling that America was unraveling. As I left Bhutan, I pledged to hold on to my happiness for as long as I could even while knowing that the America I live in would still remain the same as when I left its shores.