Having things makes you happy.
And people believe it.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Pulling the Wool.
When I was walking through the shopping mall the other day I saw an advertising poster showing a young woman looking so joyful because she’d just acquired the latest mobile phone. I hate that sort of thing because, whatever the arguments for and against running a society on free market principles, one of the things I find most disturbing about it is that it shamelessly peddles the Great Lie:
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4 comments:
It depends.
If you're poor, then a salary increase of, say, $1000 will make you much happier, (I assume because you get to buy more stuff to make yourself comfortable). But when you're rich, it doesn't matter, because you have those comforts already. So yes, buying stuff can make you happy, but that doesn't mean it takes the place of more important things like love and friendship.
I think the salient point here, Maria, is that advertising isn't generally aimed at the very poor or very rich. It's aimed at the middle ground. And I can truthfully say that most of the happiest people I've known have been poor. True happiness is a state of mind that comes from some inner quality, and has nothing to do with wealth or posessions. The advertising industry, however, tries to persuade people that it does. They call it 'driving the economy.'
Haha, well in a way it does drive the economy. After all, if people were happy with what they had all those companies would not have jobs.
What is happiness?
This could get complicated, but let's take my grandmother as an example. She was typical of her generation and hundreds of generations before her.
She had the merest basics - food, clothes, a simple home, and fuel to keep warm in the winter. She expected nothing more and she was happy. Happiness, I would say, is being content with who you are and what you've got. There was relatively little advertising in those days because there was hardly anything to advertise. Ergo, people weren't stressed out wanting things and getting into debt. Once you get beyond the subsistence level, having things is only associated with happiness if people are conditioned to want things.
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