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If Happiness Were the Only Global Currency, How Would the Most Important Decisions in Your Life Change?
If we all were to make the significant decisions in our lives based upon a happiness quotient instead of the resultant monetary gain, how drastically would our world and our reality change? Presented without further commentary.
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Yeah...the UN is starting to talk this up. Of course, the UN will jump on anything that would consolidate their power to supercede the sovereignty of nations, to create a "borderless" world. To be sure, it would mean global taxes, a global bureaucracy, and the loss of individual freedoms. That's sure to make some happy but leave other in a constant state of rage.
The big question is who decides what happiness means to the individual? It would be a lot different if I were the one to choose than, say, any of the EU bureaucrats. Sadly, as I have been minding my own business, trying to find my own happiness, those people - and others like them all over the world - have been working hard to take that ability from me.
Just like the equity markets are not the economy, the economy is not life even though governments try hard to make it seem so. It would seem that more individual freedom, not less, is the key for allowing people to find their own happiness. That means less governance, not more. This is not the argument that the global happiness agenda will make.
CloseI don't know what you smoked, man, but I want some of that.
On second thought... forget it.
Well if the world was driven simply off of emotional feelings, then it would be equally screwed.
The key to the authors statements is the same. You cant define success when you cant define "happiness".
I think the liberal author needs to go back to smoking his weed, save his money, and stop writing articles...
If you disregard emotion as unhelpful you have castigated humanity as something less than we could be. We think and feel. The two are inherently different but both equally useful when utilised in the correct manner. Wouldnt it be better to start valuing the best of humanity in all of its faculties rather than only half of what we could be?
I recommend you try some reading and dig a little deeper into the human psyche. You might be surprised at what you find.
So, you'd rather be rich than happy?
Money should be about giving you the freedom to do things which make you happy (which it does - try going without any for a while) - a means to an end.
The persuit of money has become the ends not the means - countless examples of ultimately pointless (in terms of human endeavour / happiness) activities relating to money can be found on this website, the majority revolving around how best to steal / cheat / con other people's money from them without doing anything productive...
Ever met a truely happy banker / trader / city boy? I haven't.
Its been said money is not the problem. Its the inherent corrupting human influences that channel money towards goals that are by nature causing unhappiness. We can create new measures all we want but until we figure out how to ensure we have some sense of moral rudder in the macro management of human effort we will hit this wall again and again in centuries and millenia to come.
E F Schumacher was the man who posited this in his seminal novel - A Guide For the Perplexed
http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Guide-For-The-Perplexed/dp/0099480212/ref=sr_1...
"Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope." - Freewheelin' Franklin
I never considered that dope might follow Gresham's Law, but I think you're on to something.
Hmm...not exactly; only a very limited portion of CA accepts weed as currency.
It is a nice mnemonic for marginal utility though.
only a very limited portion of CA accepts weed as currency at the moment.
Fixed it.
Think if the future of all human civilisation depended on me, what would I do, how would I be? Did I do all that I could?
"Few of us will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small proportion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation." RFK
It's up to us to write what happens next.
i've been waiting to get all meher baba on you guys. now's the time i guess. but i'll think i'll hedge the matter and let vivekananda have a couple of shots-
"whenever we are unhappy or anxious, we are atheists."
"want nothing-be happy"
I am pretty much an atheist (ironic, I know) - and I have noticed that highly "religious" people are pretty much unhappy and anxious for some kind of reason.
Maybe it's all that stupid talk about a nasty man in the sky, who sees all and punishes even the slightest fault with eternal torment or something.
Make of that what you will.
(Atheist get better sex, by the way, and none of that crap about what's acceptable in bed or not)
It reminds me an article/youtube video, which was talking about stupidity of economy benchmarks, e.g. gdp growth, etc. They are all quantity indicators, and don't describe quality of the progress.
Bigger production may be achieved by throwing more waste into environment and GDP increase will not take side-effects into account.
Health, happiness, etc. - these are correct goals we should pursue as society.
Money changes our focus to less important things unfortunately.
GDP if you all recall was a measure relevant to economic output based on a World War. We are measuring today usign a measure constructed for "war".
I don't think quantative measures are bad, they simply need to be backed up by goals as a society.
GDP increases with gov't expenditures, but the idea is measuring expansion which is what is desired. The quantative measure is simply flawed.
It's a bit like creating laws and "their true intent". You may make tax laws to reward certain behaviors (see investment) but instead you may get scoundrels that abuse "the true intent" of the law by parking money in the Caymens.
Ironically, one of the key factors that caused the Soviet Union's collapse was...
...The central planners choosing quantity over quality.
No, what really caused the collapse of the Soviet Union was:
a) stupid competition against the United States ;
b) the fact that the Soviet Union was a dictatorship to begin with, and that dictators are usually poor planners anyway (not to mention people who realize they are getting the shaft are not really productive and tend not to mention bad news in presence of said dictator or his secret police - they don't want to end in Siberia, you know?)
But that's OK - wait a few more years and whatever is left of the USA will look a lot like the Soviet Union anyway. Reading Dmitri Orlov is quite interesting in that respect.
Well, I can't use up the slim internet package I have for videos, and I've got my proxy set so they don't even show...so this is all I see:
And you know, it works! Like a zen koan, or an aphorism thrown out by Diogenes, those few lines deliver more punch than a tidal wave of verbiage designed to conceal that most relevant to our well being. Don't know what yu were on about in the rest of your presentation today JSK, but the special limited edition I got was another 99.9 fine nugget from my favourite ZH commentator!
Hey ORI, if you're out there, this is the perfect place to recycle your gem from January about the tru meaning of gold n silver! Link it up!
http://youtu.be/adY4Y60EMYo (michelle weeks\follow your dreams!)
I moved your cheese....bitchez
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moved-Your-Cheese-Someone-Business/dp/1609940652/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1