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How materialism makes us sad

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Materialism vs. Wealth (Score: 2, Informative)

by renevith@pipedot.org on 2014-05-08 17:39 (#1G7)

Interesting that the title does not suggest that the rich are sad, but rather that the materialistic (selfish?) are sad. The book review spends a lot of time trying to equate the two, but without reading the book itself I'm not sure how "materialistic" was defined and whether the book makes the same conflation. While it's tempting so think the rich are unhappy, it seems it's not actually true: richer countries are happier, and richer people within each country are happier.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/money-buys-happiness-and-you-can-never-have-too-much-new-research-says/275380/

(Whether this reflects causation or not is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Re: Materialism vs. Wealth (Score: 2, Interesting)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-12 15:18 (#1HA)

Logically, wealth is an expression of your current belongings. Materialism is a philosophy or at least an approach, and it's based on wanting more things. By wanting you are implicitly starting from a point of dissatisfaction, and if that's how you spend every day, you are living a dissatisfied life.

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2014-05-12 21:42 Interesting +1 rocks@pipedot.org

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