Money or Happiness – Take Your Pick?
I’ve been captivated by happiness lately. I’m currently reading Marci Shimoff’s book, “Happy for No Reason” and have taken the last year to figure out what makes me happy. Interestingly, it was not a question I was raised to ask. In my family, we were concerned with financial security… and that was pretty much it. It was certainly better to be miserable and financially secure than to be taking a risk but ridiculously happy. And fulfilled? Authentic? It never even came up.
I came across this op-ed in the New York Times by David Brooks in March. Based on decades of research into happiness and fulfillment, Brooks makes the argument that “once the basic necessities have been achieved, future income is lightly connected to well-being… the United States is much richer than it was 50 years ago, but this has produced no measurable increase in overall happiness.” And yet, for most of us, money is where we focus almost all of our efforts.
It leads me to question our government’s focus on the economy. What is the point of focusing on increasing economic prosperity if it is only loosely related to the happiness and fulfillment of the populace? Or is being happy irrelevant to our society?
The current paradigm, based on consumerism and materialism, tells us that more money will buy us more stuff, give us more prestige, and make us happier. Stuff = Happiness.
So we tuck our heads down and work harder, harder, harder. We earn more money, we buy more stuff, we increase our standard of living again and again…
Why?
Why do we work so hard? Are we afraid? We are certainly told by media, religion and our government that there is much to be afraid of and that to be secure we have to have more money. More money = more security. Also, more money = more power. But why do we want power and security? I would argue that it is to feel fulfilled. Because we want to feel happy.
I think (and feel free to disagree) that we have allowed ourselves to be convinced that economic success at a national level = security = happiness. We, as a society, have developed tunnel vision that excludes all other possibilities for how to live. We glue ourselves to the daily stock reports, regardless of our investment portfolio, with mood swings tied to the vagaries of the Dow, NASDAQ, and TSE. What have we been thinking?
Our PM recently said that all other issues are a sideshow compared to the economy, especially at the G8, even as he proposes a global maternal health initiative (maybe they are looking to sell Canadian technology and pharma overseas…) and this is somehow acceptable. I think not.
The Green Party of Canada proposes a fundamental shift in this thinking. Money is important, there is no doubt. Maslow’s hierarchy makes it very clear that until we can provide ourselves and our loved ones with the basics of food, clothing and shelter, we cannot aspire towards greater things and greater happiness. Trust me, I totally understand that when one is worrying about money and what they will feed their kids tomorrow, it is hard to be lofty and spiritual.
But once we satisfy those basic needs, where do we aim our attention? Let’s say that I make lots of money and I have it invested well and I am feeling pretty secure. What then? Is that all there is to life? Security?
Brooks argues that the relationship between happiness and personal relationship (both intimate relationships and the social network) is very closely correlated. In study after study, “the daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting… countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime.”
Brooks concludes, “modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones.”
I don’t want to live a life solely focused on the ‘economy’ or the markets. Happily, the Green Party agrees with me. We propose the development and implementation of a Canadian Well-Being Index that would be used in conjunction with the GDP and other indices to present a more accurate measure of how Canadians are doing.
How we are really doing. Do we feel safe? Do we feel trust? Do we know our neighbours? Heck, do we know our kids and spouse? How strong are our connections to the community? How large are our social networks? Do we enjoy time in nature? Do we have access to beauty?
Because, ultimately, we all want to be happy. And our current system isn’t getting us there.
May 21st, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I remember hearing a saying from a number of years ago, “He who dies with the most toys wins!”
Of course the wisest response to this is, “He who does with the most toys … still dies.”
It is an extreme of irony in our society that we work so hard, taking minimal vacation time, 10-12 hour days (as a commuter), working evenings and weekends, basically using up all of our liesure time so that we can, what again? Oh yeah, retire to enjoy some leisure time.
Daniel Quinn made this point very well in Ishmael (and sequel, My Ishmael.)
May 21st, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Everybody could use more money (Bill Gates, Oprah and a few others being the exceptions) but when it comes down to it I need time. I need time to rest, time to play, time to learn and time to meet and experience the community I’m forced commute away from everyday.
We strive to make money so we can flee for a couple weeks of the year to someplace we perceive as being nicer, yet if our communities were more vibrant, more active, friendlier, healthier, prettier our perceptions would change to realize we are living every day, not just when we hit that far away beach. 2 weeks of “pleasure” cannot undo the burden of 50 weeks of drudgery; we need to change the emphasis from consumption for consumption sake to those things that create real benefit and real happiness to our lives.
I agree we must strive to measure quality of life issues rather than just GDP. Most people don’t realize that GDP represents all aspects of the economy from growing food to producing toxins and cleaning up oil spills. The creation of carcinogens and the eventual treatment of a cancer are actually considered economic activities which increase the GDP. Preverse isn’t it?
GDP is not a valid measurement of our well being. Sure we need it to measure certain activies and compare ourselves to external markets and such but it certainly needs to be suplemented by other indicators.
May 22nd, 2010 at 10:21 am
“if our communities were more vibrant, more active, friendlier, healthier, prettier” Certainly, it is one of the goals of the Greens to create communities that are vibrant. I don’t know about the experience of others but there seem to be a lot more people uninvolved in Newmarket-Aurora than there are involved. Are we really just a bedroom community that only comes together to watch our kids play sports? When was the last time you attended a block party?
May 24th, 2010 at 4:49 am
Happiness is a state of mind that really depends how we see the situations in our lives each day. you can have all the riches in the world but still see it as a lonely place.`..
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:11 pm
[As a complete aside, I usually read your posts via Google Reader. I came to the site today because I realized early on that I was going to comment, so I might as well read it here. I have to say that the light-grey-on-cream colour scheme is next to impossible to read for me. It's actually physically quite uncomfortable -- it makes my eyes hurt -- and it's very hard for me to actually track.]
I think that there’s some validity to what you’re saying, but at the same time, I think it’s important to recognize that right now, there’s an unusually high focus on the economy partly because a lot of people *aren’t* having those basic needs met. Canada’s seen a rise in employment rates recently, but only quite recently, and I get the impression that in the U.S. things are quite grim. Also, you’re only quoting a small section of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of them actually is security, which you posit as being a false need beyond the basics. (His hierarchy goes all the way up to Self-Actualization, since it’s supposed to encompass the whole set, but security/safety is directly above the basic survival needs level and below all the concerns about love, community, esteem, etc.) People can’t feel happy if they’re worried that they might lose their job next week, and this is where the economic work is still important, I think.
It’s easy to extrapolate from one’s personal perspective. Not a lot us, meaning our direct social circle, have lost our jobs or are seriously thinking we might, or have lost all of our earning potential or are seriously thinking we might or have lost our homes or are seriously thinking we might. However, we’re an extremely privileged group of people. Most people right now are still quite afraid, and I know a lot of people who laid off or are being laid off still.
I think the key to remember is that money may be loosely connected to happiness after you have enough to get by, but the income spread is a curve, where we are on the curve still means that when we have enough money to have our basic needs met, all the people below us on that curve do not have enough, so there are points in economic strength where making more money is loosely coupled to, say, yours or my level of happiness, but still strongly coupled to the level of happiness of people below us on that curve, and those people are important too.
This is not to say that I disagree that we should support other issues as well and that there are facets that can contribute better to happiness than more money. It’s just that the national economy encompasses all of us, not just the ones who are doing okay, and as long as we have the strong economic class differences that our society has, that can really obfuscate the situation that a lot of people are in.
(This doesn’t at all contradict your conclusion — I was just a bit concerned at some parts of the argument. I do think that a well-being index that’s driven by more than economic factors is a good idea. Isn’t this already being done on an international level, though? What’s that index that Norway always kicks our butts on?)
June 15th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Hey If, thanks for your thoughts. And I’ll get Jordon to change the font colour as soon as possible. You’re right, it is hard to read.
I agree with you that there are people suffering all over North America (let alone globally!), people who are afraid they will not have enough money to pay the mortgage, or buy food. I know these fears, and contrary to what you wrote, I *am* having the same worries right now. I know we will be out of the red eventually, but right now we are having trouble making ends meet. And it is a crappy feeling – it makes it hard to sleep at night and colours all of my decisions.
The point of my argument (or at least what I was trying to say) was not that we, as part of public policy, should not be focusing on poverty alleviation and building a strong economy to ensure that everyone can meet their basic needs, but that Harper’s focus on the economy to the exclusion of all else sets up a false premise that as long as our banks are doing well and our GDP is increasing that we do not have to worry about anything else.
And I think that is a lie. For many reasons. One of those reasons is that our income distribution is becoming increasingly uneven, so that even as our GDP increases, more and more families see their standard of living and quality of life slipping. I do not believe that our current government cares at all about the people below them on the curve, their interests seem to lie completely with big business and oil and gas.
I don’t think I posit security as a false need in any way. Security is very important to moving through the Hierarchy of Needs. My point was that I think we are being sold ‘security’ as the end-all and be-all of existence. Buy things so you feel secure. Fight wars so you feel secure. Give up your rights so you feel secure. I believe security is merely a way-station on the path to fulfillment (again, as the pyramid shows), and is certainly dependent on more than your economic status. It is a very problematic concept, as my prof used to say, because what makes one person secure may not have that effect on another.
The index you’re thinking of is the UN Development Index, and a good start towards a well-being index, though I don’t believe it has any subjective measure of satisfaction.
Was that coherent? hmm…
October 11th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Happiness is the goal of every human being in this planet , everyone wants to be happy`*~
October 23rd, 2010 at 12:53 pm
everyone aims to have happiness on their lives and live a life that is full of it,-.
December 16th, 2010 at 4:23 am
true happiness can be difficult to achieve, you can be rich but still not be truly happy .-’