Conversation 5

Cory Stieg’s article highlights the ideologies of money being the key to happiness. Stieg debunks these prepositions by going in depth and giving us her conclusions on these thoughts. I believe the conclusion proposed here is that money does not make us any more happy, at least at a certain point nor is it the key to infinite happiness. 

She brings several premises and points as to why he believes these and I agree with her on this basis. He tells us in this article, “If you grow up without resources like food, clothing or shelter, then having more money really makes a huge difference in your life and overall well-being, but once you hit that middle class level, there really is no correlation above that,” says Brad Klontz, a financial therapist and psychology professor at Creighton University. She also previously stated, “When people earned more than $105,000, their happiness levels decreased.” Meaning people constantly associate their meaning and purpose of life with money when really, once they get to a certain point, their happiness will be put to a halt due to their ideologies and their attachment of money with happiness. 

Another premise she adds is hedonic adaptation, a psychological phenomenon that occurs within humans, which is when we adapt to a change that once made us happy, leading our expectations to change over time and therefore, decreasing our happiness levels. This suggests that once we put our happiness into an ideology like money, while we as humans are prone to natural occurrences like hedonic adaptations, we will never be indelibly happy.

She instead proposes that we put our happiness into more meaningful things like our purposes that we harbor within ourselves, suggesting that we are more likely to feel more content and happy.