Restless American Blog

Is having a lot of material goods a help or hindrance to happiness? Why are some people able to be happy with little, while others with more are miserable?

In order to be happy, most often people find true happiness in relationships with other friends and other people. Most of the time, this has to do with the meaning behind how you live and what you appreciate in life. Scientific proof would be Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He created a pyramid of needs that humans need to survive, kind of like a food pyramid to the most basic intent. He states that after physiological and safety needs that social needs are what humans need to survive. It is very important to have this in your life and if we don’t have this need, we can become miserable, and often try to fill that gap with other things, specifically material goods.
When living with a bundle of material goods, you often times only have those material goods, and not an extensive amount of friends or companions. Having many possessions beyond what you need often times makes you greedy, and you start wanting more possessions, and more, and more, and so on. Greed interferes with forming honest relationships, and doesn’t help you acquire personal traits, which helps people want to be around you. You try to find happiness in material things, and most or all of the time you end up unsatisfied and not finding happiness. They spend extensive amounts of time trying to acquire these things and do not realize what they go through to get these things. Often times the journey or events to get said thing have moralistic values, which they are too greedy to consider, they just care about the end product and/or prize. Greed blinds them from what should really make them happy, which is relationships and acceptance.
People who don’t have many material objects seem more happy and optimistic, which might seem strange to the “material man.” The “non-material man” doesn’t have many possessions, and often times he must work harder for them. Because they work hard, and discipline themselves to be focused on getting the basic necessities, let alone fancy goods, they appreciate it more. The harder you work for something, the more you appreciate it. If you are given food right away, then you don’t really care that much about it and fork it down your gullet. If you have to walk 5 miles for food, then you savor it, and it seems like the best food you ever had, even if it was dog food. They put people, relationships, and moralistic values before the end product and/or prize, which is what makes them happy.
But what makes people happy? Well, different things make different people happy. Most of the time if someone has everything in the world, most likely they don’t have is friendships, or people to talk to about what they are interested in. What people want most in the world (which is explained very well by William James) is acceptance and companionship. There are exceptions to this theory (as of any theory), but almost all of the time this is the truth. Sometimes material goods and wealth provide a sense of security, where you don’t have to worry about not being able to afford the basic necessities, but this is mostly outweighed by the pursuit of other material goods.