Sustainability Action Network Annual Meeting, "Economics of Happiness" Film & Potluck!
May 15, First Presbyterian Church, 2415 Clinton Pkwy. Pot luck at 6:00pm. Meeting and film at 7:00pm, Fellowship Hall
First Presbyterian Church, 2415 Clinton Pkwy
From Michael Almon, Coordinator, Sustainability Action Network
“At this year’s annual meeting, we will feature a screening of a short film, the Economics of Happiness. This film is provided by Films For Action, a local not-for-profit run by one of Sustainability Action’s founders, Tim Hjersted. He says that of his more than 1000 films, the Economics of Happiness is his favorite.
The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big business continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people all over the world are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization.
The film portrays Ladakh, on the Tibetan Plateau in northernmost India. It is isolated from the outside world by almost impenetrable mountain passes. In 1962 the first road was constructed over the mountains into Ladakh, and in 1975, the Indian government opened the region up to “development” and tourism.
Helena Norberg-Hodge was one of the first westerners to arrive, working as a translator with a film team. One of the first things she noticed was how happy the people were. Also there was no pollution, no shortage of resources, no unemployment, poverty, or hunger.
But with the opening up of the region, cheap subsidized food, trucked in on subsidized roads undermined the local economy. Meanwhile, the Ladakhis were bombarded with advertising and media images that romanticized western-style consumerism and made their own culture seem pitiful by comparison.
It is by generating discontent that the psychology of advertising creates consumer markets. This is a primary feature of expansive capitalism. It must continuously expand it’s level of profit, or it will collapse. But to do so, it must plunder sustainable cultures and nature itself.
The Economics of Happiness is a beautiful film, a disturbing film, and an inspiring film.”