Does money make us happy?
I am sure we have heard a lot about this issue and after having a conversation with @everittdmickey and seeing @macchiata post I decided to write this.
On one side we have people that loves money and in the other side we have people that hates money and blame it for all of our society’s issues.
Nevertheless, we must remember something important: money isn’t something with an intrinsic value, we could say it doesn’t even exists.
Money is nothing more than an abstract representation of the value we give and perceive from our goods and services.
In other words, having a lot of money is nothing more than having the opportunity to acquire a lot of goods and services, money itself doesn’t matter, what matter is our capacity to satisfy our needs.
This is why when someone hates money, he/she also hates every goods and services ever created by humanity, like our smartphones, cars, TV, computers... things like agriculture, the internet, music, the service provided by doctors or engineers, hating money implies hating everything we produce.
This also means saying you love money is in fact a meaningless statement, because what we love is not money, but what we can do with it.
So, does money makes us happy?
The romantic take on this subject is the typical answer we heard from our parents or other elders and it is “no, money doesn’t makes us happy”, however we need to understand our social conditions can blinds us and obstruct us from seeing reality as it is.
For example, depending on the family and cultural environment, it’s more common for a poor person to think “money doesn’t bring happiness” than for someone with good financial conditions.
And there is also a psychological factor on this: when a poor person says that “money doesn’t bring happiness” it’s a way to encourage himself and twist the reality in order to feel better about being poor.
What’s my answer to this question?
Well, money clearly is not the secret ingredient to be happy, we have tons of famous examples of Hollywood millionaires behind depressed and suicidal, nevertheless, a person in good economic position certainly has more possibilities of being happy with life, than someone with a constant struggle to make ends meet.
We can find people arguing there are a lot of millionaires having miserable life’s and poor people having happy life’s, but by that same standards we have much more millionaires having happy lives and much more poor people having miserable lives. So the correlation is there.
My conclusion
In order to be happy we need to have our needs met like having good health, enough food, good shelter and good company. And since having money makes it more easy to get those things, I believe having money while not being a guarantee to happiness, undoubtedly seems like a requirement.
What do you feel? Does the price increase of steem and sbd made you more happy?
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Hey, I was looking at your Posts because you are applying(or asking to) to @make-a-whale.
And your posts seem very good, but I did find a small problem. You reference your photos (give Source) but it seems you are using other's people's photos.
You are borrowing them from other people's blogs and such. But in professional internet practice....even though you give the source, you are "stealing" the photos because they are not "free use" photos.
Some places like pixabay.com have free use images.... But I doubt they have that special Venezuelan food.
The best thing will be to take the photo yourself...but I understand this isnt always easy.
Anyway, I am not upset. Just trying to give you a tip so that you dont get in trouble with the Photo's owners later!
Peace
Money is a part of life but money is not life
True! If people dedicate their lives towards money they would not be happy since money itself is worthless. The important thing is what we can do with money.
Awesome post! What is the chance, the picture you used with the person stretching their hands out with the coin it is a two Rand coin, the South African currency! My own country. I think you said valuable things! But I think also that it is a bit more complex in a way? I think money can buy you opportunities to be happy. For example if you think buying a Ferrari will bring you happiness, then maybe it won't because it is a possession that can bring stress etc. But if you know what you want to do in life, if you have a passion, then money, in my opinion, can buy you happiness.
For example, I really want to open a bakery and coffee shop with a philosophical practice. If I had the money I would open it today. It is not that the bakery and the possessions will bring me happiness, but the smile I want to see on the face of the person who buys my bread. I think money can buy happiness, it should just be buying the right stuff and not superficial things. Does this make sense? Or am I going in the wrong directions haha :P
You say it my friend “the smile I want to see on the face of the person who buys my bread”, that is what would make you happy. In order to do that you need money, so it’s just a tool for us to achieve our goals and feel happy about it. Money + work can certainly “buy” happiness in my opinion.
The sad thing is that so many people buy useless things (from my perspective) to try and get happiness that will never get them happiness. It is sad (for me) to see people who have a passion in life, lose it because they do not have enough money. Sometimes I wish the world was different! But alas, we have to use what we have to survive.
Poverty is indeed a very serious problem we have always had. But I believe this problem is being resolved right now.
Poverty rates are globally on a decreasing trend, more and more poor countries are starting to have a growing middle class. And this is good.
Hopefully by next century we will have poverty at 0% globally.
It can be done.
That is so nice to hear! I am from South Africa where there is so much poverty. When you try to help, sometimes the people see it as negative. So you start to get the feeling of not wanting to help. I really hope there is change on the horizon.
I am from Venezuela mate! And here we have a lot of poverty right now thanks to the worst economic crisis of Venezuela’s history. It’s very ugly right now and people are suffering a lot.
I hope I can do well here on steemit and provide some help for my people.
And yes, I think long term poverty will be eliminated one way or another. I think this is a good subject for another post :D
Yes it is! I got a lot of good info from other people in the comments as well. It is so nice to have a decent conversation with other people.
Yes I heard on the news about the crisis there, people fighting for food etc. (and the high prices for daily food). In South Africa it is not like that, more like systematic poverty. Which is bad because if you are stuck in that circle you will likely not get out. I want to bring steemit to people in the poor areas so they can document their lives and share it on steemit and maybe make a buck or two! Slowly we can fight against the corrupt world.
It would be great if you managed to get some people from your countries to document their lives! That would be interesting!
And yes! Steemit can be super helpful for people having financial issues but willing to share time here.
This is why I believe steemit will be very popular in Venezuela next year. It’s a very good opportunity.
Yes unfortuntely money is still a requirement indeed. Maslow's pyramid of interests illustrates these basic "needs for happiness" that you meantion rather well. I think with steemit regular folks can start pushing for the top two levels. It should however be ammended by a bottom layer like so (not my work):
Hahahahaha! You might say that joking but if the internet went down our civilization would follow...
That WiFi layer might be appropriate after all!
The world has certainly changed a lot since the invention of the internet. Who knows, perhaps we'll have to add another "Blockchain" layer at the very bottom soon...
I hope that day come soon so we could have blockchain everywhere. And I hope steemit to be there as the leader of social media
What's semana?
Sorry haha! That was the autocorrector! Fixed it!
Ps: semana actually means “week” in Spanish :D
xD
Good edit and I accidentally learned something too! See how this works?
Lucky for me steemit isn’t like twitter that doesn’t allow you to edit tweets otherwise that comment would be damaged for ever lol
Lol. I totally agree too
high fives
Man, @dedicatedguy
You are a 100% right! 100!
I couldnt agree more, people always misunderstand this. I'll burn up all the money I ever come across with a lighter if I can still comfortably satisfy my needs without the said money. Its not money we love, it has no intrinsic value. The men drawn on the front of them notes are not even goodlooking!
So we dont want money, we want the comfort, security and the satisfaction of our needs. And since our needs are ever pressing, insatiable and incoviniencing, the fact that money satisfies them and take them away only means that YES! Money makes us happy. This doesnt mean that having money is 100% guarantee that we gon' be happy but it increases the chances by so so much!
The increase in SBD price makes me happpy, man!!! I got some cash outta that has satisfied a lot of my previous needs.
#smiles
Steem on bro!
Exactly mate! We totally agree on this!
An example is when the famous drug dealer Pablo Escobar burned like 2 million in cash just so his family wouldn’t be cold when they were hiding in a safehouse!
It couldn't have been said any better. Thank you for this
Thanks for reading!
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Very true your post, sometimes we are blinded by power and money, and we believe that there is happiness, when in reality happiness you find it in very small things, very good post, and STEEM-ON.
Thanks bro I agree with you!
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