Can money make us happy?!

Question from the Internet:

“Can you be happy with little money?”

The notion that happiness depends on money works only in our artificial society where everything — people’s worth, the purpose of life — is measured through wealth, material pleasures and possessions.

There is no question about needing money to secure one’s necessities. But beyond that, more money not only does not bring us happiness, but it actually makes us more unhappy. Today we can peer into the lives of “celebrities” into the lives of the “rich and famous”. Do they look happy with all of their wealth and fame?!

“Happiness” is the general balance and homeostasis with our environment when we translate the notion to the language of biology or natural systems in general. If we are honest with ourselves, we can also conclude that our happiest moments and memories come through positive, mutual connections with other people.

True happiness is a unique “homeostasis”, sense of equilibrium that we build and sustain in human society, at least in smaller, purposeful groups, where people make all their efforts — beyond securing their necessities — to generate positive, sustainable, mutually responsible and mutually complementing interconnections and cooperation with each other. There we can sense a collective sense of well-being, enjoying the safety and fulfilment of others like parents getting fulfilment from catering everything for theirchildren.

Only when we build such “Nature-like” mutual integration — we can learn from the cells and organs of our own biological bodies — where we give birth to a new, collective sense of existence beyond all our egocentric and subjective boundaries, there we will sense this “true happiness” and “true fulfilment” which no individual person can achieve alone.