Is Enough Enough, or Is It Too Much?

“Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.”

--Aristotle, in “Politics”

There is a grand irony in using a quote from Aristotle to begin this particular diatribe, since there is an almost limitless supply of other ancient Greeks from whom to pluck the fruits of philosophy regarding happiness and the (relative) unimportance of material wealth.  Aristotle, you see, was the ultimate pragmatist.  In contrast to Diogenes, perhaps the perfect exemplar of self-satisfaction, Aristotle was (in large measure) all about “how can we Greeks get more (at the expense of everyone else)” – and yet, he managed, in this one sentence in his “Politics” which was a precursor to Machiavelli’s “Prince” as a foundation stone for Gordon Gecko’s “greed” speech, to contradict all the cynical materialism found in the rest of his works.

There is a long standing tradition among humans to think that progress can be measured by the acquisition of more stuff.  This dates to the Olduvai Gorge in modern Tanzania, when (millions of years ago) our ancestors were concerned mostly with defending those territorial sweet-spots where there were sufficient supplies of food and materials for crude weapons with which to defend oneself and one’s tribe from incursions by saber-toothed tigers, other hominids, and the occasional pissed-off rhinoceros.

That instinct, in that particular iteration of our species, was perfectly understandable.  However, we now have only one natural predator – ourselves.  And “more stuff” isn’t a deterrent to other humans, it is an invitation.  You want to steal our DVD player?  Well, we don’t want you to do so, but we’re not particularly interested in defending it with our lives, either.  We can always entertain ourselves with shadow puppets, but we cannot replace even one second of happiness by risking our lives and increasing our fear, paranoia, and vigilance, all in defense of “stuff”.

As it turns out, while we at Big Myrtle’s place are often at odds with our fellow Americans over the issue of “exactly how much stuff is enough,” we are somewhat more in tune with the standards most of the rest of the world are attempting to follow.  Numerous international organizations make rankings of “happiest” or “most livable” or “most satisfied” cities/countries/etc. and, while the U.S. is not absent from the top half of most of these lists… it is hardly ever in the top quartile.

There is a reason for that.  In most American versions of “best place to live” economic opportunity and chances for advancement/wealth rank high in our lists of desirable characteristics of a community in which to live.  Most other countries and cultures, however, do not place nearly so much emphasis on wealth creation. 

For example, since 2006 the lifestyle magazine Monacle has published an annual list called “The Most Livable Cities Index” featuring 25 top locations for quality of life, using criteria such as safety/crime, international quality of architecture, public transportation, ethnic/religious/cultural tolerance, environmental health and access to nature, urban design, business conditions, proactive policy development, and medical care.  Portland, Oregon is the only U.S. city to consistently make this list, cropping up around number 23 on an annual basis.

Portland, Oregon... the one U.S. city that doesn't make
the rest of the world queasy. 

For the sake of fairness, the Mercer “Quality of Living Survey” is produced by an American (with global contracts) human resources and financial services consulting firm, which compares 221 cities based on 39 criteria.  The baseline “100” score is New York City (because, hey, they are an American firm, and there is no more American city).  All other cities are assigned scores as they compare to New York.  The Top 10 in the Mercer Index for 2014?

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Zürich, Switzerland
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Munich, Germany
5. Vancouver, Canada
6. Düsseldorf, Germany
7. Frankfort, Germany
8. Geneva, Switzerland
9. Copenhagen, Denmark
10. Bern, Switzerland

There are a number of things that these “most livable” cities have that are missing from practically every American city.  Universal health care is one obvious example – opponents of “Obamacare” all screamed about how awful socialized medicine is, but… the fact is, hardly anyone in the world envies the American health care system.  In the developing world, maybe, but… in the industrialized West?  Nothing but crickets.  Hardly anyone in Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, etc. ad nauseum, would prefer American health care to what they have now.  As far as they are concerned, Obamacare is a pathetic attempt on the part of the Americans to move towards a “real” (i.e. single-payer) health care system.

Among the myriad other differences, though (and stepping aside from the politically charged issue of health care which Americans are seemingly incapable of discussing as a purely mathematical and economic issue, resorting instead to the paranoid fundamentalism of American-style-“let’s all get screwed by the rich”-capitalism), is the concept of “satisfaction” as an economic principle.

Essentially, there is very little in the American ethos which tells us as part of our foundational mythology when “enough is enough” – in fact, the very phrase is a cry to revolution, instead of a simple statement that we need to step back from the feeding trough.  For an American, “enough is enough” means the tyrants have finally gone too far, and by God we’re going to holy war over the installation of that stop sign/the issuance of a school bond/the ability of our lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgendered-nonidentifying neighbors to love one another/the lack of an alien-defense-system-alarm…  “Enough is enough” is usually expressed in American English as an epithet.

In contrast, the Swedish “lagom” is essentially a statement that “that’ll do” – It’s not merely “good enough” it’s “any more would be too much; yes, I see why you want that 3^rd piece of cake/next drink/extra million dollars, but isn’t that bad for your health?”

And they are right.  It IS bad for your health.  American obesity rates are climbing through the roof compared to every country on Earth; longevity comparisons, long buoyed by comparative wealth and access to technology, are actually shrinking for Americans, even as health and longevity in other countries (especially in Europe) continues to increase apace.  Clearly, there is no connection between “wealth” and “happiness” – though, as we shall see, there is a connection between enough and happiness.

The top 25 countries on the 2013 World Happiness Report published by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network are as follows:

Country	Happiness Rank
Denmark	1
Norway	2
Switzerland	3
Netherlands	4
Sweden	5
Canada	6
Finland	7
Austria	8
Iceland	9
Australia	10
Israel	11
Costa Rica	12
New Zealand	13
United Arab Emirates	14
Panama	15
Mexico	16
United States	17
Ireland	18
Luxembourg	19
Venezuela	20
Belgium	21
United Kingdom	22
Oman	23
Brazil	24
France	25

There is an “Economic Freedom” index put out by several institutions from the Austrian school of economics which more or less parallels the American Conservative movement as funded by the Koch brothers and exemplified by Senator Rand Paul – Not all of the countries in the Top 25 for happiness are listed in their top 50 rankings (Costa Rica, the UAE, Venezuela, Belgium and Oman apparently not being worthy of notice), but a comparison of the lists is interesting.  For the top 10 happiest countries, the average ranking by libertarian economists is 20.1; not a one-to-one relationship… but not inconsequential, either.

However… none of the top three “free” economies make the top 50 in the list of “happiest” either.  Hong Kong, Singapore, and New Zealand are 1,2, and 3 for the free market purists of the world, and they provide less satisfaction than the vast majority of their international contemporaries.

There is a bias in many circles (including, if we are honest, Big Myrtle’s place, where we found this next data point a little surprising and not a little disappointing) to educational performance being linked to happiness – the data says it just ain’t so.  Based on UN “Student Performance Ranking” data, for the top 10 “Happy” countries, the average ranking in student performance is 14.  Closer as a ratio than “economic freedom” but still not exactly 1-to-1, and, more to the point, only Finland among the top 3 educational countries made the top 10 in happiness.  South Korea and China (numbers 1 and 3 respectively) do not make the top 50.  Smart don’t mean happy. 

It is worth noting, though, that for the top 25 Happy countries, while some are not listed on the Student Performance measures (Costa Rica, UAE, Venezuela, Belgium and Oman… what up, Belgium?  Too good for surveys?) those who are listed average 22^nd for educational performance.  It is obviously a better measure than that used for freedom to control capital, even if it is not precise.  Our faith in this measure is shaken, but not discarded – it is hard for us to believe that there is any happiness greater than that found in reading a good George Eliot or Jane Austen novel, save perhaps in watching a Pedro Almodovar movie, something the typical American (… or Singaporean, or Hong Kong resident, or Koch brother, etc. etc.) does not fully appreciate. 

For the overall economic numbers, rather than taking GDP as a total, or even per-capita GDP, Myrtle chooses to use the UN’s “Financial Development Index” which is more or less a measure of the ability to accumulate financial reserves (not just ownership of stocks/real estate/intellectual property/doo-dads and doohickeys, but ability to convert them to cash if need be).  For the UN’s top 10 “most financially developed” nations, numbers 1,4 and 7 (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan) fail to rank in the top 25 “happy” countries.  Which is interesting, when you think about what it means… basically, apart from a few outlier Asian nations that have whored themselves out to currency exchange markets for the glorification of national ego, the happiest countries are those in which it is easiest to get rid of your crap.  Those places where it is easiest to sell the stuff you don’t really need?  In general, those are the places where overall satisfaction is the highest.

This explains a phenomenon we have noticed on countless weekend excursions looking for castoff furniture, children’s clothing, etc.  The ubiquitous American tradition of the “garage sale” represents hope for the future of our culture, but it also illuminates our current folly.

All too often dumbed-down at present, it is nevertheless true that garage sales are the quintessence of a recycle/reuse/repurpose economy – stuff we don’t want, we sell at pennies on the dollar to anyone and everyone who might want it.  And, if you pay attention at these affairs, you realize that there are two classes of garage sale patrons – the happy ones, who may haggle for a dollar or two, but overall, are just happy to meet folk and oh-by-the-way every once in a while run across some item they may actually want… and then the folk (usually on the seller’s side) who are offended by the idea that they are not getting every last dollar out of a given transaction.  Rich people (let’s face it) are usually just plain assholes at garage sales, especially at their own.  We would love to be more polite, but there simply isn’t any other way to express it.

If your definition of happiness and satisfaction includes money, it is our sincere hope that you would stop and ask yourself… “Yes, but can I get by without this thing for which I am lusting?”  For those who truly need more money, there is no question that the answer will be an honest “no”… but for far too many, particularly in this country, that “no” is exceptionally dishonest.  C’mon… we know you can do better.  You can do better with less.

Happy farming!

Rewriting the Wealth of Nations, One Happy Person at a Time

Quod satis est cui contigit, nihil amplius optet.
(“Let him who has enough ask for nothing more.”)

-Horace

What do we really need?

Given that there are roughly 6 billion people on Earth, there are probably 18 billion different answers to this question.  But it is, we believe, a question that is not asked nearly often enough.  It is certainly not asked often enough in what so many radical activists in the developing world refer to as “the decadent West”.

 A little perspective might help to show the uncomfortable justice in this charge which so many of us find alien and a little off-putting:

There are approximately 300 million people living in the United States.  That means that roughly 1 in 20 folk in the entire world are Americans.  All but the poorest Americans are in the wealthiest 10% of people in the world.  The vast majority of Americans, in fact, are in the top 1%  of the world’s wealthy.  The poverty line in the United States for a family of four in 2012 was $23,492.  The median income across 131 countries in 2012 was $9733.  That means that poor Americans in 2012 earned almost 2 ½ times as much as the middle-of-the-road earner worldwide.

Almost half the world – over three billion people – survive on less than $2.50 a day.  The World Bank sets the global poverty line at less than $2.00 a day.  Median income in the U.S. in 2012 was $51,017, meaning that the typical family of four in the U.S. makes about $140 a day… 70 times as much as the global poverty standard.

What do all these statistics really mean, though?

The typical American philosophical response (leaving aside the cretins who simply don’t care about the fates of others) is to wonder what we can do to help raise others out of their poverty.  This is a natural response – how do we help them get what we have?  There are several different approaches within the framework of this basic understanding of “the problem”… ranging from wealth redistribution schemes on the socialist end of the spectrum to sending economic missionaries to teach classes on free enterprise on the libertarian/free market economics end of the spectrum.

We believe they have both misunderstood the problem.

Measuring wealth in terms of monetary income is natural; the meaningful unit of economic exchanges has always been money – in fact, reading, writing and arithmetic, the sine qua non of civilization, were largely invented in order to deal with the problem of measuring wealth in just such terms. 

However… measuring wealth in terms of money ignores the more fundamental reality that genuine wealth can only truly be understood in terms of contentment.  And while the two different ways of looking at economic prosperity (or lack thereof) often mirror one another… there is a point of diminishing returns on wealth, a point beyond which more money brings only unhappiness, discontent, and a spiritual cancer – frequently to others, but almost always to oneself.

There are obvious benefits to “having enough”:  adequate food, clothing and shelter formed the holy trinity of wealth for early humans on the plains of the Serengeti, whose chief concerns lay in getting enough to eat, staying out of the sun and rain, and keeping clear of saber-toothed tigers.  Many of the same concerns still abound today, added to a few others with a more modern feel – adequate drinking water, access to education for one’s children, good health care, sufficient law and order to protect whatever possessions one does have from the marauding of one’s fellow humans.

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow’s paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” laid out a hierarchy of needs which has been the roadmap for much of the discussion on contentment that has taken place ever since.  According to Maslow, human ambition climbs as each level of need is attained – once basic physical needs are met, one can focus on security; once security is obtained, one can seek emotional fulfillment, and so on.  His levels are as follows:

Level One	Physiological	Air, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion
Level Two	Safety	Security of body, of employment, of resources, of the family, of health, of property
Level Three	Love/Belonging	Friendship, family, sexual intimacy
Level Four	Esteem	Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others
Level Five	Self-actualization	Morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts

In context of a discussion of wealth, one thing becomes readily apparent almost immediately when attempting to apply the hierarchy to individual human economies – practically everyone everywhere will have a different way of meeting virtually everything on this list of needs.  At the very base of the hierarchy… it costs more money to get clean air, food, water, etc. in some places than others. 

A hermit on a hillside farm in Bhutan may have plenty of clean air to breathe, plenty of food and water… a single mother in Nairobi may have to wear a kerchief over her nose if smog descends, and she may need to boil her water to kill microbes, and unless she grows her own food in bags of soil hung from the balcony of her apartment building, or in an abandoned alleyway, she will have to buy what her family needs from a local market. 

And the market from which someone in Beijing buys produce may have a different nutritional value than the equivalent market in Darfur, or Sao Palo, or Quebec, or Los Angeles, or Quito.

We cannot even begin climbing the pyramid of needs, in other words, without encountering differences in economic status throughout the world’s populations.

That having been said… taking a deeper look at the hierarchy… no matter what the cost of each item may be, it is possible locally to meet that cost.  The question then becomes, once you’ve met your needs, now what?

It is helpful in answering that question to step back from whatever striving we may be doing in terms of seeking wealth to ask… what would we do with it if we had it?  A quick look around at the kinds of things the typical American family does with what they have (and often, with credit… or put another way, with money they don’t have…) shows that a lot of things we buy with our comparative wealth don’t appear on the hierarchy of needs anywhere.

Television?  Vacations?  Movies?  Electronic gadgets?  Fancy clothes?  Where exactly do all these things fit?

It turns out luxury is an attempt to satisfy unmet needs, too.  We seek the comfort of luxuries because they satisfy our desires for things we cannot directly purchase, and may otherwise feel powerless to acquire – how often, for example, do we spend money to participate in group events as a part of our attempts to find friendship?  At first, the mind rebels against this charge (and make no mistake, it is an accusation), but a simple thought experiment demonstrates the truth of this idea.

Imagine a parent playing happily with their child in the park.  Their child is laughing uproariously over some silly joke they have just told, and is enjoying the kind of frolic one associates with a happy-go-lucky kind of day being enjoyed by a happy-go-lucky family.  Would either the parent or the child want to trade that experience for a new pair of designer jeans?  Would they want to trade that experience for two hours at a movie theater watching a shoot-em-up?  Remember, you’re trading that experience.  Would you give up the good feelings associated with an interpersonal relationship (enjoyed for the staggering economic sum of zero dollars) for any amount of purchased goods or services?

Life is not always so simple as that, of course, but unless we stop to consider a cut-and-dried example, we may not fully appreciate the distinction between emotional satisfaction and the means by which emotional satisfaction is achieved.  And if we don’t see that distinction, we invariably seek the wrong things.

There have been innumerable movements with countless gurus preaching more or less the same thing we are discussing here; whether you call it “Simple Living”, or “Back to Basics” or “Satyagraha” or “The Franciscan Order” the benefits are palpable and real.  Satisfaction comes from gratefulness, and gratefulness is the beginning of not just the humility central to the spiritual teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and countless other gurus and rabbis, but also the beginning of emotional and physical health and well-being.

We have often noted that there is some selection bias involved in any nutritional study – those who eat truly healthy diets tend to live longer and have fewer health problems.  However… those who eat truly healthy diets tend to live more simply and intentionally, as well.  They frequently have more money than they need, not because they make so much money, but because they make so much more money than they have any desire to spend.

Much the same dynamic plays out on every other step of Maslow’s pyramid – once a person satisfies a need, if they are paying attention and being sensible, they find they need less than their fears foretold.  And the more grateful they are for what they have, the more physical, spiritual and emotional capital they have to spend in moving on to the next step.  Ultimately, physical, spiritual and emotional capital are more valuable – in attaining what we need – than financial capital ever could be. 

When American ears, therefore, process the idea of $2 a day being typical for over half the world’s population, we are more staggered than we ought to be.  We can’t imagine either how we ourselves could live that way, or how we could ever assuage our guilt for the suffering of those who do live that way because the overwhelming numbers seem impossible to surmount.

We don’t need to make them financially wealthy in our terms, though.  Yes, there are plenty of people in the world who need more money than they currently have.  And yes, access to food, clean water, health care, and education are huge issues which need to be resolved.

But the real poverty crisis is the poverty of spirit which is felt every bit as much (and often more) in the “wealthy” decadent West as it is in the underdeveloped nations of the world.  The bumper sticker slogan has got it wrong – all too often we say “Live simply, that others may simply live.”  It would be more meaningful to say “Live simply, for cryin’ out loud – if you’re not happy now, you’re not going to be happy after your next million dollars, either.”

A little land, a chair to sit on, some chickens to scratch around... we're good.

Happy farming!