Experiences won’t make you happier than possessions | Hacker News Reader

Experiences won’t make you happier than possessions

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75 pointstalonx78 comments

Neither is going to make people happy.

People are happy if they are healthy, well fed, see the people they care about are happy, don't live in anxiety all the time, and feel what they do day for day has some kind of meaning.

How that is achieved is secondary.

If someone feels like a faceless drone and constantly has to worry about how to make it through life after retirement, neither a 3000$ gaming PC nor a trip to Bali is going to make them happy, both are just bandaids over the misery.

Healthy, well fed and not aware that other people are doing better, even if only subjectively…

> not aware that other people are doing better, even if only subjectively

This is not actually a requirement for happiness, turns out.

With all the disasters I've been through, one of the things that makes me happy is the knowledge that at least other people on the average are doing much better in many ways, especially financially than myself.

That's one of the things that inspires hope the most.

Quite the opposite of Envy and others among the "Seven Vices".

Agree, you can be aware and just not compare yourself and focus on your own journey or just be grateful you're doing well enough even if your friends do better. Comparison is the thief of joy

What about "not aware that other people are doing far worse"?

I think both options have an effect and whether that effect is positive or negative depends on the level of empathy vs. sociopathy.

> What about "not aware that other people are doing far worse"?

Exactly this! Because I was raised to have a shred of empathy for my fellow humans, I actually take joy from the happiness and success of others around me, and seeing (or knowing) the suffering of others really does me no favors at all.

yep, just awareness is like agreeing with universe. What is "better" ? Now, comparing and then Competing will bring anxiety and all that..

> If someone feels like a faceless drone and constantly has to worry about how to make it through life after retirement, neither a 3000$ gaming PC nor a trip to Bali is going to make them happy, both are just bandaids over the misery.

Minor nitpick, but if "constantly worry how to make it", how can you afford to go to Bali?

"...through life after retirement"

I guess you could make the argument that it's better to never go on vacation or buy a new computer and stash all that extra money in your 401k, but I don't think most people live this way.

That's missing some levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

How can people be happy without self-actualization? Happy and (making things) happen are related words.

Maslow’s hierarchy is not some empirically proven truth FWIW. This is just one opinion that has a wiki article versus another opinion that doesn’t.

"... and feel what they _DO_ day for day has some kind of meaning."

Right. Still, meaning is not enough, or all health workers would be happy.

Then there is the hedonic treadmill, and there is some evidence that people born with a certain level of innate satisfaction with life that they keep reverting to.

> Most of life is lived in the unmemorable, in-between moments

I think this is the crux of the issue. By traveling, you can make "experiences" be a larger percent of your time, which makes me happier at least.

Before I started traveling, my life was almost the exact same every day/week/year. Sleep, work, gym, pub. Go surfing on weekends if waves were good. One snowboard/surf holiday a year.

Then I started traveling, lived in a ski resort in Georgia (country not the state) for 3 months and went snowboarding everyday, that made me happy (at the time at least). Living in SA and surfing everyday was great as well.

I am in the experiences are better than possessions camp, assuming you can significantly change the ratio of regular life Vs experience.

Is going on 3 one week holidays better than buying a comfortable sofa you sit on every night to watch Netflix? Probably not.

But for me, traveling non-stop makes me happier than owning a house and a car.

I became significantly happier by spending most of my free time walking the same 20 km route every weekend. I was miserable significant portion of time on most holidays i took abroad, because they either involved following orders (on organized trips), or were stressful (because I had to organize stuff for myself and others) in unknown environment. Not my cup of tea.

Another thing is that paying a lot for a short experience puts me into a specific mindset, that I hate.

Also - one indication that you're unhappy in general is that you will pursue more and more intense recreation during the time you have free to compensate for all that sucks and to escape from your problems.

Different people have different needs and the split isn't "possessions vs experiences". Also as the article noticed - possessions boil down to experiences anyway.

i feel the same. i may not have had a great career, but when i look back at my life i did many interesting things, and most of my life was not unmemorable, in-between moments. in fact, by living in different countries away from home most of the time i made those unmemorable moments to be memorable. try going to a chinese wet-market without having learned chinese, even after years of doing that, even just the fact that it becomes routine is memorable to me.

Yup (article has a clickbait title because they actually say to each their own). After a routine many years, I started hanging out with someone who is really really good at choosing the next adventure and it's addictive. It's difficult to balance much travel with other responsibilities but I'm hooked.

This seems like exactly the sort of hard-to-maintain intensity that’ll exhaust itself (and you) eventually. But til that day, if it ever comes, rock on :)

Could you give some examples? I'm curious.

Same same ;)

The buy experiences meme has always had a slight air of having been engineered in travel industry laboratory somewhere and released into the wild.

For decades now, certain shops don't just sell stuff, they sell the “experience” of shopping there. I'd like to have what their PR departments are smoking.

It's _all_ experience. "Don't sell the sausage, sell the sizzle".

This is why car adverts are either belting round implausibly empty urban streets, or of Wankpanzers off-roading in a way almost no owner will actually do. "Buy this and this is the experience you're connecting with".

I'm rather confused by the article's point. It really reinforces that it's all experience, and really, material goods are just a means to an end.

Look - if I want to go experience Bali, it's not like I have to buy an aeroplane to do so. We _vastly_ overestimate the marginal utility of a more expensive car or some slightly different shoes in the sense of what additional experiences it's going to give us.

And, frankly, if you're claiming your shoe purchases increase your wellbeing because they don't hurt then I might suggest you pay more attention to purchasing the correct size for your feet (Stop buying from the Dolmansaxlil shoe corporation).

ISTR that materialistic humans being on a hedonic treadmill has quite a lot of evidence.

I'm not sure what you're pointing at, but all shops are selling a shopping experience.

Compare a hard discount grocery store to a regular supermarket, and we see the supermarket invisting significant money (and increasing prices) to improve the customer experience, and many customers willing to pay the price to not shop in what looks like a warehouse, even if they'd buy roughly the same products.

Yes, almost from the start, it sounded to me like something cooked up by marketing experts, either:

* to sell "experiences" to people because those marketers had services to sell;

* to sell "experiences" to people because the target demographic couldn't afford possessions; or

* more a psyop campaign, to placate demographics for whom the memes are that they'll never own a home, never be able to retire, etc.

Or all three.

Sure, there was the random carefree person who just liked to surf every day, and somehow ends got met, but for the rest of us, we were sold on expectations of homeownership, vehicles, consumer products. We can see that society is set up to expect people to have those things, and we can see how people's experience is generally better when they can afford those possessions.

It's not wrong either, though. Experiences regularly and radically change people: you might not have been longing all your life to own a French castle looking at rich pictures if you actually went into one and experienced the humidity, gloominess and sheer impracticality of it all first hand.

Sending people to the other side of the world is overrated, but confronting your world views with actual experiences is a price worth paying most of the time.

Same way experiencing at least once a well cooked, well made dish can effectively lead you cook it better for the rest of your life.

As anything, it varies from people to people, and there's no single truth out there.

It's not just about worldviews - it's having to face the unfamiliar and unpredictable that tends to change people. The best travels are voyages of discovery about oneself.

However, not every trip can be that. The more you travel, the weaker the experience becomes, and eventually one reaches a point where there is little left to learn by being on the road.

I was firmly in the experiences over possessions camp for years. But now…

Without a doubt owning a nicer house would make me happier. More room for family and friends to stay over. More room for hobbies (a workshop would be great). Nicer views, quieter, fewer neighbours.

“Possessions create experiences”, very true. Buy a games consoles to play with friends. Build bonds. Buy a bicycle to go to a riding meet-up. Get fit. A holiday to Asia is much more ephemeral

A part of me feels the message was pushed as part of an agenda. Own nothing and you’ll be happy…!

I bought a Tesla five years ago and it still brings me so much joy. It looks nice, it's comfy to drive, it gives me the freedom to go wherever I want and I've made some wonderful memories with it.

Experiences are great, but my favorite experiences are the ones I've had for free or close to free. Drive in cinema with a date, a hike with friends, Christmas with family. Sure I could go places with a cheaper car, but I'm really happy with the way I spent that money.

My experience too. I drive daily and trading in my old sometimes non-dependable car for a new (somewhat) high end luxury model worked great. It cheers me up to be in it every day even when I'm just running local errands. On the other hand, when I look at photos of past trips, and can't even recall being there or even where it was half the time.

It's not just the discovery of a new and pleasing sightseeing that will engrave the memory in your brain, also the company you were with, or what happened during that visit, especially if there were funny or crazy anecdotes.

That's why I noticed that traveling solo never brought that much joy, and meeting people in some hostel or tour group was a poor substitute than going with friends who you also happen to share something in common with.

Ok but if you have a mansion and no friends or family what's the point? You want the experience of spending time with people you like.

The same points of having friends and family but living in a poverty-ridden slum, where you can have the experience of watching your loved ones die of cholera.

I am not in favor of pursuing wealth at all costs, but there's a balance in having enough material wealth to live in a decent place in a safe, aesthetically pleasing neighborhood, having freedom of movement, being able to access healthcare and education, not starving, being physically fit, etc.

Things beyond that are superfluous and won't make you happier by themselves.

Why are you making this an unnecessary binary decision?

This is a false dichotomy. There is jo binary choice. This brings forth useless statements like money can't buy happiness.

You don't want a house, you want the experiences that come with owning one. Conversely, you can't have the experiences of that Bali trip if you don't purchase it. There, solved it for you and forever :).

It's almost as you needed a bit of everything, in moderation.

In medio stat virtus.

Goddamn Greeks already knew.

It depends on what kind of 'stuff' you are buying too. If it's a tool that you can use to learn new things or create beautiful things, then that's a possession that can unlock valuable experiences.

It seems like a simple truth to me that in the end, what humans value are experiences of some sort. And that possessions have weight and therefore can weigh you down. Over-analyzing the two as a dichotomy doesn't seem that useful to me.

If there ever was a clearer case of false dichotomy.

It's what you do with what you have. You can't have experiences if you don't possess certain things, and possesing things that you do nothing with is a waste.

But don't let common sense get in the way of a study grant.

Unlike the vast majority I do not like travelling. probaby due to being autistic. I will share how it feels for me. (Everyone is different so just me)

This ought not to be much of a problem, just dont travel. But it has been the "thing" for so long, and people want to do it, and expect everyone else to.

I tend to focus on practical matters.

Overstuffed highly uncomfortable airplanes where there is space for my legs, my arms rub up against the person(s) next to me.

All the hassle at the airport.

Then the hotel is never more comfortable than home.

The climate can be uncomfortable.

London in a peak hot period, I find the underground horrible. But it has been a while, perhaps they have stuffed some ACs in there.

Having certain dietary restrictions does not help this is made much more of a problem I dont speak the local language enough to talk about food, directions, I speak 4 languages fluently, and I am able to fake it in about 5 more.

An expectation when travelling with someone to do all sorts of boring and annoying tourist rituals.

etc. etc. etc. etc.

I live in Norway now but come from Colorado. I far prefer driving somewhere to airplanes. Much less hassle, kind of comfortable can stop when I want, eat something I like, having a good idea about what is sh*t and what is not when it comes to hotels, restaurants etc.

It is of course boring to just travel in the states.

I do like modern art museums and well run zoos. If I find those that is a good thing.

My house is larger than I need with the best view I can imagine. My car faster than I need. I own all the toys I want.

A bigger house or car won't make me happier at this point. Buying things doesn't make me happier either.

Using these things and toys, enjoying the view with friends and family eating things from the garden and meat from my neighbours. This is what makes me happy

On the other hand... My house isn't large enough to do what I want to with hobbies. It is rather small - an attic apartment, containing more than one person.

I do not have all the toys that I want - I'm limited by space and money. My main solo hobbies are cooking and artwork.

I live across an ocean from all family besides my spouse: It was my choice, I'm happy for it, but I'm never really going to get that family time without money and freedom to travel more.

I could spend more time with local friends if I had space for board games in my house (or other things, really). I would exercise more if I had room for a treadmill as well as hobbies: I choose hobbies because I don't actually like exercise but I do like hobbies.

You might have more than you can want, but I certainly don't. I'm not unhappy, per se, but I'd could definitely do without meeting frustrating limitation so very often. And that really is the difference: When you have enough of the right things, you eliminate a lot of daily frustration and anxiety that just happens in your daily life - and sometimes, you wind up more physically comfortable and/or healthier as well.

I was thinking a lot since writing this. The thing is my house is low rent because it's far off, my car is old and has over 300k km. It's was a very consciously decision to get here.

Nothing is of value, the actual value is the conscious decision of going against the main stream, taking some risks to get to place we actually can enjoy.

It's materialistic in a obvious way, but it's not about materialistic value.

> When I look around myself, I see two kinds of consumers, broadly speaking. One tends more toward having nice possessions: They have nicely decorated homes and stylish clothing. The other tends more toward having crazy experiences: They’ve traveled widely for meditation retreats, exotic meals, and maybe the occasional orgy.

This makes it sound like the author lives in an episode of Succession.

More importantly, the author doesn't seem to understand what "experiences" mean, because the examples he gives are very similar to "possessions" -- "trying the beef in Argentina" or making one's "entire [life] into the most glamorous Instagram feed possible". He systematically refers to experiences as something you buy.

Experiences are like love: the best ones are the ones you don't have to pay for.

The article's crux is on the subtitle: Be skeptical of pop psychology studies.

After reading the whole piece, I'm not sure any specific argument or point presented was stronger than the subtitle. Exactly because experiences vs possessions is a deep an interesting rabbit hole, having someone tell you in so many words "Trust that you can actually learn, at least broadly, what makes you happy, and that you know yourself more deeply than a pop psychology article does." doesn't look like a good use of someone's time.

I guess that's the classic dilemma of 'think for yourself' pieces.

Probably Stoicism answers the question instead of the article.

What of spending money doesn't make you as happy as friends.

The author compares different ways of spending and living your life, but among ways of spending, not with free experience:/

Doing football (I mean football, not the US thing) with friends is free and fun. You know you won't have the experience that will reveal the deeper meaning of your life. But it's just how you enjoy.

Going to Bali and south america for a beef makes no sense if you don't have acquaintances there. Maybe "you've been there" but so what.

I've recently travelled to crazy parts of the world, but because I wanted to hang out with friends there and develop bonds. (And my last travel was just about going on a shopping see spree instead of visiting, because my friend was into that. Bow I have the shorts that he chooses during a travel, and that makes me happy)

So yeah, consumerism isn't the way to happiness. Neither will be minimalism on its own, focusing on wealth, ...

Just do your things, idk, no one is there to judge . Make friends, make love, pick up painting or death metal to shout your soul,...

Just be the happiest guy on your deathbed (and we're all on a death bed, memento Mori )

And neither pointless possession nor pointless experience will fill your existential void. But friends _a la muerte_ that you want to fly around the world to see will do just that !

Experiences don’t take up space, but then if your memory starts to go you’ll lose the experiences.

There is just one that I don't understand about this article

It makes the difference between possessions that are truly a mean to an end, like a guitar to allow you to do music, and the Instagram experience (like going to the fancy restaurant when you're visibly not interested in food)

When you like something (in this article the music), you can't dissociate the possessions to do it (the guitar), and all the experience you need to practice and do your passion (your guitar will be pointless without gigs, without traveling to see inspiring and skilled people to train you, to find a subject to sing about,...)

And that can be extended to anything! Like science ? What's the point of owning a supercomputer and lab equipment if you don't go to conferences and PhD presentations of your friends ?

Like cycling? What's the point of owning a bicycle if you don't cycle to nearby towns to have restaurants there, or never travel to the mountains to practice,... ?

When you're passionate about something, this passion and the people you will meet for it will matter. It's not a matter of possessions vs experiences.

The only thing that matters is to thing about how each experience and possession will shape you

most of my possessions are tools to accomplish something. eg. i got a DSLR camera (the cheapest model, but that's still quite more expensive than other cameras) not because i want a nice possession, but because i prefer a fast camera to take photos of my always moving kids. if the camera breaks and i have to get a new one then it's not the loss of a possession that i'll lament over, but how much it cost over its lifetime. (500$ over 5 years doesn't feel so bad in the end). same goes for any other valuable/expensive item i get.

The article concentrates on different types of consumption. I find what really makes people happy is creating rather than consuming.

Experiences and possessions do not make one happy. Flow states are the real deal. Invest in yourself and your skills. Be like a japanese martial artist master that can kill with one strike of a katana. Or like Robert Fripp, John Carmack, Buddha, Terrence Tao etc. Pick something and try to master it. Rabbit hole is deep.

Definitely important to define terms. Seems like in this case experiences = thrill-seeking or "bought experiences".

For that type of thing, I'm reminded of this SNL sketch about a tour operator that tries to set realistic expectations about what going to Italy can or can't do for your life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg

> There's a lot a vacation can do. Help you unwind. See some different-looking squirrels. But it cannot fix deeper issues like how you behave in group settings or your general baseline mood. That is a job for incremental lifestyle changes sustained over time. We can give you the zipline. We cannot give you the ability to say "wheeee" and mean it.

If you are healthy you want thousand things to make you happy. If you are sick you only want one thing.

This is a wild late stage capitalist, Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation take. The author exclusively refers to experiences as something to be bought. A Bali retreat, a dinner at Chez Panisse, you can imagine these as something Patrick Bateman would espouse at a dinner party.

The author makes the mistake in trying to distinguish between spending money on products and spending money on services, but these are fundamentally the same thing; they are just something to be bought. Only one is temporal and once is physical.

When people discuss the joys of experiences as anti-materialism, they are talking about actually doing something. Depending on your sense of adventure this could be going to a dinner party with friends, or climbing a mountain in a foreign country. True experience needs to happen in your own control, outside of consumerism. This is a well studied and written about phenomenon: see any adventure book written in the past 100 years.

Undoubtedly there’s something to be learned about the happiness-generating potential of possessions versus experiences in aggregate. But surely there must be significant intersubject variation. It probably has at least something to do with your stage of life. In my 30’s travel and acquisition of possessions were both a source of happiness. Approaching my 60’s now, both experiences and possessions have different value. I find I’m much more interested in the meaning behind how I use my time and money.

Happiness is overrated.

Which is more fulfilling? Ownership or experience?

The whole thing is a big false dichotomy. People mostly aren’t buying a snowmobile because they want one sitting in their back shed. They buy it to use it.

Even when something isn’t useful, the ownership experience still might be great. For example, if you spend thousands buying a painting you love and hang it someplace you see everyday, how would you categorize that?

Ownership enables experience.

Yet the trivial, banal, waste of humanity is to allow lacking to deny necessity, or affix one’s potency upon possessing some “thing” which makes one good enough for whatever so ever.

I do not condemn standards, yet true lacking comes from within, if you are to be a wayward self.

The most profound experience I ever had was experiencing days as whole moments on a sabbatical where I just hiked for months straight.

My only possessions were about 20 lbs of gear. I can promise you, the possessions were necessary to make the experience possible but I don’t have a relationship with that year.

I have a relationship with the memory of how reality works when you disconnect from society and plug into nature.

I’m supposedly strongly in the unmaterialistic camp, but to my horror often when I finally buy useless nice to have things they turn out to be really important sources of active happiness for me for years. Like buying a nice car after owning reasonable cars previously, building home cinema or getting guitar way too good for my skill level when I already had a guitar.

Both possessions and experiences may put you in the aesthetic camp anyway. Some people are more wired for the ethical camp where commitment and doing the right things makes you happy.

https://jondouglas.dev/either-or/

I'm not thinking about possessions that I once had twenty years ago, but I am thinking about experiences.

Many of us think very fondly of that computer system or gaming console our parents bought for us in 1983. They spent a crazy amount of money that they probably couldn’t afford and only as adults do we fully realize what our parents did for us.

You kinda want both.

Possesions are also nostalgic. I just did a walk with my 2yo on my old tricycle. There is no way I would have remembered it without it being around.

The sky doesn't complain about the clouds.

To my experience, the trouble seems to be in the external sourcing of feelings like happiness.

If only...I would exercises work for me when considering my intentions. If only I had a fast red car then I'd be happy. If only I went to Paris I would be happy.

I can’t believe the article used that midjourney image with the hell-beasts in the background

There's always this, by Donovan, well commented too:

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cGWTAe3M6U

partial lyrics, perhaps the most meaningful:

> Happiness runs, happiness runs

> Why? Because

So it's basically a make-or-buy decision: Buy your experiences or make it with the stuff you own.

And no, a hammer is not necessarily more boring than a guitar. It depends on what you do with it.

Learning to truly appreciate experiences is what makes people happiest. In the end, a possession is just another experience.

Touring through eastern Afghanistan with a cheap netbook and a backpack more than a decade ago made me extremely happy.

I don’t know if the author is right in general. But I possess a good German car and I have the experience daily of the quality of the car, the silence, the smoothness etc. And yes, it’s pretty nice!

When I have something that I really appreciate either from a value-add or simply an engineering or artistic perspective it's something I'll never forget - and often spend time thinking back to when it's gone. I think your example of a nice car (whatever that might mean to someone) is an excellent one. I have so many font memories of various cars I've owned over the years, the happiness they've given me and how much I appreciate their engineering.

My personal opinion: Having lots of nice things doesn't automatically make you happy, however having appreciation for nice things you own almost always does.

I think you described it accurately… possessions helps experiencing nice things on a regular basis.

Striving for happiness is a trap.

What make people happy are not experience per se, but the validation they get by posting them on instagram. It’s the same thing: in the 50s people uses to buy a new car or a new refrigerator to impress the neighbor and today they post their travel to Machu Picchu or Dubai to impress their followers

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