WELL, what a week! A global financial crisis and a federal election, with Thanksgiving in between.
There have been lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth (literally and figuratively) with a bit of celebration thrown in. This odd conjunction has me thinking about what makes people happy.
Our well-being, after all, is what governments are supposed to oversee. It’s the seductive promise of Wall Street money. And it’s what we ultimately give thanks for.
John Helliwell, well-known British Columbia economist, has spent his career studying the question of what makes people feel satisfied. Helliwell examined data from 25 years of the World Values Survey, provided by people all over the globe.
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I was delighted, though not surprised, to find that his conclusions mirror what the best of our faith groups (and our grandparents) have been telling us for ages: that people are most satisfied when they have loving relationships and are making a meaningful contribution to the world.
Every culture reports that once basic needs have been met, money improves the quality of life only insofar as it helps one “keep up with the Joneses.” Its real value is social acceptance.
In rural India that might mean having one good cow, several healthy children and a fertile plot of land. In Hollywood, it could mean a million dollar mansion.
Whatever the context, money’s chief benefit turns out to be not the enjoyment of luxuries, but the chance to be like other folks, to be accepted. Apparently, once our financial status is similar to those around us, additional money adds little to our sense of well-being.
Wall Street hasn’t caught on, however. We chase even fictional dollars with a ferocity that seems to border on madness. How come?
Helliwell describes an experiment in which subjects were divided into two groups and given a sum of money. Group one was told they had to use it to make themselves as happy as possible. Most spent it on things they wanted for themselves.
The other group had to use their money to spend time with people they loved or to do something good for others.
At the end both reported on their feelings of satisfaction. Turns out the group that used the money for charity or relationship-building was much happier.
So why did the first group spend their money on things that didn’t make them happy? The dynamics seem to be those of addiction. Professional pushers – advertisers for example – sell us the promise that money brings well-being. And sure enough, each income gain or new purchase gives us a rush. But the rush soon fades. We have to quickly find more.
Soon the emotional gain from each purchase declines. Severely addicted, we end up competing for the “drug” so fiercely that we don’t even stop to check to see whether the drugs we are being sold, the financial instruments, might be diluted or even toxic.
Thanksgiving reminds us that all things belong to God. We’re not owners, just users. Let’s put our investment in people, not in things that we can never own anyway.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.
