aka007 's List: Wealth - route to Happiness

• Charity is his supreme refuge.
• Control of mind keeps away a man from sorrow.
• abandoning anger
• abandoning greed a man becomes joyous
• abandoning lust he becomes wealthy
• not burdened by debts
• A man who remains 'even' in every situations i.e. fortune, misfortune, joys-sorrows, past, future, is the wealthiest man.

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• can act with confidence

  • Who is happy?
• Absolute and dispassionate awareness of reality

  • How to maintain confidence?

• HAPPINESS IS THE RESULT OF GOOD CONDUCT

• “Who’s happier? The uniters or the dividers? The builders or the breakers? The givers or the takers?” he asks. “I think you know the answer,” he adds.

  • Bill Clinton asks a rhetorical question, that is, whether the the builders or the breakers are happier?

• The underlying message is that the country should not sacrifice elements important for people's happiness to gain material development.

  • Are the criteria for GNH evaluated by the people? How are they matched with general opinion?

• • Greed when renounced makes one happy.
    Renunciation of desire brings wealth.
• One who cooks his own food (is not dependant on anyone),  is not a debtor (does not spend more than he can afford), does not  have to leave home to make in order to earn his livelihood (does not  over endeavor for material things) is truly happy.

  • - Good conduct
    - avoiding avarice
    - One who makes his own food, has no debts, does not have to leave home to make to earn his livelihood.

• spend

  • How do they spend it? Affected by culture?
• "conspicuous consumption goods."

  • Which goods are conspicuous?
• as houses grow in size, the average length of commuting time to work too grows.
• extra time spent driving

  • The key is in being productive and making life less stressful = self-knowledge

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• $15,000 per capita
• higher hurdle
• asked

  • How do we ask the people? How do we measure their answers?
• polluting
• brain-

   

  imaging studies

  • Wow! How does that work and how reliable is it?
• social

   

  arrangements that exacerbate the

   

  salience of status.
• when people have

   

  got richer

  • If an individual gets richer, he should be happier in both places. Does he not?
• compare our

   

  income and living standards with

   

  others.

  • So is that because competition has decreased? Perhaps the rewards for work should be higher? Do we always need to compare to be happier?
• self-defeating
• habituation
• equity ar-

   

  gument

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• “Happiness is relative,” Mr Vardi warns. “The more successful the high-tech  sector, the more frustrated and unhappy the rest of society could become.”

  • Happiness is relative - But isn't the same true for rich people? What kind of balance should there be?

• economic  freedom and high average incomes

  • So higher average incomes are important. What is the evidence?

• But no one stops earning money or striving for more money after they reach $50,000.”

  • But why?

• the remembering self

  • vs the experiencing self
• meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end)

  • Certainly, money increases personal strengths. It also must be the art of using that money that brings happiness.

• whether it's the God part or the community

  • Maybe, it's like the pursuit of any knowledge where there is a strong sense of community.
• "It is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social support in order to be happy."

  • As hypothesized, social skills and interpersonal ties are vital.

• said the monks use a larger portion of their brains when they meditate

  • That does say something about their control of their brain. But as we see, you could use the brain on te same scale by any other activity such as playing the piano.