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by ryusage
4232 days ago
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I saw a good TED talk[1] a while ago about this topic, and the speaker made the interesting point that people use the word happiness to mean different things. You can ask someone how happy they are feeling at a given moment, or you can ask them how happy they are with their life in general. And we evaluate those two feelings in very different ways. He mentions at one point that studies about how people feel in the moment were very correlated with money, but only up to the point that they didn't need to worry about it anymore. After that, it had little bearing on their experiential happiness. But when asked how happy they were with their lives, the more money, the better, with no limit. Which seems to me more like pride in an achievement. I wonder if the happiness that wasn't "your own" was because part of you was happy when you thought about where you were in life, but you were also aware it wasn't really improving your day-to-day experience. Kind of a cognitive dissonance between the two ways you were evaluating your happiness. I don't know, you think that's even close? [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper... |
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The day-to-day didn't really change above a certain income, and that income limit (at least for me) was pretty low. Even living in both Manhattan and San Francisco where things are expensive.
All the things I enjoy aren't really that expensive. You don't need millions of dollars to read a book, watch a movie, listen to an album, or have sex. These things are only very marginally improved above let's say, the $75K mark. You don't even need millions of dollars to go out to eat every night.
Money can give you more discretionary time. But that free time can't be spent in any way (at least none that I found) that feels rewarding while everyone else you know or care about is at work. You are still bound to rest of the world. I think that's what I like about more European, or day I say socialist, lifestyles. I need other people to spend time with. I've found hanging out with extremely wealthy people who don't do anything to be extremely boring and almost uncomfortable.
If I woke up tomorrow and suddenly had $10 million I'm not sure I'd be any happier. I'd go out and buy some new clothes I guess, a bigger apartment maybe. I'd still wake up in the morning and turn on the radio to listen to NPR. I'd still eat the same yogurt, same strawberries.
People start to do silly things with money I don't understand. Giant TVs they don't know how to work, fancy cars they never drive. Or buy some house with rooms that sit empty. I'm just like, why? Why would you do that? When people say these things make them "happy" I wonder if we actually feel completely different emotions.