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Tag Archives: wealth

Assume that Fortune Carries You

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by jrbenjamin in Philosophy

≈ Comments Off on Assume that Fortune Carries You

Tags

Epicurus, happiness, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Philosophy, Seneca, wealth

“There is also a saying from Epicurus: ‘If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.’

Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon, riches. Add statues, paintings, and whatever any artist has devised for the luxury; you will only learn from such things to crave still greater.

Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are traveling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless. Recall your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you would know whether that which you seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point. If you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to nature.”

__________

A section from the 16th of Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius. Buy the book, but you can also read the letters on WikiCommons.

More stuff on this topic:

  • Julian Barnes asks, “it all adds up to happiness, doesn’t it?”
  • Mitt Romney: what matters most to me in life
  • John Updike talks about his conversion

Photo credit: The Book of Life

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Jerzy Kosiński on How Aging Shapes One’s Outlook on the World

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Philosophy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aging, Experience, Gail Sheehy, General Philosophy, happiness, interview, Jerzy Kosiński, joy, Psychology Today, Sentimentality, wealth, Wisdom, Worldview

Jerzy Kosiński

Interviewer: You have looked at the world from both ends of its ideologies — Soviet totalitarianism and American capitalism. Also from both ends of the class ladder. When you first arrived in this country, with no English, you were scraping ships, cleaning bars, parking cars, chauffeuring in Harlem. You were a truck driver and lived in the YMCA. By 1962, in four short years, you became a known author, you met and married a woman who was one of the largest taxpayers in the United States… At which end of your experience of fear or freedom, rich or poor, did you find the greatest sense of being alive?

Jerzy Kosiński: At both ends – and in between. As I have no habits that require maintaining – I don’t even have a favorite menu – the only way for me to live was always to be as close to other people as life allowed. Not much else stimulates me. I have no other passions, no other joys, no other obsessions. The only moment when I feel truly alive is when, in a relationship with other people, I discover how much in common we all share with each other. Money and possessions – I care little for the first, hardly for the second – were never necessary to experience life as I live it. As greatly as my wife, her wealth, and our marriage contributed to my knowledge of myself, of America, and of the world, they contributed just so much – no more, no less – as all other moments have contributed to my curiosity about myself, others, society, art – and to my sense of being alive.

Of course I’ve always known moments of loneliness when I felt abandoned, rejected, unhappy – but in such moments, I also felt alive enough to ponder my own state of mind, my own life, always aware that at any moment this precious gift of awareness of the self might be taken away from me. That state of awareness has always been, to me, less a possession than a mortgage, easily terminable.

Interviewer: Do you find you are becoming less dispassionate as you grow older?

Jerzy Kosiński: More compassionate, more attentive to the voice of life and more forgiving of its various failures, in myself as well as in others, but also more critical of a society so cruel to the old, sick, infirm. And I begin to perceive certain periods of my past, like certain skiing tricks I used to perform, as not available to be reproduced by me anymore. From now on, they will reside in me only as memory – and as a play of my imagination. Nostalgia and sentimentality – this is new.

Interviewer: Sentimentality?

Jerzy Kosiński: Yes. Once, I considered it merely a mood undefined. To be sentimental was not to be clear about oneself or others. Now I feel it as a minor but necessary shade, a mixture of regret and of desire.

__________

From Gail Sheehy’s illuminating 1977 interview with Polish-American novelist Jerzy Kosiński.

This piece was originally published in Psychology Today with the heading, “The Psychological Novelist as Portable Man,” a hysterically pretentious title that mischaracterizes what is otherwise a candid and illuminating piece. It’s certainly worth a read, and can be found alongside other insightful discussions in Tom Teicholz’s 1993 collection Conversations with Jerzy Kosiński.

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Being Friends with Socrates

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Philosophy

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Amy Bonnette, Cornell West, friendship, General Philosophy, Jesus, Jesus Christ, knowledge, Memorabilia, reading, Socrates, understanding, wealth, Wisdom, Writing, Xenophon

Socrates

“Antiphon once said to Socrates in a conversation: ‘Socrates, I, for my part, hold that you are just, but not in any way wise. And in my opinion you even recognize this yourself. At any rate, you demand no money in exchange for associating with you. And yet if you thought that your cloak or your house or any other of your possessions were worth money, you would not only not give it to anyone for free, but you wouldn’t even take less for it than it is worth.

‘Surely it is clear that if you thought as well that associating with you were worth anything, you would exact no less money for this too than it is worth. Just, then, you may be, in that you do not deceive on account of greed, but not wise, since what you understand is worthless.’

And Socrates replied to this: ‘Antiphon, among us it is held that youthful bloom and wisdom are nobly bestowed, or shamefully bestowed, in like fashion. For if someone wishes to sell his youthful bloom for money to whoever wishes it, they call him a prostitute; but if someone makes a friend of one whom he recognizes to be a lover who is both noble and good, we hold that he is moderate. Similarly, those also who sell wisdom for money to whoever wishes it they call sophists just as it they were prostitutes; but we hold that whoever makes a friend by teaching whatever good he possesses to someone he recognizes as having a good nature – this one does what benefits a gentlemanly (noble and good) citizen.

Accordingly, Antiphon, just as another is pleased by a good horse or a dog or a bird, so I myself am even more pleased by good friends, and if I possess something good I teach it, and I introduce them to others from whom, I believe, they will receive some benefit with a view to virtue. And reading collectively with my friends, I go through the treasures of the wise men of old which they wrote and left behind in their books; and if we see something good, we pick it out; and we hold that it is a great gain if we become friends with one another.’

When I heard these things, I formed the opinion that Socrates himself was blessed and that he led those who heard him to nobility and goodness.

And again Antiphon once questioned him about how he could believe that he made others fit for political affairs, since he himself did not engage in political affairs. Socrates said, ‘In which case, Antiphon, would I more engage in political affairs, if I engaged in them by myself, or if I should attend to there being as many as possible competent to engage in them?’”

__________

From Book I, Chapter VI of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (Amy Bonnette’s translation).

Like Jesus of Nazareth, Socrates never wrote a book. We know his words through the conversations and monologues that his acolytes recorded.

Cornell West was once asked what question of history most sparked his imagination. His answer: “I sometimes wonder why Jesus never laughed and Socrates never cried.”

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It Has to Be Earned: Arthur Brooks on Creating Value

25 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Freedom, Interview, Politics

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

AEI, American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks, charity, economics, economy, free enterprise, Government, happiness, Marvin Olasky, politics, wealth

Arthur Brooks“Financial status is the way we demonstrate to others (and ourselves) that we are successful—hence the fancy watches, the expensive cars, and the bespoke suits. We use these things to show other people not just that we are prosperous, but that we are prosperous because we create value.

There is nothing strange about measuring our success with money; we measure things indirectly all the time. I require my students to take exams not because I believe their scores have any inherent value, but because I know these scores correlate extremely well with how much they have studied and how well they understand the material. Your doctor draws your blood to check your cholesterol not because blood cholesterol is interesting in and of itself, but because it measures your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. In the same way, we measure our professional success with green pieces of paper called ‘dollars.’

What scholars often portray as an ignoble tendency—wanting to have more than others—is often evidence that we are driven to create value. Wanting to create value is a virtue, not a vice. The fact that it also brings us happiness is a tremendous blessing.

Have you ever wondered why rich entrepreneurs continue to work so hard? Perhaps you’ve said, ‘If I had a billion dollars, I’d retire.’ This is what Mack Metcalf [a forklift driver who won a $65 million Powerball Jackpot, and died 4 years later from cirrhosis of the liver] actually did when he won the lottery. But if he had earned that money doing something creative and productive, things would almost certainly have gone differently for him. People who succeed at what they do tend to keep doing it. The drive to succeed, as opposed to just having more money than others, explains why the super-rich—who already have so much more than virtually everybody—continue to work.

Take the case of billionaire Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle. The world’s 14th-richest man, he would need to spend more than $30 million per week, or $183,000 per hour, just to avoid increasing his wealth. Further, he would have to spend it on items with no investment qualities, meaning that, unless he sets his money on fire, or (better yet) gives it away, he simple cannot not be filthy rich. Yet he continues to slave away, earning billion after billion. Being rich, and having more than the average Joe, simply cannot be driving Larry Ellison. It is the will to succeed and create value at greater and greater heights.

Who enjoys the benefits created from the slaving of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and all of America’s other success-addicted, ultra-rich entrepreneurs? We all do: As long as fortunes are earned—as opposed to stolen, squeezed from governments, or otherwise extorted from citizens—this is good for all of us.

Oracle has not made Larry Ellison a rich man without any benefit to society. The firm currently has tens of thousands of employees, people with well-paying jobs to support their families. The company has introduced technology that has benefited all parts of the economy, and it has paid billions to its shareholders. And we can’t forget that Oracle has rendered generously unto Caesar, year after year: In 2007 alone, it paid $1.2 billion in corporate taxes, totally apart from the personal taxes paid by Ellison and his employees.

Money is a measure of success, and a handy one at that. But there is a dark side to this fact: People tend to forget that money is only a measure. Some people focus on money for its own sake, forgetting what really brings the happiness…

In 1978, for example, researchers presented a sample of adults with a list of 24 big-ticket consumer items (a car, a house, international travel, a swimming pool, and so on). They were asked how many of these items they currently possessed; they were also asked, ‘When you think of the good life—the life you’d like to have—which of the things on this list, if any, are part of the good life as far as you are personally concerned?’

Inevitably, people felt that the ‘good life’ required more things than they currently possessed. Among the people between 30 and 44 years old, the average number of items owned was 2.5, while the ideal number was 4.3. The same people were interviewed 16 years later, in 1994, and presented with the same list. Naturally, most people had more items; the ones formerly in their 30s and early 40s (now in the next age category, 45 to 59 years old) had 3.2 items, on average. They were closer to the good life, right? Wrong. Their requirements for the good life had now shifted, to 5.4 items. In other words, after 16 years and lots of work, the ‘good life’ deficit had stayed almost exactly the same. The more stuff you have, the more you want.”

__________

From Arthur Brooks’s article Can Money Buy Happiness?.

Tomorrow is my last day working at the American Enterprise Institute, of which Arthur Brooks is the current president.

Following his graduation from high school and a brief stint at the Annapolis Brass Quintet in Baltimore, Brooks moved by himself to Spain to become the principal French hornist of the City Orchestra of Barcelona. While eating lunch in the AEI dining room the other day, I overheard Brooks recount this personal story too improbable for any novel, which he capped off by saying he was leaving the table to head to catch a flight — to western India to meet with the Dalai Lama. Needless to say, he’s a pretty compelling case.

Below is an excerpt from Marvin Olasky’s recent interview with Arthur Brooks:

How many French hornists have become presidents of the American Enterprise Institute? One.

What are the similarities between playing the French horn and being president of AEI? Creativity… the working out of ideas that are of interest to other people… and the privilege of having audiences enjoy your work. The only barriers in front of you are those put in place by your own imagination.

Why did you decide to move from a prestigious orchestra position to academic work? Things were going well … and I wasn’t happy. What I wanted to be was an economist. I wanted to do that analysis of how the gears turn in society. I hadn’t even gone to college, so at 28 I had to go to college and get a graduate degree.

When you told your dad about your new plan, what did he say? I said, “Dad, I want to become an economist.” After a silence he said, “Why would you want to do that? You’re at the top of your career.” I said, “Because I’m not happy.” He said, “What makes you so special?”

A Harvard economist once told me he did not plan to have any children because he figured that every child would cost him a book, and he wanted to publish books rather than have children. You have three children, and you’ve published lots of books. Does having children inspire you to publish more? I do believe the world will benefit more from my children than it will from my books, but there is a connection. My wife and I had had our two sons biologically. I was writing this book about charity and finding that when people give to charities their lives improve dramatically. I wrote a chapter on it, and everything I write my wife Esther reads.

That’s wise. For sure. She’s spiked a lot of my stuff. Susan probably spikes your stuff too sometimes, right?

Yeah. A couple times that she hasn’t I wish she had. Exactly. So I brought home this chapter that shows charitable actions make you happy and healthy. Esther ruminated on it for a while, then said, ‘We ought to use the information in this book to change our lives a little bit. I think we should give more.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll write a check.’ And she said, ‘I think we should adopt a baby.’ I said, ‘It’s only a book!’ Then of course I had no argument, so we did. We adopted our daughter from China. She’s now 8 years old.

Two questions: First, how should we define fairness? Seventy percent of Americans believe that true fairness means rewarding merit and creating an opportunity society, which is exactly what the free enterprise system is designed to do. The fairest system is one in which people have an opportunity to rise. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a safety net, but a safety net is not middle-class welfare. It’s not spreading the wealth and getting rid of risk: It’s simply making sure that people don’t have the most abysmal poverty and starve.

Second question: “Earned success” is a key concept in your book. What does that mean? Earned success is the idea that you’re creating value with your life and value in the lives of other people. It’s not money per se: It’s the value you create with your life. You can denominate it with souls saved, or neighborhoods that are habitable, or clean drinking water in Africa, or lots of money, or beautiful works of art, or having children who are honest and have good values, or whatever. People who say they’ve earned their success are the happiest people. It has to be earned. 

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The World Is Getting Less Innocent

26 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview, Literature

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

consumerism, excess, Experience, Germaine Greer, innocence, Martin Amis, Money, Money: A Suicide Note, the world, wealth

Martin Amis

“I, in common with many writers, feel that there’s a great convulsion of stupidity happening in the world. Mostly to do with television. People know a little about a lot, and put very little effort into accumulating knowledge and culture, and when they do, it’s almost like a sort of consumerism of culture…

But with regard to feeling disgust, I think every writer — even the blackest writer — actually loves it all. I suppose it is temperamental, but I don’t sit around feeling disgusted. I feel enthused.

Many of us think the world has reached its nadir, its low point. But in fact this era will be lamented, just like the last. That’s the paradox.

What you can say about the world is that, while it may not be getting any better, it’s getting infinitely less innocent all the time. It’s like, it has been to so many parties, been on so many dates, had so many fights, got its handbag stolen so many times. So the accumulation is what makes the world seem at its worst, always. Because it’s never been through as much as it’s been through today, the earth.”

__________

From an interview with Martin Amis in 1984, discussing his acclaimed novel about consumerism and excess, Money: A Suicide Note.

I’m glad to report that you, the consistent reader of this blog, most likely do not fall into that wide category of people who put minimal energy into absorbing culture and knowledge.

Watch the short discussion with Amis below:

Read previously posted excerpts from Money here:

Martin Amis

There’s Only One Way to Get Good at Fighting

New York

In L.A.

Thailand Plane

That Head-on-Heart Stuff

Young Martin Amis

Can You Remember Where You Left Those Keys?

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