This is a response to the post “Ironies and Contradictions of modern life“. I started it as a comment, but as I wrote more and more I figured that it became more than a comment and turned into something that could be of a more general interest.
I’ve seen many times people talking about having a happy poor life, or saying that poor people are happier than rich people. However, people who say this don’t notice that a poor life is not the same as a simple life — they are pretty different things.
No sane person would want to be poor, and I hope I can show why with this text.
Being poor is not simply having a modest life and or not having everything, it’s about not having means to fulfill even basic necessities.
It’s not about not being able to buy the latest gadgets, it’s about going to work even when you’re feeling awfully sick because if you don’t, you won’t have enough money to buy food, or to pay your energy bill, or to send your kids to school.
It’s not about being unable to buy a car, but it’s often about living far away from the place you work or study, wasting huge amounts of time commuting in crowded buses and trains, waking up very early and going to bed very late at night, almost everyday fucking day.
It’s not about living in a happy community where everyone loves and cares for each other, it’s about living in an ugly neighborhood with high criminality rates where homicide, rape, violence, drug dealing and other bad things are often a reality, not something only seen in TV.
And finally, being poor is definitely not being in a level from where you have a clean start and go climbing to the top, it’s more like being in a dark hole where you fight for survival, and it’s only after getting out of such hole, sometimes with your body and soul full of scars, that you can finally see the sky and start climbing to the top of the mountain.
Poor people definitely don’t have it good, and those who feel happy despite their poverty, more often than not are those who have been through a lot already. Their rough life toughens them up, they adopt a positive attitude towards it, they find ways to accept their losses and their hardships, and it’s such a positive attitude that ends up giving them the strength to endure everything.
I think it’s easier now to see why a simple life is not the same as a poor life.
I’d say that having a simple life is more like having a slow-paced life, one where you free yourself from the excesses of modern society and find pleasure on simple but significant things that matter to your happiness. What many don’t notice is that not all poor people are able to have such simple lives, after all, contrary to popular belief, many of them are actually busy fighting for their survival and can’t afford the luxury of having these happy simple lives that the non-poor idealize.
On the other hand, rich people can pretty well have a simple life if they are ready to let go of some things and put some effort into it. I’m not saying it’s easier for rich people, I understand pretty well that this is very hard: unless you’re living off your parents or something like that, being rich, among other things, also usually means having a greater number of responsibilities and more expectations to meet. Sometimes it’s extremely hard to set yourself free from such things, but when you do, a simple (and possibly happy) life becomes achievable.
Slow your pace, accept being less rich if that’s the only way to do it, try being people who appreciate more simple things, be yourself, ignore what people say about you… I think these are things that can lead to a simple happier life and I bet that many rich people could do it if they really tried.
I come from a very poor family and I have been in and out of the poverty hole more than once. I had days in my life when I had to ration food and try to sleep as much as possible so I wouldn’t have to deal with my hunger or feel tempted to eat the food too early. But I also had days when my biggest concern was to find the best possible restaurant while visiting cities such as Rome, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin etc. regardless of their price tag.
If you are rich, don’t take your money for granted. I understand that money won’t buy you happiness, or love, or true friends. It’s true that having more money on my bank account didn’t make me a happy person, but at least I was not fighting for survival anymore and I was able to give a more comfortable life to me and my family.
What I want to say in the end is that being rich gives you a higher chance of starting a simple life than being poor. For instance, being rich may even give you the opportunity to choose where in the world you are going to start living your simple life, a privilege that a poor person would hardly have — you could choose a place where you could find more like-minded people, for example.
And by the way, even if money can’t buy happiness, c’mon, tell me the truth: would you rather, for example, live unhappy in the slums of Mumbai or live unhappy in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris?
7 comments
This started out as something I see every day in my day to day existence and materialistic westerners somehow twist this into something negative. WTF! No wonder you guys are suicidal and depressed. You can’t seem to see the simple joys in life and want something more instead. You’ve been brainwashed by nihilism and mindless consumerism. Let’s not kid ourselves. Poor people are happier, there are even studies that show this:
www . pravdareport . com / society / stories / 02-01-2013/ 123363-poor_happy-0/
www . theguardian . com / society / 2016 / dec / 12 /happiness-depends-on-health-and-friends-not-money-says-new-study
www . princeton . edu / news / 2006 / 06 / 29 /link-between-income-and-happiness-mainly-illusion
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but this shatters your illusions that wealth brings happiness. Yes, you didn’t have to fight for your survival anymore but you rising to the top and then finding yourself on a suicide site kinda defeats your long-winded post doesn’t it?
BTW, I come from a poor country and have seen it first hand so I know what I’m talking about. My father came from a poor household and so was my mother. They rose to the top while my other blood relatives lead simple lives. While they didn’t really have to fight tooth and nail just to have something to eat, they did have meager income and a simple roof over their heads (akin to the wooden houses you see in slums on your TV).
When they rose to the top, they brought with them the problems associated with it – long hours at work, trapped in an office cubicle, anger from work related stress being unloaded unto the children, being abusive psychologically to the family as a means of anger management, less time for family and friends, less time for personal hobbies, etc. In contrast to my not-really-fight-for-survival-poor but on the poverty line relatives, they had more meaningful lives, allowed their children to grow freely, weren’t isolated, had more time for personal hobbies and family bonding and were more social in nature than the rest of me and my middle-class peers. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what’s happening in industrialized nations today and no wonder why western countries are so dysfunctional with single motherhoods, broken families and low birth rates.
Don’t be angry that I’m telling reality for what it is. I’m simply commenting on what is and posting here. Don’t shoot the messenger just because you don’t like the message being given.
Let’s consider two situations:
1. You’re stuck in a situation where your income barely allows you to put food on your table or the table of your family. This is the kind of situation where you would work so hard and so much that you wouldn’t even have time to think about happiness. To try to cover your basic needs, it’s reasonable to say that you would try to use all the time you had to work: this is surviving; the chance of achieving happiness in this situation is naturally very very small.
2. You have a job that gives you an income that not only cover your basic needs but leaves some extra cash at the end of the month. Let’s think of two possibilities:
– A. Your job already takes all of your time and once again you can’t even think about happiness at all: well, at least you or your family won’t be hungry and would live with more comfort than if you were just fighting for survival, you could even be equally unhappy as before, but one thing is being unhappy and hungry, another is being unhappy with your stomach full.
– B. You do have some free time to do whatever you want: it’s here that you are truly able to start thinking about happiness, and it’s here that you can start opting to have a simple life or not. You can choose to use the extra time to work even more to get more money, you can choose to study to get a better job in the future that would pay you more for the same amount of time worked, or you could simply use all your free time to spend more time with your family, do things you liked etc — we could say that this last one would be the choice of having a simple life. Each of these decisions will have a different impact on your chance to find happiness, but regardless, here you have options, your chance of being happy increased.
I think these examples help me to explain what the thing about money giving people more chances to find happiness. In the first situation people are struggling, they are busy working day and night and they don’t have much choice to begin with. If they tell they are happy, it may very well be not because they really feel happy, but because they are so busy that there is little space for sadness — it’s no wonder that many people try to occupy their mind with work to avoid getting depressed.
There was a year of my life that I got to a very dire situation, when sometimes I would struggle even to buy food. I got to the point of having three jobs at the same time and I would often work more than 18 hours a day. I had thought about suicide earlier in my life, but I didn’t think about it even once during this period. I never even really got sad back then. Why? Was it because I was having a more enjoyable life? No, definitely not, it was because my mind didn’t even have time to feel sad to begin with, I couldn’t think about anything else other than work. I would get back from work absolutely exhausted and sleep as soon as I touched the bed. Then I would wake up with the alarm still feeling tired and run back to work. My mind was totally focused because failing one day could mean not having enough money to buy food or pay rent on another. I didn’t have time for other things such as friends, love, sex… It was only after I got a better job, and thus more money and more free time, that I was able to really feel sad and think reflect upon my life.
I can’t say that it applies to all cases, of course, but based on my experience, I believe that when people struggling with poverty say they are happy, they are probably saying it because their life is so fucked-up that they can’t even notice how unhappy they really are.
Let me put it this way: can poor people be happy? Sure. Can miserable people be happy? I doubt it. Even if they say they are happy, I believe their judgment is clouded in this situation. And that’s why I like to point the difference between being poor and between having a simple life. Anyone can have a simple life, including rich people. And being poor doesn’t mean you are automatically having one.
And by the way, it feels like you don’t believe that rich people can be happy. It feels like you’re saying that only poor people can, which is definitely not true. Money can’t buy happiness indeed, but poverty won’t get you happiness either. As that article from the Guardian says, social and psychological factors are the important things, not income — and it applies both for high and low incomes.
It’s strange for you to say something like “No wonder you guys are suicidal and depressed. You can’t seem to see the simple joys in life and want something more instead” — if you are aware of such simple joys, what is it that holds you back from pursuing them and being happy? OK, don’t really mind answering this, it’s kind of rhetorical. But don’t give up on trying to have a simple happy life just because you’re rich.
I don’t know if you didn’t read my long-winded post entirely because it was too big (I know, I write too much, sorry about that) or if you really misunderstood what I have written. I totally agree that wealth doesn’t bring happiness or that money can’t buy happiness and I have stated that, I would be a very naive person if I thought otherwise. What money brings you is comfort, protection, opportunities, options. With this you may have more chances to go about finding your happiness. However, if you don’t know how to use, or are not able to use, your wealth in a way as to get you closer to a happier life, that’s another story.
Either way, here goes a long-winded reply which I hope will make my opinion about it more clear for whoever feels like reading it. I will understand if you ignore it, as it is even bigger than my original post. And don’t worry, I have no reason to be angry with you — just remember not to shoot the messenger, as you said.
Regarding statistics, well, I don’t believe happiness surveys are reliable. I think each person or perhaps each culture has a different idea of what happiness is. It’s something too subjective to be measured and compared by surveys.
However, for my own private reasons, I’ve been researching about happiness and some other well-being indicators quite a lot in the last few weeks. Even though I am skeptical about happiness surveys, I could point to several reports that show that there is a strong correlation between wealthier countries or higher incomes and happiness. For instance, here are some interesting reports:
World Happiness Report: http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/
Subjective Well?Being and Income: https://www.brookings.edu/research/subjective-well%E2%80%90being-and-income-is-there-any-evidence-of-satiation/
Gay Happiness Index: https://www.planetromeo.com/en/care/gay-happiness-index/
And here are some interesting news articles:
Based on the World Happiness Report: http://time.com/money/2802147/does-money-buy-happiness/
Based on many different surveys: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/1VFolBknMjbXCdZlCkjZEI/The-economics-of-happiness.html
The second article is of special interest, as it talks about many different happiness surveys and questions their reliability.
The first link of your comment refer to an article that talks about a survey made by Gallup in 2011. The survey shows Panama, Paraguay and El Salvador as the countries with the “highest positive emotions worldwide”. But look at the questions that were made in this survey:
– Did you feel well-rested yesterday?
– Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?
– Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?
– Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?
– Did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday?
– How about enjoyment?
From http://news.gallup.com/poll/159254/latin-americans-positive-world.aspx
Ehr… There were many days in my life that I have enjoyed and for which I would answer yes to all of these questions, but does it mean I was happy? Definitely not.
Ironically, the first report that I linked, the World Happiness Report, is based on Gallup’s most recent surveys about happiness. It’s pretty interesting to note that the results are quite different, and here’s the question that was made for the survey:
“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time, assuming that the higher the step the better you feel about your life, and the lower the step the worse you feel about it? Which step comes closest to the way you feel?”
From http://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/206468/happiest-unhappiest-countries-world.aspx
Even though I wouldn’t say this is the perfect question to find out if someone is happy, there is no doubt that it is much better than the questions made in 2011. My sincere answer to this question would be much closer to how I feel concerning my happiness.
Let’s consider this research for a moment then. If poor people really were happier than rich people, we would see African countries like Sierra Leone topping the list and countries like Switzerland or Canada at the bottom. Or if the eastern culture really were the key to happiness, we would see countries like India, China and Japan at the top, not countries like Netherlands, Australia or United States. But here is the top 10 and the bottom 10:
1. Norway (7.537)
2. Denmark (7.522)
3. Iceland (7.504)
4. Switzerland (7.494)
5. Finland (7.469)
6. Netherlands (7.377)
7. Canada (7.316)
8. New Zealand (7.314)
9. Australia (7.284)
10. Sweden (7.284)
…
146. Yemen (3.593)
147. South Sudan (3.591)
148. Liberia (3.533)
149. Guinea (3.507)
150. Togo (3.495)
151. Rwanda (3.471)
152. Syria (3.462)
153. Tanzania (3.349)
154. Burundi (2.905)
155. Central African Republic (2.693)
But I’m not so naive, I know that even though most of the surveys shows such correlation between wealth and happiness, I am aware that high incomes don’t determine happiness. But it’s absolutely understandable that someone with more resources has more opportunities to find happiness than someone with less resources. Pay attention that I’m not saying that people with more resources WILL find happiness, I am saying that they have a greater number of CHANCES to find them. On the other hand, I could argue that even though they have more opportunities to find happiness, people with more resources also have a greater chance of wasting such opportunities than people with lower resources, and this statement is precisely related to my belief that someone who values a simple life is more likely to find happiness than someone who doesn’t — and using a bit of common sense here, it’s reasonable to believe that rich people value less a simple life than non-rich people.
The article you linked from The Guardian refers to a report that supports that “social and psychological factors are more important to the wellbeing of individuals than income levels”. Of course, who would deny that? However, the article doesn’t say anywhere that being poor increases the chance of being happy.
The Princeton study from your third link is very interesting. It showed that people with higher incomes spent more time in a bad mood than people with lower income, and points to statistics showing that people with higher incomes spent more time with activities with “higher tension and stress”. But considering that the survey is based on the percentage of time that people spend in a bad mood, some questions are raised, like: how much time does one need to spend in a good mood to be happy? What about the intensity of their bad mood — is it slightly bad or too bad? What if the amount of time that some people spend in a good mood actually compensates for a possible higher amount of time they are in a bad mood? What if they are in a good mood most of the time but when they are in a bad mood they feel like killing themselves? And how does all of it compare between the people with higher incomes and the people with lower incomes?
I think the Princeton study really supports the idea that money doesn’t buy happiness and perhaps could even support the idea that a simple life leads to a happier life. Well, I agree with both ideas indeed. But as with most or all surveys trying to measure happiness, it feels incomplete and kind of unreliable.
I find pleasure in many things that take some discretionary income. When I lived in poverty my life was complicated by the lack of money. I was assaulted repeatedly in the poor neighborhood. I will not repeat the poverty experience.
@ThirdClassWorldCitizen- it doesn’t matter how much evidence you present. Some people refuse to believe facts no matter no matter how many facts, links, and evidence you present to them. Just like people who believe in a flat earth, big foot, or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Your time and energy is wasted on someone like that.
Are you telling me that big foot doesn’t exist? ?