Clearing the Way
The pursuit of happiness has been a central theme in the writings of moral philosophers and religious thinkers since antiquity. However, in the post-industrial era, this pursuit entered a period of eclipse, as happiness and well-being became conflated with consumerism, reduced to the satisfaction of wants through material acquisition
and instant gratification. The importance of happiness or the innate desire to pursue it has never ceased to capture people’s imagination, evidenced even by its enshrinement in the very founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, wherein life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are presented as unalienable rights given to all humans by their creator, and which governments are to protect.1 Despite its recognition as a fundamental aspiration, the realization of happiness remains elusive, prompting many to give up as they are further confounded by the complexity of seeking happiness in a world marred by stark opposites:
deprivation, inequality, exclusion, strife, violence, and insecurity—physical and psychological. Yet, the prevalence of these very factors renders the goal of happiness attractive and difficult to ignore. If there is a way out of the quagmire and appeals to human reason and emotion, such a pathway could positively shape culture and politics, aligned to meet the goals of well-being and happiness.
This book is a response to this question, or rather, a conundrum, by journeying through the intersecting worldviews of development and religio-philosophies. Here, development refers to the field of development studies concerned with the development of people and nations, viewed primarily from political and socio-economic perspectives. It is important to engage with this field because decisions that matter for people’s lives and are translated into national policies and plans emanate from the collective deliberations of the development community. And religion, given its complexity and proclivity to evoke diverse reactions today, requires careful defining at the outset, not as a concept but to locate its coordinates within the scope of deliberations undertaken by this book. Therefore, religion, in the sense presented here, is an epistemological (ways of knowing) and ontological (ways of being) treasure trove that holds profound implications for culture, offering valuable insights into the nature of reality, from which meaningful and coherent worldviews emanate, influencing people’s choices and ways of living, and the means and ends of development. That said, the category of religion, within the scope purveyed, subsumes philosophical and spiritual epistemologies that fall outside the category of world religions, including indigenous cosmovision. The emphasis is on worldview and the modes of living originating from it, and the body of wisdom categorized as ‘religion’ holds the key to unlocking many of these treasures passed down through generations across millennia. On the one hand, the multidisciplinary approach of development studies allows this flexibility to expand and draw from new and otherwise ignored epistemologies and ontologies. On the other hand, the ‘objective’ approach of development studies stands to benefit
by drawing from the ‘subjective’ experience of religions. This is imperative as happiness is not merely material but inherently affective and emotive. For over a century, development studies have grappled with a host of pressing global issues: poverty, inequality, loss of livelihoods, hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, climate change, disease outbreaks, conflicts, wars, and mass migrations. While some progress has been