Difference between revisions of "Even in difficult times, we can still be happy..."

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''by Michael Roscoe''  
 
''by Michael Roscoe''  
 
http://www.newint.org/blog/2014/12/15/2142865930_7eccfacbdd_o.jpg
 
 
''Good fortune (www.simplepleasureseverydaylove.com under a Creative Commons Licence)''
 
  
 
When the economy stops growing, this doesn’t have to mean we will not be happy. We need to share the money more equally and think again about what happiness is.   
 
When the economy stops growing, this doesn’t have to mean we will not be happy. We need to share the money more equally and think again about what happiness is.   
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But we shouldn’t be jealous – they are probably not satisfied with their own lives anyway. The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome understood that it is useless to worry about all the parts of life that we cannot control. It’s better to follow the advice of Seneca: If you are not satisfied with what you have, then, even if you have a lot more, you will never be happy. Or better, Epictetus, who said that the best way to be happy is to make your expectations lower and lower until they are the same as reality.  
 
But we shouldn’t be jealous – they are probably not satisfied with their own lives anyway. The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome understood that it is useless to worry about all the parts of life that we cannot control. It’s better to follow the advice of Seneca: If you are not satisfied with what you have, then, even if you have a lot more, you will never be happy. Or better, Epictetus, who said that the best way to be happy is to make your expectations lower and lower until they are the same as reality.  
  
It is not easy to see what is the cause and what is the effect with something like as happiness. But it seems that equality is much more important than money alone. Prosperity is linked to other things as well as money; health, relationships, environment, work – it is not surprising that unemployment is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness.  
+
It is not easy to see what is the cause and what is the effect with something like as happiness. But it seems that equality is much more important than money alone. Prosperity is linked to other things as well as money: health, relationships, environment, work – it is not surprising that unemployment is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness.  
  
 
Another good thing about changing what we understand by ‘prosperity’ is that when we accept that growth is not what we want now (we need the opposite - to buy and use less resources), all the arguments against things like higher taxes and more regulation of finance (eg. that we will have less business because businesspeople won’t have so much motivation to get money etc) do not work anymore. The big challenge now is how to improve our living standards in other ways – not just to buy more and use more resources (and warm the world and maybe end the human race).  
 
Another good thing about changing what we understand by ‘prosperity’ is that when we accept that growth is not what we want now (we need the opposite - to buy and use less resources), all the arguments against things like higher taxes and more regulation of finance (eg. that we will have less business because businesspeople won’t have so much motivation to get money etc) do not work anymore. The big challenge now is how to improve our living standards in other ways – not just to buy more and use more resources (and warm the world and maybe end the human race).  
  
We will still need to get people to invest in real industry, and also to encourage people to develop technology to find solutions to problems. But we shouldn’t have to rely on motivation of greed.  
+
We will still need to get people to invest in real industry, and also to encourage people to develop technology to find solutions to problems. But we shouldn’t have to rely on the motivation of greed.  
  
 
''Michael Roscoe is the author of '''Why Things Are Going To Get Worse And Why We Should Be Glad''', published by New Internationalist.''  
 
''Michael Roscoe is the author of '''Why Things Are Going To Get Worse And Why We Should Be Glad''', published by New Internationalist.''  

Revision as of 09:38, 16 January 2021

Even in difficult times, we can still be happy...

by Michael Roscoe

When the economy stops growing, this doesn’t have to mean we will not be happy. We need to share the money more equally and think again about what happiness is.

The good news is that happiness does not directly depend on how much money you have – look at the two charts. Many surveys in the last twenty or thirty years show this: when we get enough money to live on, with enough money to not be poor, then more money doesn’t mean more happiness too. This next chart shows that happiness can go down when income goes up.

http://www.whythings.net/chart112.jpg

This is because we expect more when we have more money: the more we earn, the more we want; and it is more difficult to feel satisfied. And when we try to keep the level of money we are then used to, we get more stressed.

When people study the relationship between income and happiness, or money and happiness, they find that they are not really related. But income equality (when there is less difference between the richest and the poorest in a country) is related to happiness.

http://www.whythings.net/Chart113.jpg

This chart (above) shows that some of the poorest countries have some of the happiest people. But only if the money is shared quite fairly. Of course there are other things we need to think about, eg. climate and culture and the way people answer questions like this. But the important point in this study is that less money doesn’t have to mean less happiness. And if less income comes together with more equality, it could bring more happiness.

The most important thing is to see how life relates to what people expect. We expect more as we get more money, often more than we can buy. When we have enough for basic needs, more money makes us want more, and what we want is often unrealistic; so we are less satisfied. Also, maybe, the type of people who want more are also the type of people who find it more difficult to be satisfied.

As we get more money, we also get more worried about our place in society. We compare ourselves to other people, and of course there is always someone near us who seems to have a better life than us; ‘the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence’. We don’t like it when rich people show all their money – this makes us think about how unfair life can be.

But we shouldn’t be jealous – they are probably not satisfied with their own lives anyway. The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome understood that it is useless to worry about all the parts of life that we cannot control. It’s better to follow the advice of Seneca: If you are not satisfied with what you have, then, even if you have a lot more, you will never be happy. Or better, Epictetus, who said that the best way to be happy is to make your expectations lower and lower until they are the same as reality.

It is not easy to see what is the cause and what is the effect with something like as happiness. But it seems that equality is much more important than money alone. Prosperity is linked to other things as well as money: health, relationships, environment, work – it is not surprising that unemployment is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness.

Another good thing about changing what we understand by ‘prosperity’ is that when we accept that growth is not what we want now (we need the opposite - to buy and use less resources), all the arguments against things like higher taxes and more regulation of finance (eg. that we will have less business because businesspeople won’t have so much motivation to get money etc) do not work anymore. The big challenge now is how to improve our living standards in other ways – not just to buy more and use more resources (and warm the world and maybe end the human race).

We will still need to get people to invest in real industry, and also to encourage people to develop technology to find solutions to problems. But we shouldn’t have to rely on the motivation of greed.

Michael Roscoe is the author of Why Things Are Going To Get Worse And Why We Should Be Glad, published by New Internationalist.

NOW READ THE ORIGINAL: http://newint.org/blog/2014/12/01/difficult-times-still-be-happy/ (This article has been simplified so the words, text structure and quotes may have been changed).