Sure, but I think we should be wary of thinking that things people choose aren’t on some deep level what they want. It’s a small but useful amount of information.
Well, I’m personally a bit sceptical of that, due to the fact that many things influence what we choose or not. We’re not that good at predicting what will make us happier, and a large amount of what people choose derives from several influences like marketing.
To take the Ferrari example—the marketing team at Ferrari has been very good at making this kind of car desirable, by associating it with status. But status is relative—in a world with no Ferrari we’d use other symbols (and we did). Marketing is pretty strong when it comes manipulation.
The fact that chasing one’s desires (or, more exactly, craving), does not contribute to happiness has been documented in many spiritualities, and I think this still applies today. I recommend this text : https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/art
(of course, this does not apply to basic stuff like eating, sleeping, etc.)
I don’t want to detail, but I have one example in mind : one survey looked at lottery winners (who presumably wanted to win it), and it turns out that one year later, they were less happy than before, on average. This is because they got used to their wealth, but the quality of their relationships with others (friends, family) declined, as people around them started seeing them differently.
Some people in this comment thread are repeatedly making the mistake of talking about the increase in satisfaction due to increased wealth of already-wealthy/developed-country-people. Increases in satisfaction related to increases in income only start to plateau around the $80k per year mark.
https://images.app.goo.gl/7jDJFqbj3Eq1ePeY7
The per capita global income is around $10,000. Most people in the world would be significantly more satisfied with 2x, or even 7x, their current income.
Sure, but I think we should be wary of thinking that things people choose aren’t on some deep level what they want. It’s a small but useful amount of information.
Well, I’m personally a bit sceptical of that, due to the fact that many things influence what we choose or not. We’re not that good at predicting what will make us happier, and a large amount of what people choose derives from several influences like marketing.
To take the Ferrari example—the marketing team at Ferrari has been very good at making this kind of car desirable, by associating it with status. But status is relative—in a world with no Ferrari we’d use other symbols (and we did). Marketing is pretty strong when it comes manipulation.
The fact that chasing one’s desires (or, more exactly, craving), does not contribute to happiness has been documented in many spiritualities, and I think this still applies today. I recommend this text : https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/art
(of course, this does not apply to basic stuff like eating, sleeping, etc.)
I don’t want to detail, but I have one example in mind : one survey looked at lottery winners (who presumably wanted to win it), and it turns out that one year later, they were less happy than before, on average. This is because they got used to their wealth, but the quality of their relationships with others (friends, family) declined, as people around them started seeing them differently.
Some people in this comment thread are repeatedly making the mistake of talking about the increase in satisfaction due to increased wealth of already-wealthy/developed-country-people. Increases in satisfaction related to increases in income only start to plateau around the $80k per year mark. https://images.app.goo.gl/7jDJFqbj3Eq1ePeY7
The per capita global income is around $10,000. Most people in the world would be significantly more satisfied with 2x, or even 7x, their current income.