I spend a fair amount of time thinking about money and my ideas about the subject have changed over time. Money, in my view, is not the key to happiness – but being overwhelmed by money (or by the lack of it) can definately be a key to unhappiness.
In terms of importance money is like oxygen: having loads of it won’t necessarily make you happier, but if you don’t have enough it’s awful hard to think about anything else.
The idea of hedonism, in the colloquial sense, is often associated with visions of vice and amoral excess. Even the term Epicurean carries this connotation, even though Epicurus, the philosopher for whom the term is named viewed pleasure primarily as the absence of suffering. So in the classical sense the idea of hedonism actually had an air of responsiblity to it. Meaning: fun times today leads to less fun stuff tomorrow – be it loads of credit card debt, a root canal, an unexpected pregnancy, acid indigestion, or that extra twenty pounds that’s magically appeared around your hips.
A couple of things brought these thoughts to mind today. First, I’m reading Milan Kundera’s excellent short novel Slowness, which talks about the topic. And second: I just ran across this excellent photo essay about money at SavingAdvice.com. I found it insightful and occasionally funny.
Related Link:
