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As someone very poor, for me good life means having money to the point where my choices are not based around it.
I also reflect that the most significant choices are those which are within one's locus of control, the awareness of that is foundational to a life of virtue and money never seems un-constraining even if objectively one controls more of it.
What is needed minimally? - a loved and loving partner, a sane and fulfilling sexuality - enough income to not have any substantial worries about the future - absence of other justifiable existential worries and anxiety about the future such as cataclysms, threats, oppressive social, political and work environments, political instability, etc. - a decent amount of recognition in work or private life (one of them suff…
This seems like a pretty good list. I'm sure it's possible to debate the details, but it seems to hit the big points. What I think is interesting about it though is that aside from "enough income to not have any substantial worries about the future", none of these items can actually be provided by society / government. Government certainly can't provide a loving partner, fulfilling sexuality, good mental and physical…
What is needed minimally? - a loved and loving partner, a sane and fulfilling sexuality - enough income to not have any substantial worries about the future - absence of other justifiable existential worries and anxiety about the future such as cataclysms, threats, oppressive social, political and work environments, political instability, etc. - a decent amount of recognition in work or private life (one of them suff…
Is this sarcasm? Because this seems like a list of "pick some, but not all"... I'd say that 99.99 percent of humanity has not hit all of these goals ever in the history of humanity. If this is the minimally required list, then depression is way, way underdistributed.
As someone very poor, for me good life means having money to the point where my choices are not based around it.
Most of my choices, and certainly all of my major life choices (like where to live, what car to drive, what job to take) are still based around money.
Edit: good points in the responses. I don't worry about eating out, what to order, what brand of sundry to buy. I do try to optimize but as others have said, that's more of a desire than a requirement.
Having said that, I think the only people who truly never worry about money are children. I've heard stories about international students at universities whose parents buy them luxury car after luxury car when they crash them, that kind of thing. But I suspect it's pretty rare.
I know that personally I really don't need much for my own happiness - the basics of survival, a very modest house, and being away from people and in nature would do it for me. The problem comes when these simple things are denied to me, and I am put in a society in which one is treated badly when one doesn't strive to keep up with the Joneses. Controversial opinion: the people with the power to change the never-endi…
Son, you’re not going to get where you want to be until you resolve whatever lead you to find this thought important enough to write down in public.
Good life is the absense of bad life.
As someone very poor, for me good life means having money to the point where my choices are not based around it.
There is a sad, almost Catch-22 in the typical U.S. city where you need a car to make money and need money to buy a car.
When I was unable to afford a car though I was able to find a (minimum wage) job and a place (well, room) to rent within a reasonable bicycle ride. (Yay, I did have a bicycle still from my high school days!) I did succeed though (was even able to begin college at a small community college — rode to my classes via bicycle).
The first thing I bought though after food, rent, tuition and books was a rust-bucket of a car so that I had more choices in employment. (Sucks that gas, repairs, insurance, and registration then ate even more of my paycheck, but that's another rant.)
To be sure, I still now experience discontent, anxiety, stress and other things in life even though money is no longer making my choices for me. But, yeah, money is not the one calling the shots.
It's easy to in fact look back on those impoverished times and feel like they were somehow less stressful, and I felt less anxiety and discontent then than I have in the decades following. I'm not sure if that's the big lie we tell ourselves or if instead it is correct: either because money then was such an overarching issue that all other issues had to "get in line", or because when life boiled down to work-school-rent there really were no other 2nd-order "Maslowian" needs that I could be bothered to trifle with.
As someone very poor, for me good life means having money to the point where my choices are not based around it.
I'm at a point in my life where I can essentially go on autopilot when shopping for groceries and not worry about the cost. I still have to make other decisions based on money (do I take a vacation or upgrade my laptop?), but the side effect of those choices is NOT stress.
So there's some minimum income that everyone needs (and it's different between people) where they can "forget" about living expenses and still have a relatively stress-free life. I'd wager somewhere around 1.5x - 2x the cost of living.
I know that personally I really don't need much for my own happiness - the basics of survival, a very modest house, and being away from people and in nature would do it for me. The problem comes when these simple things are denied to me, and I am put in a society in which one is treated badly when one doesn't strive to keep up with the Joneses. Controversial opinion: the people with the power to change the never-endi…
The controversal part is the first paragraph, you are nursing a victim mentality here. What stops you going to Alaska and get your cabin in the woods.
- Letters from a Stoic, Seneca
- On the Shortness of Life, Seneca
- Walden, Henry David Thoreau
- Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck