Happiness imagined as a resource

We've all heard the mantra, You can't buy happiness. This is a well accepted phrase that people have just kind of gotten used to hearing. But what does it mean, really? The phrase itself is just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger concept that I don't think many people have explored.

You can't buy happiness. So what we're saying here is, that we have one resource. Money. When we obtain money, we expect that money to be attached to another resource - happiness. When one goes up, the other will go up. The phrase is breaking the assumption that the two resources are tied together, so that when one goes up - money - happiness will actually stay precisely the same, as the two aren't tied in any way. 99% of the time, the phrase is associated with how much people EARN: you EARN more money, you EARN happiness, and people use the phrase as a way of explaining that getting a good job and earning a money isn't at all connected to "earning" happiness. So people know that how much money you have isn't linked to their levels of happiness. But we can look at the phrase another way, and perhaps one that's closer to it's literal meaning. We still live in a deeply consumerist culture where people think that if they SPEND that money, they can BUY happiness. This idea is still rooted in the same concept, yet it is one less explored.

So if you're not buying happiness, what are you buying? All you're doing is buying that material object. No matter how much you spend, money can only buy you material things. How much joy and happiness you get from that, depends solely on yourself. Buying an expensive drink at a club isn't going to increase your levels of happiness. It's only going to increase the amount of expensive drinks at a club you have. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go out and buy expensive drinks at clubs. I'm saying that the amount of happiness you get from that is the amount of happiness you give it. You could be in blissful happiness from a glass of milk... if you love milk, and be non-the-happier after a £400 bottle of champers if that 'ain't your thing.

So what are some more implications of this concept? All of a sudden, a lot of things look more cheap again. Perhaps you don't have a sudden desire to go out and buy those shoes you wanted. You can start to re-evaluate what makes you happy, and you might realise that what makes you most happy is completely untied to the resource of money. Going for bike rides in the park suddenly become a much more "valuable" prospect again. I think people feel this unconscious pressure in a consumerist society of that if they're not spending money, they won't be able to be happy. Don't look at a price tag and think "it's more expensive therefore it'll be better and give me more happiness". The price tag is associated with the material value of the product. You need to evaluate the intrinsic value of the product, how much it'll make you happy, whenever you buy something. This model also reminds you that happiness, unlike money, is an infinite resource. There is no limit to how happy you can be, and when you give your happiness, your enjoyment, you don't lose it!

We can go even further with this idea and see how far we can generalise into every day life. If money isn't going to buy you happiness, what else might not buy you happiness? What two resources aren't explicitly tied? The biggest culprits of making resources look like they're (falsely) joined together are the marketers. How many times have you heard "get a 6 pack, get the women!!". No. You obtain a 6-pack, you get a 6-pack. You don't get women. The 6-pack might be a tool where now women find you a bit more attractive & you've gotten rid of a "barrier to entry", but when you work to "buy" a 6-pack, that's all you get. Marketers tend to join two resources up so that it incentivizes you to buy what they're trying to sell. So next time you see two resources joined together to look like one affects the other with products, question it.