abundance and poverty.

 abundance and poverty.


The fact that you need money to live, but money alone does not make you happy is clearly an unavoidable dilemma in life.


Is material wealth a condition of leisurely living, or is it a poison that corrupts life?


The answer to this question depends on the leisure of life beyond survival.



What is leisure that brings true freedom and happiness?


If we do not think about the problem of values ​​we want to realize through leisure, we cannot break free from the trap of questioning.


Can money buy happiness?


How wealthy do you have to be to be happy?


What is happiness?




It's so hard to find answers to these chained questions that people get caught up in making money without thinking. The problem is that the more money you have, the less valuable it is.


Through many studies of money and happiness, we know that income above a certain level does not affect happiness.


Higher incomes and more money tend to value their own lives, but they do not affect the emotional well-being we experience on a day-to-day basis: the joys, sorrows, anger, and enthusiasm we experience. Simply put, having a lot of money doesn't necessarily make you happy.


Although material wealth is a means of achieving happiness, happiness itself is not material. Philosophers who set happiness as the purpose of life also emphasize this point.


​


"Isn't it crazy and reckless foolishness to desire so much when you have to have so little?"


- Seneca


​

No matter how high the minimum cost of living, which is the minimum cost of living, is set, the materials we need to live are actually not that many. Nevertheless, people are not satisfied and continue to want “more”. To this, Seneca said, "It is extremely foolish to think that the amount of money is important, not the state of mind."


​


In the end, money has no choice but to return to the subject of the state of mind.


The key to happiness is your state of mind, not your finances. People with a lot of money worry a lot as much as they have money. Wealth and wealth do not alleviate our troubles, pains, and sorrows. It is true that wealth provides various pleasures and conveniences, but it does not bring true satisfaction.


​


Poverty is not happiness just because wealth and wealth do not bring happiness.


Even if you think, 'No matter how much money you have, you are not happy', it is not easy to change your lifestyle. If being poor does not make you happy, and having money does not make you happy, it is better to have money.


The problem is that money and wealth corrupt people morally and make life miserable.


Wealth and wealth are means of life. If you work to make money as a means to an end, and live to earn money, you will eventually lose the ultimate purpose of life. When the relationship between the end and the means is reversed, the value we must protect becomes meaningless despite the many hardships and pains that come with life.


​


Many people use money for a convenient and luxurious life. But is it morally wrong to eat good food and drive the best cars in a luxury home? Unlike the traditional society where frugality was a virtue, modern society encourages consumption. There is no need to criticize living well materially. However, you should also know that living well is not necessarily a 'good life'.


​


Excessive wealth destroys the meaning of life from three perspectives.


First, excessive wealth absolutizes the means, rendering the purpose of life meaningless. Of course, there are many things you can do if you have a lot of money. Efficient altruism philosopher Peter Singer says it's not a bad thing to make a lot of money on Wall Street to help others. The money earned by hard work can be used for a good society.


Money is not earned unconditionally, but only if it has a purpose to use it to be happy.


​


Second, those who are accustomed to a life of wealth and luxury are not easily satisfied. It would be nice to have only good things, but the reality is the opposite. Just as there is a lack to know satisfaction, so there is a bad thing to know what is good. People who eat only good food every day do not know what good food is and fall into boredom. Pleasure for pleasure also poisons us.


Even when an artificial need is satisfied, it creates another need. In this way, we become slaves to our desires.


​


Third, those who are accustomed to living in luxury and extravagance lose the ability to find joy in simple things. Our lives are made up of small things that are repeated on a daily basis. When we surrender ourselves to the flow of life, we fail to pay attention to the small but close things that surround us. It is said that modern people do not even feel the change of seasons due to their busy lives.



How much money we need to be happy is ultimately up to the individual to decide. The important thing is that we live to live a good life, not just to survive.


Animals also survive. Only humans dream of a good life and a beautiful life beyond simple survival. Therefore, each of us should think for ourselves what is a good life and what makes life beautiful. If we recall the meaning of rich here, a person with a generous heart regardless of wealth is a rich person. It means having enough wealth to not care about survival. The key is relaxation. Those who can afford to think about life are truly wealthy. For those of us who are accustomed to material wealth, what we need to have room to think is voluntary poverty. Just like intermittent fasting for health, one way is to prescribe a material diet called voluntary poverty for mental relaxation. When the body is light, the mind is rich.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fatigue society, excess of positivity, dialectic of positivity.

 Fatigue society, excess of positivity, dialectic of positivity. ​ ​ ​ Each age has its own disease. For example, there is an era that can be said to be bacterial. But this era came to an end, at least with the invention of antibiotics. The beginning of the 21st century can be defined pathologically as neither bacterial nor viral, but rather neurotic. It is an infarct disease, not a contagious disease, and it is a disease caused by an excess of positivity, not the negativity of the immunological other. Therefore, it is by no means governed by immunological techniques aimed at defeating the negativity of others. ​ The last century was the immunological age. In other words, it was an era in which clear boundaries were drawn between the inside and the outside, friends and enemies, and me and others. The essence of immunological behavior is aggression and defense. There is a certain blindness in the essence of these immunological devices that have taken over the entire society from the...
Read more

The Truth of Perspectiveism, Maturana.

 The Truth of Perspectiveism, Maturana. "The observer is the source of all things. Without the observer nothing exists. The observer is the basis of all knowledge. The basis of all claims concerning man himself, the world and the universe. The extinction of the observer is the It will mean an end and annihilation, for there will be no one left to perceive, speak, describe or explain." - <<From Being to Doing>> Maturana ​ Someone is watching something. Marurana says this is a fundamental starting point. The person develops a world of his own as he sees it as an observer. If the other person exists as an observer, then the other person's world exists, and as an observer, the world that that person sees also exists. ​ The philosopher Nietzsche, before Maturana, described this as perspectives. If the term perspectives is difficult to describe, you can borrow the term from Maturana and call it 'observers. ​ ​ Snakes are creatures of a different world from human...
Read more

active reading.

 active reading. We know more about the world than we used to, and you may still think that knowledge is essential to understanding something. But knowledge is no longer as essential for understanding as one-sided thinking. You don't have to 'know' everything about something to 'understand' it. Too much information can actually be an obstacle to understanding something. The present age is overflowing with facts that prevent us from understanding the correct appearance of things due to a lot of information. ​ One of the most active projects of some of the best intellectuals today is to unite views from an intellectual standpoint. Through the Internet, television, radio, and magazines, people are provided with well-organized resources, from clever persuasion to carefully curated information and statistics, to make 'decisions' with little effort. But with effective packaging, viewers, listeners, and readers are sometimes unable to make their own decisions. As i...
Read more