Money can’t make you happy but there is an economic equation for creating happiness. While some may think the West is economically strong, it is (in many ways) happiness poor, and it’s high time we listened to and learned from ancient cultures.
Helena Norberg-Hodge was exposed to the intact ancient Tibetan culture in Ladakh in the 1970’s when it was a closed country. She witnessed a lightness of being and pure happiness in the people in the strong community there. This inspired her to begin a mission to transform the financial and social structure of the modern Western world. One of the major solutions she focused on was localisation and this led her to start Local Futures.
“Localisation is truly a solution multiplier because it does mean restoring biodiversity, it means reducing transport and packaging, it means reconnection at that deep level, rebuilding the community fabric, reconnecting to the world around us. It means more meaningful livelihoods, it means more security. It means more justice and equality.”
“Localisation is essentially creating not more self reliance but community reliance…where regions start reconnecting with the resources around them, rather than being dependent on import and export.”
A pioneer in her field, Helena Norberg-Hodge has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She joins the UPLIFT Podcast to discuss The Economics of Happiness and what she’s learnt from villages around the globe.
About our Guest:
Author and filmmaker, Helena Norberg-Hodge, is the founder and director of Local Futures. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is the producer and co-director of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, and is the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh.
Articles Related to the Podcast:
How to Start a Happiness Revolution
Very nice article… Keep doing
Now I am spending time in Japan with no convenient. But sometimes, I feel poor in my heart.
By reading your article, I noticed something.
I appreciate for you and my teacher who recommended to me this.