On happiness (and money)
You often hear people complaining about how much money someone else makes. They talk about politicians or football players or anyone else who makes a lot of money (actually, politicians don’t really get that much money). They are envious and want to have that much money too.
But when was the last time you heard anyone complaining about those buddhist monks who achieved happiness? Surprisingly, most people are not envious of them. I’m not really sure why that is so, but I think that it’s because people don’t really want to be happy. They want to have a big house, luxurious car, and many other things, but they don’t actually care about happiness.
Don’t get me wrong here, money is very important for one’s happiness. People who completely lack money are likely to become unhappy as a result. Complete lack of money makes it difficult to get food, place to sleep at and other important things like that. But as long as you have enough money to survive comfortably (ie. not permanently stressed about where you are going to sleep tomorrow and what you are going to eat), getting more money is not going to increase your happiness nearly as much as you might think it would.
I think the key to real happiness lies in consciously and fully enjoying small joys of everyday life. I won’t suggest anything particular, as each of us has to find their own, different small joys.
7 thoughts on “On happiness (and money)”
Drc 2008-02-27
Law of diminishing marginal utility
Skoda, ze jsi tenhle prispevek nepublikoval tak pred 300 lety – ted by z tebe mozna byl velky (a mrtvy) klasik… ;-)
Doug 2008-02-28
The quote I like is “money doesn’t buy happiness – it only rents it”.
tasuki 2008-03-01
@drc: Moc jsem nepochopil, jak ten tvuj odkaz (ac zajimavy) souvisi s mym prispevkem. Moji hlavni myslenkou bylo, ze lide se spise snazi, aby meli hodne penez, nez na aby byli stastni. Wikipedie tam zminuje vselijake ekonomicke nesmysly, ale neni tam nic o stesti o_O
@Doug: sometimes :) Still there are people who have a lot of money and are very unhappy and people who have almost no money and are very happy…
Drc 2008-03-03
Velmi podobný graf nakreslil ve 30. letech 18. století Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) jako jeden z výstupů svého zkoumání st. petěrburského paradoxu.
Na osu “y” však místo “štěstí” umístil “celkový užitek”. Klíčové v jeho zjištění bylo, že užitečnost dodatečného bohatství klesá s rostoucím bohatstvím.
Jinými slovy: užitek z dodatečné jednotky (marginal utility) peněz (bohatství) je klesající.
No nic… trochu jsem se rozepsal… ;-)
tasuki 2008-03-06
No, to uz je lepsi :)
A ten paradox je docela zajimavy…
Ale stejne si myslim, ze do toho zbytecne moc tahas ekonomii ;)
Spirit 2008-03-15
Apparently the imagined importance of making money depends on a few things.
Genetics: Guy making lots of money is good, so he can show off around the girls and make them happy with expensive things and show how important she is to him by spending time and money on her instead of making even more money. Other than money in a guy, women don’t often care much about it.
Education: Through education one can overcome the above mentioned evolutionary trait to do something more worthwhile with one’s live than solely making babies.
Social: Social pressure is not to be underestimated. Some people are just happier if they are high up in the show-off chain.
Does this comment thingy give me a message btw if there’s a reply to my post?
tasuki 2008-03-24
Spirit: Enlightening comment, I think I have nothing to add except that I agree…
And I don’t think this comment thingy gives you a message if there’s a reply, but you can watch the comments in rss (yeah, I know that’s not what you want, but it’s closest to it).
Add your comment — How does this work?