I don’t read it that way - the quote is saying that the notion that the rich are really miserable on the inside is intended to comfort the middle classes (that is, the not-rich) who have to toil for a living.
That isn’t I think the same as a denial that individual rich people can be “legitimately” miserable.
The poster I quoted referred to the idea that rich people are miserable as a “crock.” I read that as a denial. But no big deal - different interpretations.
I guess it depends on whether one means “the rich” as a group or as individuals.
The notion that “the rich” are miserable as a group is a crock. Some individual rich people are certainly miserable, so a blanket denial that rich people can be miserable is also a crock.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying your thought process.
Nah that’s why I used the qualifier “mostly a crock”. You can be rich and miserable, but it is far from the rule.
Far enough, but it’s also not the rule that non-rich people are miserable, either, so I still kind of took it as casting doubt on the idea that the rich could ever be miserable. Sorry if I misinterpreted.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
The problem most of the time is staring at them in the mirror and they will still deny THEY are the problem.
As I tell my kids, " You can be a part of the problem or you can be a part of the solution."*
*And one of my BFF adds to this, " Can I be a part of the crowd that just throws rotten tomatoes at the problem and the solution?" Yes, yes, he can. He has a good throwing arm.
I came in here to metnion Princess Diana. “Happily ever after” did not happen for her.
There is no doubt that there are extremely wealthy people who have miserable lives. To people of more modest means, this seems strange since having such wealth should theoretically give them the freedom to live the lives they want. From what I’ve seen, these people may be miserable for one or more of several reasons:
It is never enough. Whatever force is driving them to be a millionare is unsatisfied that they are not a decamilionare. It’s like a void that can never be filled. This puts them in a perpetual state of trying to keep up with the Jones, often with financially disasterous results.
Golden handcuffs. This is a phenomenon where a person is so addicted to the lifestyle that comes with their high income that they are forced into careers or jobs they hate. You see this often with investment bankers and lawyers and high level executives. They might hate their job but the kids need private schooling and the trophy wife needs new clothes and the mortgage on the Hamptons house is due so they have to keep working to make partner and collect that bonus.
The lifestyle itself. Kind of a “be careful what you wish for” sort of thing. Wealth and success can come at a price of loss of friends, loss of privacy, harassment by mooching “friends” and “relatives” who suddenly come out of the woodwork. There might be constant pressures to fit into a new upper class lifestyle.
Finding success unfullfilling. A few years back when I was in MBA school, I remember reading an artical about a people who achieved their dreams of success only to find that it either wasn’t what they expected or didn’t wasn’t what they wanted. It’s kind of like if you worked your entire life to become a doctor or lawyer or something of that nature, did it, and then realized you basically wasted your life because you hate it.
They are successful, but alone. I know a lot of people who are successful but they are jerks. They make a lot of money, but manage to alienate everyone else in their lives. Often they end up divorced with troubled kids. Sometimes they seem unable to have a meaningful relationship with anyone. They may not be miserable inside, but they make everyone else around them that way.
Or as we say in consulting
“If you can’t be part of the solution, there is a great deal of money to be made prolonging the problem.”
Hughes suffered from mental illness IIRC.
A few relevant quotes:
“Mo money, mo problems.”
-Notorious B.I.G.
“Show me someone with $500 million dollars and I’ll show you a frustrated billionare.”
-Unknown
“They say money can’t buy happiness? Look at the fucking smile on my face! Ear to ear, baby!”
-Jim Young, Boiler Room
After last night’s little fiasco, you might have to add Tiger Woods’ name to this thread.
My understanding on money and happiness is basically just that a rising up to a base income affects happiness, but beyond that it really doesn’t make a difference. So going from 10k up to 30k makes a difference, but 30k up to 300k makes little.
My main concern with starting this thread was discussing how we are all deeply vulnerable to endless things (endless psychological & physical threats) and that vulnerability unites us. All the money in the world can’t cure an incurable disease. And people who have tons of friends and family will still suffer psychologically due to losing their job and house.
Our medicine, sciences, social sciences, infrastructure, social justice programs, etc. they all help to protect us. I could fill a dictionary with medical problems I’ll never suffer from (or that can be easily overcome and reversed) that people faced 400 years ago. And I am far more free of oppression than people were 400 years ago. But I am still deeply vulnerable to physical and psychological threats just like everyone else. I am just more protected from them than people were in past generations.
Point is, my OP wasn’t really about ‘people who have tons of money but are unhappy’, it was more along the lines of ‘we are all deeply vulnerable to endless threats and risks to our minds and bodies and that vulnerability unites people together’.
QFT. I was utterly amazed at how many things changed for me - and how much - when I started getting into volunteering for stuff. Truly incredible experiences, had I, and I can’t recommend it enough.
I was just reading a book about Elvis and learned several things I’d never known about him, and his death. He had many problems as everyone knows; but what struck me was his lonely unhappiness, that he was self-aware enough to wonder what his life was all about.
I watched my father go through his life with nearly everything a man could want (job he loved, wife, kids, fancy car, travel, education etc) … but he was a depressed alcoholic (a functioning one - kept career etc) … I always swore that I would be happy with what I had and appreciate what each day gives us - and that I wouldn’t end up like him …
this past week I’ve realised I’m exactly like him.
I have so many wonderful things in my life and I’m still completely depressed on the inside - and I have worked out why my father lived the way he did … he might have had the life he wanted - but he still hated himself on the inside.
I too hate myself on the inside … I am a complete failure at most things that I deem important … and I can’t ever see myself ever changing those failures. So the outside trappings of a comfortable life don’t take away self-hate.
I also struggle with the pointlessness of life … what is the importance of a football final when they just play again next year? … yet … when I look further, most of what we do in life is pointless (especially if you don’t have kids to raise) … and I just have to play along with the pointlessness and just hope the whole thing hurries up and ends!! Is there a fast forward button on life?! My current aim in life is to just get through it, hurting as few people as possible on the way.
Many many jobs become a boring routine after some 20 or 30 years. So it is probably the usual case that new interests in personal life keep you going.
I am not thrilled about work, but I like the routine. And some skill is needed. So some minor satisfation is obtained.
Right now money is a little bit of an issue. Need some roofing work. But we are neither rich or poor.
What I am saying is, life is not a party after 45. But we all get there, most of us.
(my first message after 10 yrs. have forgotten old board name.)
Not nearly often enough, apparently. Appeals to vulnerability most often take the form of inciting fear in order to build power or wealth. And fearmongering mostly involves the kinds of fears that drive people apart, not together.
Yeah, there is that side of it. People use other’s fears to persecute scapegoats or make money.
From my perspective they do also unite us, because nobody can escape them. If you are rich you can get a disease that money can’t cure. A great family and friends won’t eliminate the trauma of sexual abuse. A fun, meaningful job won’t eliminate the consequences of a car wreck.
For me at least knowing we are all deeply vulnerable makes me appreciate all the work people have done to protect each other. All the advances in agriculture, engineering, medicine, social justice, science, etc. that have been done to protect each other’s vulnerabilities. But at the end of the day all we can do is cut down the intensity and severity of threats to us while improving our ability to recover (via medicine and social science), we are all still deeply vulnerable at the end of the day.
I think the hard part is realising how little difference money makes. It makes some difference, and there’s no joy in poverty and hardship. But it is truly remarkable how little correspondence there is between money and happiness.
Knowing how to be happy and knowing how to be wealthy are two different things. A cliche, but true.
There was once some fascinating research done by ad agency Young & Rubicam. Basically, they asked lots of people would you rather (a) own a 200k home when everyone else owns a 100k home, or (b) own a 400k home when everyone else owns an 800k home. Most people chose option (a), even though with option (b) they’d have a nicer, more expensive home. For many people, it seems that being better off than those around you is more important than the intrinsic or objective worth of whatever you have.
No, but they do say “I wish I’d made more money.”
Fortunately, I do not have children. If I did, they would never see Daddy, because Daddy has to work a midnight shift at the manager’s discretion. Or the 8pm to 10am shift (I bet you never knew there was such a shift) which would be putting kids to bed time. Meaning, somebody else would be waking them up and taking them to school. Perhaps the wife, if she didn’t have an 8-5 job. You get the idea. I would be a father who is a slave and has to kiss his bosses butt to keep the job. I would want no child to witness this.
Rich people being unhappy are substantially more rare than poor people being unhappy.
IIRC, Robert Ringer, in Looking out for Number 1, quotes some famous pollster, Gallup??, as having looked for a group of poor but happy people. Quoth he: They don’t exist.
You have a good and happy life, Praise the Lord, and I do too, but it’s totally unfair to say that spending time at the office, and neglecting family moments is any worse than being home and poor. My money says that there are more troubled times in poor homes than in wealthy.
hh
I remember seeing or hearing a show about Elvis where a friend tried to get him to leave his house and just take a simple walk. He refused saying he’d be recognized immediately and mobbed. The friend persisted and got him to go out. Elvis was not recognized and had an enjoyable walk. This did not have lasting effect on him and he pretty much went back immediately to the miserable, unhappy person he was.