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Musings Report 2020-18 5-2-20 How Much Do We Need To Be Happy?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they're a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
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How Much Do We Need To Be Happy?
Let's start by stipulating the imperfections of the English word "happiness:" it's much too broad, as it includes a range of experiences from grace to joy to pleasure to fulfillment to accomplishment to recognition to self-acceptance to positive expectations to unexpectedly being rewarded and so on.
And then there's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which emphasizes that the material needs of shelter, food and water must be met before any other forms of fulfillment/happiness can even become possible.
For the purposes of answering the question, "how much do we need to be happy?", let's focus on the basics of a state of well-being, which would include material security in terms of shelter, food, clean water and air, freedom of movement, etc., some measure of emotional stability and comfort (friendships, etc.) , a positive role in a family, community and/or enterprise, physical health, and the one element that's so often overlooked, the prospect of getting ahead: not just abstract opportunities, but immediate prospects for fulfilling projects.
Though there's always the danger of slipping into nostalgia, one way to start answering this question is to look back on one's life and ask: when was I happiest? And then list the attributes and features of that period of your life: your relationships, friendships, memberships, jobs, interests, income, creature comforts, projects, and general frame of reference: what you looked forward to, what you enjoyed, and what generated your overall sense of well-being.
One relatively brief era in my life offers an example of happiness/well-being that was largely disconnected from financial security, income or many of the creature comforts that most Americans consider absolutely basic: running water, a variety of food, electricity, etc.
In the late 1970s, we decided to help a friend erect a minimal living quarters (better than a shack but not quite a cabin) on his long-fallow sugar cane land in North Kohala on the island of Hawaii.
The property bordered an agricultural irrigation ditch left from the long-past days of the local sugar plantation, but there were no utilities: no electricity or county water.
We took delivery of a load of lumber and hacked away the old cane to clear a space for our tents and a building site. Nearby we dug a deep pit toilet and built a proper outhouse, all with hand tools (no electricity).
We then proceeded to build a 12 foot by 16 foot structure with a raised wood floor, screened windows, a plywood door and a shed roof. Improvements included a plywood kitchen counter for the Coleman stove and sink, and a structure to support a water storage tank that would collect rain water and enable a gravity-feed shower.
This was all done with handsaws, hammers, framing square, level, etc.--no power tools. (A sharp handsaw in strong hands can cut a 2X4 in a few strokes.)
Concurrently, we cleared land for a garden near the irrigation ditch and watered it with 5-gallon buckets carried from the ditch.
We cooked on a propane fueled Coleman two-burner stove, relied on blocks of ice and an ice chest for refrigeration, and took sponge baths or showers at a local county park. A Coleman lantern provided light at night, and the county library in Kapa'au offered reading material.
Despite conditions that most Americans would consider primitive and acceptable only while camping, we were happy because we had a shared goal/purpose, we were with friends (our friend the owner and two young Japanese women, daughters of his friends in Japan, who showed up on their own accord), and we were making visible progress every day. Our need for money was limited to some basics like dried beans, brown rice, bread, etc., a few gallons of gasoline for the VW Bug, auto insurance and not much else.
Snack foods, eating out, baked goods, frozen foods, a wide variety of vegetables and fruit--none of these were part of our lives. Our diet was very simple and basic, with zero waste. (Recall that Americans throw out an estimated 40% of all food purchased.)
In other words, we were rich in intangible capital while being under-capitalized financially. By conventional standards, we were poor.
Unwelcome problems with my eye (severely injured in a construction accident the previous year) cut our stay to a few months and permanently altered our plans, but I look back on this period with appreciation for our happiness and well-being: we had novelty, accomplishment, social capital, plenty to do, no debt and were in charge of our own lives.
While it's easy to romanticize such experiences from the comforts of the present, other periods of my life I see as equally happy were also marked by very basic material comforts and very low income. What generated a field of well-being and happiness was having goals and a shared purpose, friends, an enterprise or project, and opportunities for making progress that were within reach.
It's clear that the world has entered an extended period of economic uncertainty and austerity, as bailouts and unemployment are not substitutes for earnings and profits.
A great many people will very likely experience a decline in income and income security. How much will they need to be happy? If you start with very little, then what qualifies as "hardship" that strips away the possibility of happiness is considerably different than the "hardships" of those who have much and feel the sting of every step down the financial ladder.
In my experience, the gnawing anxiety of not having enough money to pay one's living expenses is the greatest impediment to well-being, along with chronic pain / illness. Stripping away debt and cutting expenses to the bone will likely be easier than trying to increase one's income in the months and years ahead, just as it will likely be easier to grow intangible capital than financial capital.
If happiness is largely the result of intangible capital, then a reduction in income and spending might be more bearable than we might have imagined a few months ago.
Highlights of the Blog
Richard Bonugli and I discuss how COVID 19 will affect Jobs and the Economy (50 minutes)
Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can't Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility 5/1/20
The Pandemic Is Deepening America's Many Divides 4/30/20
With Superfluous Demand in Free-Fall, What's the Upside of Re-Opening a Small Business? 4/28/20
The Crash Has Only Just Begun 4/23/20
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
My website traffic has finally recovered from the drop resulting from being shadow-banned by Google, Facebook and Twitter in October / November of 2018, and actually exceeded early 2018 traffic totals in number of visits and page views. I don't control my readership or what the platform monopolies do, I only control my content, but it's positive that either the shadow ban was lifted or its influence declined.
From Left Field
Unicorn Companies Account For High Number Of Layoffs (via Adam T.)
The 'Undertaker Of Silicon Valley' Stays Busy As Startups Lay Off Thousands (via Adam T.)
The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead
How the Fed’s Magic Money Machine Will Turn $454 Billion Into $4 Trillion
We Are Living in a Failed State: The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
The Limits of Clean Energy: If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels.
How effective is a hard lockdown against the COVID epidemics? The data say not so much
Cosmopolitan Provincials
Where Will You Live In The Post Covid-19 Future? Cities are cramped, sprawling suburbs are a dead end. That leaves two places well equipped for uncertain times.
The problem of a weak state: Dictatorship is the mark of a weak government: lacking real strength, dictators try to look strong by taking (indeed) dictatorial measures.
How a pandemic could bring down civilization
A Russian Woman Working as a College Professor in the US Writes About the Sovietization of Amerika (via Michael M.)
"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Dorothy Parker
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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