Reply #62: Materialistic people ain't happy either, Maple...

[IrateCitizen]

Here in the US, where we supposedly have the highest standard of living in the world, at least one in four adults suffers from clinical depression. We live our lives told that the free market is the ultimate arbiter, and that our economy will flourish by everyone acting in their own self interest.

But something is lost in the process. Through the cynicism that is certain to develop by viewing everything through the lens of self-interest, we lose our sense of connection to others. We lose community. And as social animals whose best moments are displayed through our capacity for cooperation in times of great crisis, we are left wanting more.

Of course, the modern world tells us that happiness is only a new car away, or a new set of clothes, or a new plastic surgery. We work and work and work to consume and consume and consume, with the maximization of profit the only thing that is valued by society as a whole. Professions that are centered around improving the "social" economy -- health care workers, child care workers, teachers, firemen, EMT's, etc. -- are not as widely respected for their contributions as free-wheeling CEO's and speculative financiers.

The fact that is implicit in the statement "poor but happy" is that the poor often have something that we don't -- a real sense of community, in which people genuinely care about others, and cooperate during hardship. While their social arrangements are far from perfect -- often exhibiting narrowmindedness and patriarchal control -- they still offer that sense of community that we need, ALL of us.