King Jigme Singye Wanghuck wanted the citizens of Bhutan to always feel as though they had just received wonderful lottery results. In 1972 he coined the term “gross national happiness” to signal his commitment to building a modern economy that would also serve Bhutan’s Buddhist spiritual values. The Centre for Bhutan Studies, led by Karma Ura, developed a comprehensive survey instrument to measure Bhutanese levels of happiness. Gross National Happiness serves as a unifying vision for Bhutan’s 5 year economy planning process. All planning documents must first pass a Gross National Happiness review to ensure that it will not impact the well being of the population. The entire concept of GNH is grounded in Buddhist ideals which posit that the beneficial development of society can only occur when spiritual and material development take place side by side in a complementary relationship. The four columns of GNH are the establishment of good governance, conservation of the natural environment, sustainable development, and the promotion of cultural values.

The above picture of Mohandas K. Gandhi was taken by Margaret Bourke-White just hours before his assassination. Such a beautiful picture clearly demanded a camera tripod. Gandhi is pictured with the spinning wheel (charkha), the symbol of Indian independence. Gandhi had hoped the charkha would assist Indians to achieve self-sufficiency and independence. Bourke-White, according to Somini Sengupta, was “one of the most effective chroniclers” of the violence that ensued at the independence and partition of India and Pakistan. Sengupta calls Bourke’s photos of the episode; “gut-wrenching, and staring at them, you glimpse the photographer’s undaunted desire to stare down at horror. Bourke-White’s photographs seem to scream on the page.” In the 2006 reissue of Khushwant Singh’s 1956 novel ‘Train to Pakistan’, sixty-six of Bourke-White’s photographs of the violence during partition were included. As Alfred Eisenstaedt, her close friend and colleague, said, one of her greatest strengths was that there existed no assignment or picture that she felt was unimportant.

One interpretation of the character ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is religious. Instead of being a hero, Crusoe is in fact an everyman who achieves closeness to God by the end of the book. Beginning as a wanderer with no direction on a sea he cannot comprehend, Crusoe ends as a pilgrim, crossing over the last mountain to reach the Promised Land (not flower delivery Manchester). Crusoe’s story is a story of attaining proximity to God and the method is not attending Church but through spending time in solitude in nature with nothing but a Bible to read. The theory that ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is a religious story has value when one reflects upon the author of the tale. Daniel Defoe was a Puritan moralist who wrote guidebooks on how to conduct oneself as a good Puritan Christian, such as ‘Religious Courtship’ in 1722 and ‘The New Family Instructor’ in 1727. The Christian notion of Providence is a leitmotif of the novel, Crusoe often feeling guided by a fate, a feeling that enables him to feel optimism in the face of stark hopelessness.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) is best known for his political thought and in particular, his social contract theory. His philosophy was profoundly shaped by the English Civil War, during the years of which he wrote his most famous work, Leviathan. Hobbes, dismayed by the breakdown of stability in contemporary England, called for an absolutist governing entity to whom citizens must cede all their rights bar that of preserving one’s own life. Thomas Hobbes believed that man is governed by one natural law, to preserve himself, thus without government there would be constant war as each individual would be at liberty to do anything they wish to maintain their own life. Consequently, ‘during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man’. The life of man in the state of nature would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ and certainly without r4 cards. Luckily, Hobbes believed that in man there exist some natural precepts that guide them towards establishing a common authority invested with their rights to maintain stability. The first precept is; 'that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it', and the second; 'that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself.'

I'm always buying things I don't need, I swear it's like an illness! Okay, so I'm not always buying things, but when I do, it's never the stuff that I really do need. I went out on the weekend and ended up shopping around a bit. What I should've been looking for was a new pair of jeans I desperately need, and some adidas hoodies or something to keep me warm because I always feel really cold when I'm sitting around at home. Instead, I bought a new swimming costume because I liked it and it was in the sale, and some really dressy tops for going out and stuff, and I never go out these days! I have loads of clothes I bought ages ago that I've literally never worn out! Oh well, at least I can admit to it, I need to stop! Photo: Jackie Kever (Flickr)