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Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, p
by zusammen 2y ago
Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent.
That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either.
My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.
- fsckboy 2y agosociety subjects people to artificial misery? society is all we have, it's the most authentic misery you'll ever experience.
- littlecosmic 2y agoMaybe artificial in the way that we hypothetically could do things better if there wasn’t so much inertia to the status quo.
- lazide 2y agoAh, idealism. Truly the root of much of misery of the world.
- david-gpu 2y ago> Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded. Thank you for sharing your own experience.
- jquery 2y agoBeing young and healthy goes a long way. I was happier when I was a poor ahh college student but that doesn't mean losing all my money and possessions would be good for my mental health.
- obruchez 2y agoHaving kept a diary/journal since 1993 and reading old entries daily, I'm struck by how we often see the past through rose-tinted glasses. The opposite is also true: I tend to forget happy moments from long ago.
- jquery 2y ago>supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be Sure, they are just people like you and me. Doesn't mean their mere existence isn't evidence of a major flaw in our implementation of capitalism. Our society is becoming far too stratified. Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development, it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs.
- WalterBright 2y ago[flagged]
- defrost 2y agoMany have made the poor worse off by pandering to the rich and entitled. The rich don't have to be eaten, just constrained from exercising their worst excesses.
- atq2119 2y agoSocieties have made the poor better off by preventing people from becoming too wealthy, though. Specifically, I'm thinking of the very high high-end tax rates that were common 60 years ago.
- victorbjorklund 2y agowhich countries did have high standards for everyone but no "too rich" (whatever that def means. Is more than 1 million dollars too much?) people?
- atq2119 2y agoI don't know about "too rich", but if you're looking at the distribution of income and wealth, you'll find an increasing divide between poor and rich over the last decades in pretty much all western countries at least.
- 2y ago