Is getting rich worth it?

perhaps it was phrased wrongly - certainly there are convincing studies that one gets happier (by whatever metrics) as one progresses through the decades.

However if we have happy as a spectrum, I contend people are placed by the end of childhood on a point on that spectrum - some lucky ones far to the right, others not. One can move up the spectrum, but not everyone ends up crowded to the right - we can easily imagine two people, one in left 2nd std dev, one in the right. THey both get happier as they get older, but the person on the far left of the bell curve just never gets to be as happy as the other was in their twenties.

I colloquially would say one is a happy person. The other not.

I have a similar idea.

I'm totally tired of seeing people getting rich, so they can humiliate others from the top of their wrongly concepted superiority. They came, see and conquer for the very sake of saying they did. And they don't stop. They suck every working class neck dry so they can feel more powerful in society, like they are super humans for what they've accomplished.

But feeling powerful, in this case, is a social concept. And as a social concept it needs a society to exist. Like sound needs matter. And so, this people only feel this way for wasting thousands of lives, because the lives they waste are feeding their ego! Media is aways talking about this kinds, because its what we all want to hear. We all purse professional success and money to be looked upon, to be served, to have whats exclusive. We feed it.

What's worse of it all is that we teach this behavior to our kids, by giving them fancy stuff. We forge the pointless consumerist concepts of superiority into their heads and towards their very character, as our father did to us. And thats why we just can't be free of the thoughts of having. Because it's printed to our very psychological ids.

I also want to get rich. And I also have a plan for future generations. I want to have the time to create a new concept of education from scratch, based not on competition, individualism and fear like the one we have today, built over a mass production platform, teachers that only teach for a living, ranking grades that only tell that you have better memory, or that you cheat better, that carves into students heads that their dreams are impossible to achieve, that they must work 70 hours a week, obey the rules and be a law abiding mediocre form of life whose only legacy will be their obituary expenses; but based on cooperation and curiosity, printing into the young ones heads better values, like teamwork, self development, sharing, humility, honor.

I want them to know that they can do everything they imagine, I want them to know that nothing is impossible and that they have every requirement to achieve all of their dreams. But they must know also that they must work together and that they must work for , not the self, not society, but for humanity, and that's where they'll find their pleasure to feed the hedonism. I don't want people to keep away from pleasure. I just want to redirect it to something more constructive than consumerism, power, individualism. And if I can teach this to a few ones, they will multiply over generations and gradually take the world.

I may sound religious but i don't consider myself not even agnostic. The only thing I believe is humanity. And for 24 years I've seen it's darkest side ruling over the world. But I know that in every sucked out neck there's hope and good will to change our situation. In every new brain there's another chance to build good character to multiply the idea. I have no kids yet, and I don't know if I want a child of mine living in this horrible world we live in. But if you do, rethink the values you want your child's character to be built upon. He/She will feed the status quo, or help change it.

As long as we, the voiceless millions, compete against each other, we will be weak. Competition divides. Division makes us smaller. We must cooperate. Human cooperation is not linear, it's a geometric progression. Apart we are lots of ones. Together we are millions. Together we can change.

My experience is a bit different. After working as a software engineer and suddenly (yes, it was sudden) realizing that I could afford most of the things I had ever wanted, I just didn't want them any more.

I don't find that I want more expensive things, instead I just lost interest in most material objects. Being able to lend/give (I never expected the loan would be repaid) a friend of a friend $3,000 to avoid foreclosure gave me infinitely more satisfaction than anything I could have spent that money on.

Even now, years later, it still amazes me that I simply don't want stuff I don't need. Well, for the most part, anyway :-)

Rich in hairballs, yes.

Like Warren Buffet's house.