Yes. Financial independence would give ample time for me to escape abuse but alas, I’m trapped under family’s false insights and paranoia.

“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.”

~~Clare Boothe Luce

I just want to talk.

I made it big. Huge. Motherfucking huge. I bought and paid off my house in 2 years, was taking 5 major trips a year, had all the bullshit.

Wasn’t ever a materialist and was frugal, not cheap. Tried to take the lessons of my grandfather who grew up in the depression with literally nothing, and where he taught me over many years that everything is priceless and worthless at the same time. He was 1000x the father to me than my booze-bag sperm-donator male called my “dad”.

That piece of wire on the ground might save your life. It might just be another piece of shit. One day you go and buy some wire for $11 because you need it, other times you walk past $11 of free wire laying there because you have no immediate need or want for it. I was too spoiled and precious to get it. I want my meat packaged on a Styrofoam tray and there needs to be cartoons on things. No you shouldn’t make me a home made metal detector out of a broken FM radio, lacquered wire and a 9V battery because then I won’t be cool.

Through my life and path, I discovered no matter how much material stuff, no matter how lovely the accouterments of my life, no matter how many “freedoms” and experiences I had stemming from my financial wherewithal, there was an underlying thing at the core, the kernel of my being, that had been neglected my whole life. For I was never taught to see it and know it. I hated myself and hated my life and refused to look through the telescope to see that.

I didn’t really find any of this out until I had a humiliation that provoked the beginning of my thoughts of personal transformation. I later heard Miles’ Kind of Blue for the first time, by myself, in a separate bed from my pill-popping wine-guzzling wife, wearing Bluetooth headphones. I had smoked a grain of cannabis, my first return to it in about 20 years. Something touched me and I cried. One photon of light hit me somewhere and I couldn’t unsee it.

I later arrested my rage-drinking, or demon-drinking as I sometimes say. When the magical fairy wand didn’t dispense the fairy dust on my life and render everything into utopia, I intuited my power-drinking was a mere behavior and really had effectively nothing to do with the underlying issue. Or perhaps it did in the same sense that water in a boat isn’t the issue, it’s the rotted holes and splits in the hull.

I aimed myself at discovery and self-transformation and opened myself to anything from which I could take something useful and apply it to my own perspective. After getting into 5 years of heavy therapy which I pursued with vigor, something happened. I connected to that thing that I didn’t know existed.

My life exploded, I effectively went insane, but not insane enough to lose sight of that photon. I lost everything because I was not able to care for myself. I ballooned to 135kg.

I had $280,000 in my chequing account at one point, 100K of random investments, and I was living in my car and eating at shelter. I was fucked.

Anyhow.

Now my shit is together. I have 1BR apartment and I will never ask or take more. I refuse. I pull things out of dumpsters, clean them, use what I can and give away the rest. I repair electronics and sell them to survive in part. My community is Harkness Station, a bus shelter in the freezing cold snowbank called Winnipeg, where people live - many suffering addiction and abandoned by humanity. These are my friends and I bring them home-cooked food, water, tea, sugar-laden 3am coffee, hygiene, relief of all sorts. My friend Alex who did 4 years hard time for an armed-robbery he set-up, spoke to me about getting sober 2 days ago. He’s heard my story but I’ve never heard those words on his lips before.

Hear what I’m saying please.

I got an inheritance from my sperm-donors estate and gave it away. There were more than 5 zeroes digits on it.

I am moving to Zen. All of the problems in my life are my own creation.

My grandfather gave me something priceless. My new community at Harkness showed me you can live with nothing.

We put all of this together and I can say with confidence I’ll live in a car (which I don’t have anymore because I gave it away), eat at the “missions” and be happy as a motherfucker. Whatever bro. I’m happy inside, I can care for me, and I need nothing but basic elements of mechanical survival. edit: How silly of me. I forgot the most important thing of all, perhaps so intuitive to me it needed not be said, but I think it should be said. I also need the love of humanity and connection to community for we are all one. And where I have no community I will make one because I also need that.

Apparently there was a study done and your happiness levels out. Like if you got a big pay bump you’d be happier for a while but then back to baseline.

My boss used this to say that we don’t need raises. I asked if we could prove it and me and her swap pays. She laughed and brushed me off.

Money does buy you happiness. It just has diminishing returns.

So the best way to maximize happiness is to take the money from those that have maximized its effect and give it all to the poor.

I do have terrible crushing problems money can’t solve.

but I would be a hell of a lot happier with lowish 6 figures a year.

The thing is, it’s true that money can’t buy you happiness. I can guarantee you that I would still be depressed after a salary increase. I actually think the majority of wealthy people are fucking miserable.

However, money can buy you a lot of other helpful shit and its importance should not be downplayed.

But I have always interpreted “Money can’t buy happiness” to mean that accumulating wealth beyond what you need to survive and be comfortable won’t actually make your life meaningfully better. And that’s true. Happiness levels off after a certain level of wealth.

“Money can’t buy happiness” is a warning only intended for people who already have enough money to meet their basic needs. It’s bad faith to say it to people who are struggling financially. It’s kind of like saying, “Food won’t bring you happiness.” It has a different meaning depending on whether you are saying it to an emotional overeater or someone who is starving and malnourished.

Money isn’t sufficient for happiness, but it’s usually necessary.

Money buys you the luxury of beeing in the position where money can’t contribute to your happiness any longer.

*pay increase above actual inflation/bill increases.

My pay has gone up every year, but each year I end up poorer as my bills eat the extra, plus some more!

The problems of poverty might be easier to deal with. Not discounting that. But a salary increase under capitalism does not solve the fundamental depression you feel from alienation.

Not to say I don’t have it better. I do. But the emptiness is not solved by a higher wage. It only has allowed me to have the time to become more reflective and depressed by the alienation of my labor.

To have more time and freedom to reflect on the suffering of these systems that I benefit from more than others do.

Money of course can buy happiness. Can subcribe to YT Music forever, can pay for therapy, can pay for everything. :,-)

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

How does one obtain food, shelter, healthcare, a basic sense of security by having a stable and safe living space?

Oh thats right, you obtain all that with money, obtaining those things without money is either functionally impossible for the vast majority of people, or literally a crime.

Yeah, adding an infinite amount of money to one person doesn’t meaningfully impact their ability to get those first two layers figured out.

Distributing money such that everyone has those two base layers… is quite literally the foundation for a happy, stable, productive society.

Liquidate the billionaires… assets, of course.

Money absolutely does buy happiness until you’re in middle class and in a fulfilling job. (If you’re rich but in a shit job, it means you might have the option to work less or look for a better position.)

Money does not buy you happiness applies to people who are already rich and are looking for money to fulfill needs way high on the Maslow hierarchy. In fact, much of the tyranny and cruelty within stratified social systems comes from miserable rich people believing they should be happy due to their vast wealth and power yet are not. And our capitalist society has messages everywhere that promise that a new car, (yacht, vacation, lover, religion, etc.) will totally fulfill them and they don’t.

I mean we’ve had three billionaires shoot themselves into space. If that’s not an obvious plead to the gods or the cosmos for a taste of nirvana I don’t know what is.

Curiously, this is a thing that Jesus (and every other divine-ish wise guy) knew about: If we give away our vast fortune and live simply with that experience and wisdom, fulfillment comes. But it means overcoming greed for wealth and power, which is quicker, easier, more seductive.

ETA: For those of us outside the ownership class, though, money improves our base Maslow hierarchy (better housing, HVAC, better water, better food) and gets us out of precarity (or worse, scarcity) which make us desperate and miserable (which accounts completely for elevated crime in poor neighborhoods). Money buys us out of that hell hole. The only thing better than not being there is to also have the perspective of not being there, which can lead to maybe helping others behind you out… Unless you’re Clarence Thomas. (He’s a very special case.)

Meh. I grew up dirt poor, and I am now what past me would have considered successful.

Funny thing about it, though, I’m still me. I’m that same dirt poor teenager, just older. It didn’t change me like I thought it would.

Absolutely, the lack of money will make you unhappy. Without a doubt. But I’ve never got a 20% raise and felt 20% happier. You’re always gonna be who you are, money or not.