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Title: Bhutan, After Prioritizing Happiness, Now Faces an Existential Crisis
Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/19/1562...
Bhutan, the tiny kingdom that introduced Gross National Happiness to the
world, has a problem: young people are leaving the country in record numbers.
CNN: The country boasts free health care, free education, a rising life
expectancy and an economy that's grown over the last 30 years -- still,
people are leaving. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay believes it is ironically
the success of Gross National Happiness that has made young Bhutanese so
sought after abroad. "It is an existential crisis," he said. Bhutan, which is
about the size of Maryland, was largely isolated from the rest of the world
for centuries. The kingdom was so protective of its unique Buddhist culture
that it only started allowing foreign tourists to visit in the 1970s and
didn't introduce television until 1999. Buddhism is the country's national
religion. Bhutanese, especially older men and women, spend hours spinning
prayer wheels full of Buddhist scriptures. Prayer flags flutter on hillsides
and in forests, turning nature itself into a shrine. Bhutan's capital city of
Thimpu still has no traffic lights. The nation's roads are shared by cars and
cows.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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