The very
best thing in life, happiness, can only be a byproduct of something that’s
authentically good (e.g., a kind deed, a good night’s sleep, love) and is
absent from any market. The second-best things, to which we turn out of
impatience or despair, are pricey because no price can approximate the value of
the best things.
If the pursuit of happiness is condemned to
be self-defeating, what should our guide be? The optimist in me believes that
there is something innate in humans that, like the mechanism that prompts
sunflowers to follow the sun across the sky, can help unleash our creative
side. For the hell of it. With happiness the unintended byproduct, the butterfly
that sits softly on our shoulder.
Alas, the Sirens of daily toil can distract
us and turn us into consumers who like what they buy, buy what they think they
like, and end up bored and dissatisfied - permanently unable to specify the
nature of their discontent and living confirmations of Mark Twain’s point about
the “limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.”
A Few of Readers' Favorite Things What are
the rare luxuries or simple pleasures that you couldn't live without? Let us
know in the comments or on the Times Opinion Facebook page. We may highlight
your response in a follow-up to this piece.
On the other hand, Dorothy Parker said that
we ought to “Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of
themselves.” Of course, necessities take care of themselves only for those
people who belong to the tiny segment of society where privilege reproduces
itself.
A civilized society provides everyone with
the conditions that will give them the freedom vigorously and creatively to pursue
their own goals. But for this to happen, each must have liberty from fear,
hunger and exploitation - as well as, according to Virginia Woolf, a “room of
one’s own.”
* Yanis
Varoufakis is a politician, an academic economist and Greece’s former finance
minister.
Πηγή: nytimes.com
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