Everything You Can’t Have
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collabfund.com
Do you want a new and better car? Actually, you don't want a Ferrari, you want dopamine. Do you feel attracted to someone younger, better looking, funnier, more interesting than your current partner? This is a trap. Well, I would love to have a Ferrari and I would love to be in the company of the best partner I can find. Call me a dopamine addict if you want.
Although my experience is not necessarily generalizable, it may offer the perspective of someone who, through working in the tech industry, has gone from having little to having more. Having better things makes life more interesting, bigger, and reduces the likelihood of having annoying problems. On average, mind you, and that is how we should look at people's behavior (we should also look at variance, but that would require a longer commentary).
We have all experienced the Gatsby syndrome, either personally or through other people. Having everything we want except one thing we obsessively desire, perhaps a woman or a man, a full head of hair, a few inches, the genuine appreciation of others, fewer years on our shoulders. It is the limiting factor of a chemical reaction. Does this make the possession of things irrelevant? No, it just tells us that they are bottlenecks, limiting factors, that can keep us from enjoying the material or the easy. But if you get rid of the obsession, you will find, as I did, that a 5-star hotel is better than a 2-star hotel, natural fabrics better than polyester, first class better than knees touching ears in economy, a Ferrari better than a 25-year-old Ford. Just lived experience.
Now, after how much money we reach a plateau for the outcome being considered (happiness, the best care in case of illness, sending children to the best colleges, traveling the world in 80 days), whether there are trade-offs between the money obtained and the ways of obtaining the money are examples of topics that may be more interesting, and they are all context-dependent. But if someone wants to give me money as a gift and makes me choose between $10 million and $50 million, I choose $50 million. And I might have the temerity to ask if there is by any chance also the possibility of getting $100 million.
And it is the same for all positive traits or qualities, which are, in fact, considered positive because they make it more likely to achieve the goal being talked about.
Then we can discuss more interesting matters of trade-offs and let people like the author of the article enjoy a nap instead of offering the usual trivial contentions with his writings.
It is objectively a better experience being depressed in my hilltop hot tub over looking acres than the 1bd apartment the 20yr old me had.
There is a “mindfulness” angle. Instead of taking it always for granted, pay attention and make time enjoy your stuff.
Thoigh if you keep realizing the things you have worked hard for don’t end up making you happy, that might be hopeless.
Being satisfied with what you have is what “poor” people (people who can’t have everything) do in order to be happy. What’s the benefit of being rich then?
And there will always be sometjing you want but cannot have, regardless how much money have. E.g. art, the Mona Lisa will never be up for sale. Or some other unique piece of art. Accepting that fact makes you a happier person, or at least doesn't hurt.
- Consuming is usually bad for the environment, even if you're rich. Being satisfied conserves resources.
- The work you devote to something gives it its value. I appreciate good food, good art, good engineering and good woodworking because I have repeatedly attempted them. If you just buy stuff without consideration, you rob yourself of a finer experience.
It's the ability to do what you want with your time, and to (increasingly with more wealth) say fuck you to people who try to force you into this or that.
It's also the increased ability to change things (for you, others, your city, or even your whole country) towards what you want to happen, aka power and influence.
"Being able to buy nice stuff" is the benefit of being rich that poor (or well-offish but still mostly aspiring to greater wealth) people think being rich is about...
What the point of having fuck-you money, if you never say 'fuck you'?
Freedom.
Owning better material items is only meant to facilitate freedom. I'm not a collector and never will be, even if I inherit two billion bucks tomorrow.
Examples:
- I'll get an expensive bike so me and my wife can go on an impulsive picnic in the outskirts of the city.
- I'll get an extra house in rural France so we're free to go there if we need the scenery for a few weeks (but will otherwise allow a local family to take care of it).
- I'll just invent stuff in my shed -- or compose the programs I always wanted to write on my computers -- if I'm never worried about money in the future.
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Rich people getting bored and even unhappy is just lack of imagination, intellectual and physical laziness.
Being rich and unhappy is entirely on them. It can be much better in every way but they're too busy complaining about non-issues to see it.
- I can control to enjoy a scenery or a picnic from local park or nearby forest and
- I can control of being worried about the money and doing exactly what I feel like doing (considering it makes me trully happy)
As a rich guy:
- I'd not be sure why I should pedal and sit on a muddy grass instead of renting Hummer and going to some fine dining restaurant
- I'd not be sure should I be wasting my time having all this money when I could be treating myself with X and Y
Once again, what's the benefit if I need to take a mental and physical effort in order to be happy? Your last two paragraphs are the exact thing I am talking about, and can be applied to non-rich people as well.
(There's a social and financial line below which you can't enjoy anything btw, and I don't wish even my worst enemies experiencing that -- because I did go through it).
RE: your expressed preferences: of course, they are your prerogatives. I'd go sit on a muddy grass every now and then, and travel with taxi to a fancy restaurant other times. One does not exclude the other.
> Once again, what's the benefit if I need to take a mental and physical effort in order to be happy?
You don't. It's quite the opposite: you drop the idea of status or belonging to special club or whatever, and you feel truly free. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. That's how I would be if I make it to the other side.
You could probably argue it's still effort as we have to learn to let go of certain toxic ego traits but that would be arguing semantics IMO. To me, letting go of stuff that's dragging you down is freedom even if you have to work for it a bit.
The point of being rich is to have all the good stuff.
To get there, it helps if you're not too easily satisfied.
Alas, many rich people go overboard on not being satisfied. When they get all the good stuff, the have forgotten how to enjoy it.
But if you're smart about it you can make sure you enjoy stuff, and also get more stuff.
You are allowed to (gasp) enjoy your previous victories, without getting complacent. You can be happy about your yacht and also work hard to get a jet.
Unless, you know, you can't. But that's just a (common) mindset problem and I don't think you're doomed to fall in that trap.
I bet this "rich but unhappy" trope is appealing as a cope for the less fortunate. Thus it gets overplayed as a trope and people wrongly think it's universal truth rather than a cliché.
IMO it's baked in at a cultural level, at this point. Where did it come from? You could point to the harsh Puritan work ethic, or the myth of meritocracy, or the rivers of blood lurking in the US' past, but there's probably no single root cause.
Are you grandparents representatives of capitalism?
I am sure if you go to the most socialist or communist country out there, you will find grandparents saying the same thing. Source: me, I come from one such country.
Maybe the author should read some old philosophy.
Another way to interpret what's going on is that people often look for happiness in all the wrong places, or confuse pleasure with happiness. In this case, the author is describing people who believe acquisition leads to happiness. He is describing the thrill of the hunt, that anticipation of a reward that isn't there, followed by disappointment because some nebulous misplaced expectation isn't met.
Happiness begins with virtue.
Since it makes my goals very personal, I can't compare myself on an objective metric with other people and as a result feel less frustrated about not earning more.
My version would be more like :
"Owning a car is very circumstantial. It means you temporarily have some property right on it. It can break, it can be taken away from you. If you create something it's yours forever. Its existence is not independant of your will.".
At the end of their lives some people will have owned ten cars, others will have written ten books.
No need to ignore anything. Instead realize that everyone on this planet has exactly the same amount of hours in a day - the poorest and the richest alike. With that understood realize that you can only spend your time on so _few_ things that you better choose what's really important to you.
And thus one may choose to spend time on projects and making stuff, and "friends who buy a new car every year" are simply people that chose differently - there is little point to ordering the choices (or conversely you can always design a metric by which any given choice will be strictly superior to others - thus making such orderings generally pointless).
And in terms of money and even its power to buy time - it's all diminishing results surprisingly quickly. And if you like cars then indeed switching every year sounds like a much better strategy than owning many at the same time.
To each their own. Would be extremely dull otherwise!
If you're genuinely into cars and driving, you might well indulge in buying nice cars and find it emotionally fulfilling. If it's about status, however, you can probably find more fulfilling ways to attain status that doesn't involve purchasing a trinket you don't truly want or need – perhaps by becoming known in the local area as a donor/philanthropist, having the best garden on the street, involvement in local politics or sports teams, being in a band, becoming a busybody on the PTA, and such things. (I admit these things all sound a bit suburban but that's my frame of reference.)
Money is freedom and trading that freedom to get a shiny toy doesn’t make sense to me. I would much rather know I can work on what I want or not work at all than drive to my job in a nicer car.
And if people judge you as person based on the car you have, the clothes you wear or the appartment / house you live in, well, maybe ignoring those people actually is a healthy thing to do.
A car especially is just a tool, I care as much about someone’s car as I do the hammer in their toolbox, but I am not a car person.
It comes down to what you value. Stability, time, and financial freedom matter more to me than any fancy thing I could buy.
They definitely are, which is why I forego things that take them away from me. No children or dogs in my future.
The fact you notice and thinks about it means you care. You want a new car every year. You envy it. Be honest to yourself and go get it. That is what you want.
If you have sanity issues because you ain't driving the nicest car in town... Maybe that's the core issue? Why do you place so much importance on having the nicest car? Vast majority of people do not give a damn what others drive/wear/whatever.
All in all the only way to win this game is to not play.
How do you ignore friends who write a new book every year?
Problem-solving mindset: what problem do I need to solve? “Problems” will always arise life (due to other people, random events, our brain always wanting novelty, etc.), so this mindset is a reactive one that leads to anxiety and lack of direction.
Creational mindset: what would I love to create? This mindset can seem harder to get at because of all the conditioning we’ve gotten from society and childhood. But all it takes is a simple perspective shift. It leads to more proactivity, and trust that you’ll be able to do whatever you need to do. All the secondary, tertiary, etc. questions about how get answered relatively easily when you’re clear about what you want to create.
Except for those who choose a cause. Bill Gates comes to mind.
> You feel that, gee, isn’t it just great to have enough money to afford to live in a very nice house, to be able to play golf, to have nice parties, to wear good clothes, to travel if you want to?
If that's the vacuous extent of your life, the problem doesn't lie with the money.
> Something you can easily afford brings less joy than something you must save and struggle for. “The man who can buy anything he covets values nothing that he buys,” Dawson wrote.
Except that it's not true. I was easily able to afford the air fryer that I bought two years ago. Every single time I use it, I'm amazed at how easy it makes preparing certain meals, and I am thankful to the friend who recommended it. Every single thing I buy is carefully thought out (sometimes over months) to improve a specific part of my life. And every single thing I own is valued because it has a specific purpose. Dawson may have thought he'd stumbled upon some great wisdom, but all he was actually doing was looking in a mirror.
> Your brain doesn’t want stuff. It doesn’t even want new stuff. It wants to engage in the process and anticipation of getting new stuff.
Uhh wuuuuut? That's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. What's the point in getting "stuff" over and over? You're not going to have any use for it.
> When you get a $10,000 car you dream of the 20,000 car.
Uhh no. I have a $5000 car and have absolutely no desire to buy another one until this one becomes too expensive to fix. I could buy a $50,000 car tomorrow, but what would be the point?
All I'm seeing in this article are confessions of a greedy person.
> Your brain doesn’t want stuff. It doesn’t even want new stuff. It wants to engage in the process and anticipation of getting new stuff.
On the contrary, I find myself avoiding hedonistic consumption more and more as the years go by. I scrutinize planned purchases for months, even if I can easily afford them, and I do wish the the world was less of a place where the solution to every problem seems to be to purchase something.
That matches my experience too. With a bad, cheap guitar or shoes or a computer, I yearned for a better version thereof. Now I am playing a good guitar that I bought 10 years ago and I do not really feel any need to buy a more expensive one.
I also think you should go farther than just the experience component and pair it with physical objects that keep the memories alive, vibrant and reliveable.
Anyway I’ll add to this that you don’t have to like all experiences. I have tried to force myself to like travelling, but I’ve come to accept I just despise every aspect of it. Other people find it weird, but whatever.
To be happy or at least satisfied and content, it takes a lot of introspection and creativity on how to pursue what you really want, which is also rarely in a permanent state. This is often overlooked in favor of taking oversimplified life advices and time consuming setting of life goals
It also seems like people chase the dragon; keep going to restaurants and resorts. If experiences are so unforgettable, why would you repeat them each year?
And for most people it (for the outside) looks fraught with stupid dysfunction; the White Lotus kinds of things where everyone is just struggling to make it worth what they believe it is, and strain their relationships and lives in the process.
Simple resort stay in Greece with my SO is embedded in my memory forever.
Meanwhile many „experiences“ is just staring at others or consuming prepared products. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to find out what other people did. But making/doing stuff yourself is much more rewardable in the long run. On top of that, we've to provide experiences to people around us as well. Not just consume experiences provided by others.
Everyone has a lived existence.
Everyone is trying to optimize their lived experience.
Are you saying a person’s occupation should preclude them from asking “What’s the right way for me to live?”
My intent in asking isn't just to be dismissive, but rather to point out that there are complex, overlapping reasons. It can be incredibly difficult to even pinpoint your own motivations, to say nothing of those of others.
A simplistic answer might be "because they want to have their thoughts read by others." Beyond that could be altruism, a desire for notoriety, wanting to change behavior, or many other intermingled goals. Most likely, the author didn't even consider "why" but rather, like all of us, just felt an intrinsic need to be heard. See also: social media.
I know other people like myself as well, some more obsessed and downright hyperactive even.
People lose themselves in material items and status. I want to buy stuff so I waste less time on things I don't enjoy -- washing machine is the perfect example. I want computers because I can program my ideas. I want an electronic workshop corner because I want to get into that and experiment. I want an air fryer because I have high cholesterol and want to experiment with healthier cooking. Many other good and valid examples exist.
Don't lose yourself in material items. Status does not exist. Decouple your money-making scheme from other people perceiving you as having "status". Important thing is for the number in the bank to keep increasing, everything else is a distraction. As long as you're not harming people, kidnapping kids or raping anyone then by all means, go crazy getting rich by doing legal stuff.
My observation from the 8 rich people I knew in my life is: they got lucky, they succeeded too quickly, they have ZERO direction in life, they have no clue what to do with their free time. They got miserable not even 2 years into it.
To me they are weak and uninteresting people whose only impressive trait is that ONCE in their lifetime they managed to combine two and two together and called somebody at the right time (and these opportunities were more often than not created for them; they didn't initiate them).
But of course, "pull the ladder after yourself" and all, we know it. They are weak and uninteresting but they don't want competition and they have the tools in their hands to ensure that's the case.
It is how it is apparently. I'll fight to become rich as much as my personal limitations allow me and I am likely to fail but at least I won't ever complain about "having too much" or "the moment you have it it's no longer wanted".
Meh. Get some imagination!
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Oh, and that article sounds like paid propaganda: "you actually don't want what you think you want, be happy with what you have". Oh yeah? Well I'll be happy if I work 20h a month for the same money as now. And healthier. I can't. Then bugger off because your article does not help with anything.
Life change like that affects your whole life from there on 24/7. In a way you cannot actively decide how you will act. You will probably fall back to your inner default way of reacting to things, but your life is subtly changed.
The things that were great passions when you always lacked time to properly get in to them might turn out to be just another job when you start doing them more. Holiday trip might mean nothing if your not having a break from anything. Ventures in easy mode without risk might feel stale. All consumption is pointless anyway. Maybe all tinkering is as well? Etc.
And maybe I'll get tired of the tinkering I want to do now (but can't). I'd still like to find out if that's the case.
There are creative pursuits that can take a lifetime however. Eventually you will find and choose what to consume you.
My main point is that there is a subset of humans who can never be bored. And it seems that it has no intersection with rich people. If that's indeed true (which I doubt; the world is not so black and white) it would be interesting to find out why.
In the end, we all need meaning and some struggle. Shame that most rich people choose to struggle over petty stuff like who has the most expensive watch or who will sleep with the youngest legal boy/girl on that party, or whatever else that signals status.
Shame on them that not even one of them tried to become Ironman or Batman.
TBH I’m sure there are people who have no trouble with these things. It is just common to read experiences from rich and famous in which they say that it is actually quite tricky to live that life (sandwhiched between the obligatory platitudes about how lucky and priviledged they are)
During the pandemic, I found out that my superpower is that I can't get bored, I just dissociate. And I've noticed that wealthy people tend to prune off possibilities rather than explore them like I do, in other words, they never seem to daydream, but live in the hard reality of making difficult choices almost dispassionately, without imagination.
I had one bad day with covid where I couldn't get off the couch due to headache and dizziness, and felt an odd inclination that I wanted to play video games, because I couldn't. The last time I had felt an impulse to do something from inside was around 1992 (had a bunch of life-changing events the year after, and then went off to college and career). Ever since then, mostly the entirety of my life has been spent reacting to and dealing with external demands. So the feeling of motivation, however brief, was like tasting nirvana or glimpsing the sublime. Guess I'm still trapped in the 90s.
Anyway, I've spent so much of my life in that state of superposition that I solve problems almost automatically. People tell me anything at all, and my mind races through the branches and edge cases, arriving at the solution before they finish speaking. Like I solve problems in parallel, while others seem to do it serially. This is what I think the term neurodivergent is getting at.
The downside is that I don't perceive the difficulty of the problem, only the friction and artificial barriers preventing me from implementing the solution. Everything feels so contrived or even sabotaged (the theme of The X Files) that sometimes it feels like living in a nightmare where we all do everything the hard way by design, which is why I struggle so profoundly in a world designed for neurotypicals.
All I need is a minimum of time and resources to get ahead of the daily grind to get real work done. But those are the things that I can never seem to have. Because the people who favor tradition over outside the box thinking have the wealth. Which keeps us all stuck in a 20th century economy like The Matrix. Rich people seem to want to be the Merovingian, not Ironman or Batman.. at least that's how they present themselves as influencers, titans of industry, tech bros, etc.
But at the end of the day, I'm learning to let all of these preconceived and self-limiting beliefs go. Wealth is a construct, as are the generalizations we use to lump individuals together into stereotypes. Which means we hold the key to changing our own mindset. There's a power in surrendering to the unreachability of a logical solution and shifting to the reality/timeline in which it's already been solved. That's what magical thinking and manifestation and The Secret are about. I'm straying into the metaphysical now, but anyone who is self-aware or conscious or woke can do this. It all starts with meditation and bringing the outer reality into balance with the inner reality by reconnecting with the divine. But it's a red/blue pill thing, nobody can prove that it works or disprove it, we all just have to try it for ourselves.
I liked your response to my other comment, but figured I'd reply here. We're below the fold anyway now, but your insight deserved another.
Consider yourself lucky then. Privileged even. Money is not the only privilege there is.
And yep I'm grateful that I have a curious nature.
After multiple boom-bust cycles and returning to the land of the living after burnout, I feel that the world's problems are caused by people who have too much either being unwilling or unable to empathize with the struggle of others.
It's not that I'm jealous of the rich. In fact, I have no real use for money other than to get left alone.
And it's not that I'm lazy. In fact, my education, experience and work capacity allow me to take on high workloads.
No, the central crisis for me is that my standard of living depends on taking from others. If I want to eat well, wilderness has to be cleared, someone has to pick the food, animals will die. If I want to live well, trees have to get cut down, fossil fuels have to be extracted, people will die mining and refining minerals. All that I do, all that I am, places additional burden on someone else.
So I've decided to live modestly, working just enough to keep a roof over my head and drive a vehicle so that I can meet the minimum demands of civilization. If I could, I would give it all back and live in a state of ultimate gratitude and peace.
But the wealthy don't do that. They just keep taking more and more and more, giving little or nothing back. Reaching a position of power only to deny it to someone else. Perhaps the ultimate sin besides taking another's life.
Profit means that someone didn't pay high enough wages. Inheritance means that resources were stolen from one generation for the next. Philanthropy means that someone didn't pay their taxes, so we had to.
Once you've hit rock bottom and see through the veil of illusion, wealth accumulation becomes a repugnant thing. The thing separating one from the divine. The thing that perpetuates the suffering we were born into.
The eerie part is, for all that I've experienced and learned, I know that this analysis of the status quo is not the final answer. I have not really had an epiphany. We all arrived here to incarnate as humans and experience the full gamut of suffering and bliss. We have philosophies and religious traditions glorifying suffering, even calling it noble and pious.
But I've struggled for so long that it's all I have really known, to the point where I've lost sight of how to improve my situation. But what about the people who have achieved success, who do have the means to make things better? Where are the wealthy people who demand shorter work hours, more automation and time off, more shared prosperity and even UBI? Surely there is at least one willing and able to speak out and step up.
Story of my life. Get here for a virtual hug!
While I'd not be as spartan and ascetic as yourself I too 90% identify with your quote: "I want enough money to be left alone". I definitely will want a few dozen things I don't have now but I am also very convinced I'll know when to stop.
> No, the central crisis for me is that my standard of living depends on taking from others.
This can very easily spiral into extremes. Even Buddhist monks, to whom all life is sacred, laugh at those among them that don't dare weeding out the monastery garden lest they kill a worm while doing so. No disrespect to you meant, in fact I very strongly relate to you, but you do sound like you want to minimize harm in a way that's just not realistic and will end up burning you out in a different way compared to what you experienced working for the man.
I don't lose sleep over the fact that me ordering a $6.70 item from AliExpress maybe stimulates a guy running a sweat shop to keep exploiting people. I am not responsible for that and even if I have tilted the scales slightly here and there in my life I still view all of that as a fair transaction: if they couldn't offer it at that price then they wouldn't. But they do, so I order it and consume it after.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
With that being said, I'll always agree that we need to learn to consume the minimum because the way humanity is living right now is absolutely not sustainable and it will bite future generations super hard. That much is true. But I don't order napkins from AliExpress, no, so I am excused for wanting to try a curious novel (to me) shaver or buy my girlfriend a butterfly-shaped hair pin. Simple pleasures that hopefully harm nobody.
> But the wealthy don't do that. They just keep taking more and more and more, giving little or nothing back.
As another commenter here said: most people are not fit to be rich. They get rich too quickly or too easily and then realize they have no purpose, no hobbies, no goals, no struggles, so they spend the rest of their lives desperately trying to fill the internal void with material items which ironically they are well-aware will never gonna happen but feel trapped and hopeless so they keep trying anyway.
...Or date other rich people, which fails even more spectacularly.
...And they love pulling the ladder after they climbed it.
> But I've struggled for so long that it's all I have really known, to the point where I've lost sight of how to improve my situation.
Time for the next virtual hug as I am almost the same. I'll hit 43 next month and I am already dead-tired of all this circus and all the dumb charades and pretenses. The only thing that truly keeps me going is the absolute angel of a wife that I have, whose optimism and positivity are kind of contagious, and I want to show her a better life for both of us. Maybe along the way I'll find self-love as well, who knows.
> Surely there is at least one willing and able to speak out and step up.
I hate generalizing people so I am pretty sure benevolent rich people exist but (a) they are part of a much smaller group and them speaking up might actually be very harmful to them because others in the same group might actively sabotage them and (b) I completely understand somebody who fought for their life not wanting to spend the rest of it fighting for other people's lives (I know that if I make it I'll be one of the most anonymous rich guys you could think of).
You do get tired and burned out after all. Fighting with your own life is quite enough, and then some more even. You and I understand that pretty well.
I've run with this since, perhaps a little more than is healthy. Want something new: research aggressively but actually back out of ever buying. Our car (not the new one, that was a different country years ago) is getting to the point of needing more work than it's value, so I've been looking at new ones, taking test drives etc. But we won't buy any of those, we'll buy something used and quite old.
It might sound ok, I've got it solved and get that dopamine hit without consequence, but it's a huge waste of my time and it affects pretty much every purchase decision.
My hack around this was to recognize the only things that were valuable cost time. Fast way to do that was by recognizing the difference between the symbol or representation of something, and its real effect. As a symbol, money makes it it really easy to acquire other symbols, but that's all they are. Instead, get good at something, and even use some money to make opportunity (buy the time, your own or someone elses) to do it, but the more money you spend on them the less satisfying they are. An example is buying an expensive instrument to take beginner lessons, where learning on one can be so unsatisfying and humiliating relative to its symbolic value as to discourage you from pursuing it. The basic absurdity of culture is the belief that if you consume enough symbols of desire you eventually become one - and also perhaps that it is for the lack of those symbols that you are not normal or desirable. Symbols certainly help us negotiate the culture around us, but they are not the substrate or the real.
A quant once told me that the ideal portfolio lets you both eat well and sleep well, but they come at a cost to each other, so good luck with managing, i.e. extracting value from - money. It's not a problem I have, or one that I particularly envy because I mainly value time, and index on sleeping well over eating well.
step two: fail at step one
step three: devote your life to step one