Jason Huynh, the Carrier’s photojournalism editor, gives his thoughts on wealth’s relation to happiness.
Jason Huynh, Campus Carrier photojournalism editor.
Growing up I was taught that if I got good grades, went to college and got a degree I would end up with a better life than my parents and be happy. Over the past few days I was given an opportunity to test that idea.
Last week I had to take my car into the body shop for a repair. In return I was given a rental car that just happened to be a fairly new Mercedes-Benz, a luxury car that most college students can only dream of owning post graduation. Yet, I’ve had the golden opportunity to experience what it would be like to have wealth.
A Time articlepublished on June 14, 2014 asked the question “does money buy happiness?” Economist Justin Wolfers responded, “the relationship between income and happiness is extremely strong.” Wolfers, however, also gave the disclaimer that “correlation isn’t causation.”
University of Southern California professor Richard Easterlin responded to Wolfers by saying, “while happiness and income are correlated over short-term periods, the relationship disappears over the long run.”
Society has come to accept that wealth will bring happiness and, in turn, good health. The assumption is that wealthier people are happier than poor people. In my own experience with a piece of wealthy culture, I honestly did not see the big deal. Yes, the car was nice, but ultimately it was just another car.
Karl Marx, most notable for being the author of “The Communist Manifesto,” said that everything is about economics and that it is the key to understanding human history and society.
It’s here that I disagree with Marx. I believe that Marx was right in saying that economics is important, but it’s not the only thing.
We live in society where the common symbols and signs we inherently learn were labeled and named by some thing of power, those who control the narrative. Freudian psychoanalyst Carl Jung presented this idea of the collective unconscious. An idea that, Jung says, aside from our personal nature and psyche, there exists an impersonal nature, a second psychic system that is identical in all individuals that is inherited rather than personally developed.
Given that, society accepted this language barrier between the wealthy and the poor.
I use the term language in the sense that it enables our ability to communicate, but it also cuts us off because it is specific to a certain group. It is clear that the wealthy have their own language and the poor theirs. Yet, the concept of happiness is not one that can vary in many ways. Taking from the collective unconscious, we as humans share the same concept of emotions.
Cleric and philosopher Richard Cumberland wrote in his text, “A Treatise of the Laws of Nature,” that promoting the well being of our fellow humans is essential to the “pursuit of our own happiness.”
Italian Marxist revolutionary Antonio Gramsci presented such an idea in his theory of cultural hegemony. Gramsci believed that lots of groups in a society are pursuing their own goals, but when an external threat is posed, the entire system acts together allowing small changes in ideology to save the larger system.
I believe His Holiness the Dalai Lama puts it best in his text “The Art of Happiness.” “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries,” he said. “Without them, humanity cannot survive.” The ideology that we choose to pursue and what language we choose to limit ourselves to matters more than material wealth.
So what I grew up hearing wasn’t entirely accurate. Getting good grades and a college degree are important, but there is more to happiness than driving a rented Mercedes-Benz. If we choose the simple idea of love and compassion, we collectively find happiness.