“Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.” ~ Epicurus
February 19, 2009 by alienated
Trying to keep up with Joneses? Why is having “enough” never quite enough for those of us living in the “rat race” of urban ideals? In an interesting new study of how money motivates, brought to us by the University of Bonn, researchers discovered that humans don’t just want “more”—we want more in comparison to others. This relative sense of “more” appears to play a much larger role in motivation that previously suspected.
…. While it is nice to “feel less alone”—to know that everyone else on the planet is crazy too—wouldn’t it feel nicer to avoid fruitless comparisons in the first place? The paradox of living our lives in relation others, is that there will always be someone who has some form of “more”. We may “score” a fleeting feeling of pleasure when we compare favorably, but it’s quickly deflated when we inevitably compare unfavorably in another measure.
Frittering away our lives in this futile effort to have (or at least appear to have) more than others, may well be one of the greatest indications of human irrationality ever known. At the very least, it is a pastime that robs one of the joy of living in the present, full of gratitude for the abundance we have in relation to no one.
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