RE: This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stabs
05-02-2012, 07:47 PM
The idea is that money can't buy long-term happiness, and that the accumulation of wealth itself isn't a sensible goal in terms of achieving happiness.
There's a fair amount of not-pseudointellectual literature that supports the idea, but a basic concept worth familiarizing oneself with is the idea of hedonic set points. It's fairly new research (as research goes anyway, the basic ideas are older than any of us) so there are still some problems with theory and documentation, but it tends to hold up fairly well.
Of course, the aphorism dates back to a time when the idea of happiness wasn't even the same as we conceive it now; throughout the history of humanity and the diversity of culture, there's never been a single monolithic idea of happiness. The idea that money can't buy it stemmed from a point when happiness was supposed to be the contemplation of the divine and a life lived virtuously: in that sort of a framework, money certainly wasn't getting you in with God and in all likelihood you'd had to do some immoral, unethical, or at least unscrupulous things to accumulate a significant quantity of it.
In any case, it's a little bit... silly... to take a phrase like "money can't buy happiness" and interpret it – and argue against it – as "money is immaterial to happiness and purchases will never bring you joy". The idea, I would argue, is less a literal money≠happiness, and more an exhortation about pursuing material things above all others.
Relatedly, it seems that experiences do make you happier on average than purchases do. It's hard to find scientific sources that let the general public read more than the abstract, so here's an article about an one such article that indicates that the happiness from purchases tends to dissipate while experiences just get better over time.
Of course, the line between a purchase and an experience isn't super clear, if you think about it. One of my all-time favorite games ever is Kirby Super Star; it's not honestly an unusually good game or anything, but I love it to death because of the hours my brother and I spent playing and replaying and goofing around with it. We'd go back to it year after year and make the same jokes and play the same levels and joke about our jokes. The game itself is a thing, but what I remember and enjoyed most about it was the experience associated with it. The same could be said for anything else, enjoyed with someone or without; you might wax nostalgic about a record you bought years ago and how great it was hearing it for the first time, or snuggling a sweetheart while it played in the background, or even just still get a rush every time you play it; the puzzler might not go back and resolve the puzzles she collects, but she'll grin when she remembers how something finally clicked that let her solve her most challenging puzzle yet, or laugh at staring at an obvious clue for hours and making things ten times harder than they had to be.
In any event, it's hard to seriously worry much about being judged for enjoying owning things in our fairly materialist culture. It's only when one gets to the level of a hoarder or someone who buys things simply to buy them and then never does anything with them (completing a collection here being part of "anything") that most people start looking down. In terms of collection, it's less the act of collecting or the size of the collection that tends to draw leery looks, but the nature of the collection itself: a man who's spent tens of thousands of dollars on and filled his house with Star Wars memorabilia isn't judged for his hobby so much as what's seen as his obsession with a childish film; someone who's done the same thing with art is seen as laudably sophisticated, after all.
There's a fair amount of not-pseudointellectual literature that supports the idea, but a basic concept worth familiarizing oneself with is the idea of hedonic set points. It's fairly new research (as research goes anyway, the basic ideas are older than any of us) so there are still some problems with theory and documentation, but it tends to hold up fairly well.
Of course, the aphorism dates back to a time when the idea of happiness wasn't even the same as we conceive it now; throughout the history of humanity and the diversity of culture, there's never been a single monolithic idea of happiness. The idea that money can't buy it stemmed from a point when happiness was supposed to be the contemplation of the divine and a life lived virtuously: in that sort of a framework, money certainly wasn't getting you in with God and in all likelihood you'd had to do some immoral, unethical, or at least unscrupulous things to accumulate a significant quantity of it.
In any case, it's a little bit... silly... to take a phrase like "money can't buy happiness" and interpret it – and argue against it – as "money is immaterial to happiness and purchases will never bring you joy". The idea, I would argue, is less a literal money≠happiness, and more an exhortation about pursuing material things above all others.
Relatedly, it seems that experiences do make you happier on average than purchases do. It's hard to find scientific sources that let the general public read more than the abstract, so here's an article about an one such article that indicates that the happiness from purchases tends to dissipate while experiences just get better over time.
Of course, the line between a purchase and an experience isn't super clear, if you think about it. One of my all-time favorite games ever is Kirby Super Star; it's not honestly an unusually good game or anything, but I love it to death because of the hours my brother and I spent playing and replaying and goofing around with it. We'd go back to it year after year and make the same jokes and play the same levels and joke about our jokes. The game itself is a thing, but what I remember and enjoyed most about it was the experience associated with it. The same could be said for anything else, enjoyed with someone or without; you might wax nostalgic about a record you bought years ago and how great it was hearing it for the first time, or snuggling a sweetheart while it played in the background, or even just still get a rush every time you play it; the puzzler might not go back and resolve the puzzles she collects, but she'll grin when she remembers how something finally clicked that let her solve her most challenging puzzle yet, or laugh at staring at an obvious clue for hours and making things ten times harder than they had to be.
In any event, it's hard to seriously worry much about being judged for enjoying owning things in our fairly materialist culture. It's only when one gets to the level of a hoarder or someone who buys things simply to buy them and then never does anything with them (completing a collection here being part of "anything") that most people start looking down. In terms of collection, it's less the act of collecting or the size of the collection that tends to draw leery looks, but the nature of the collection itself: a man who's spent tens of thousands of dollars on and filled his house with Star Wars memorabilia isn't judged for his hobby so much as what's seen as his obsession with a childish film; someone who's done the same thing with art is seen as laudably sophisticated, after all.