Tag: consumerism

Nihilism, Existentialism, and Basic Human Conditioning

crimson

I’ve been thinking about my identity recently. Who or what would I be, if it were not for the influences of my environment. Who or what would I be if I were somehow not situated, in Simone de Beauvoir‘s understanding of situation. I almost always come to the same conclusion each time: I would not exist.

Every day, I notice something else that has had a profound effect on myself and on the world I inhabit. A few days ago, that thing was Santa Claus. I had known for a very long time that the story of Santa Claus was a consumerist story, designed to sell products and get countless families out to the stores. What I realized, however, was how much the story seemed to insidiously form the foundation of consumerism as a whole.

What do you want? This is the question asked by the shadows in the 90s television series Babylon 5. For the shadows, it is a prompt to action. A call for races to fight for the things they desire. I imagine they would be quite happy if we spent all our time fighting with each other in our deluded attempts to acquire everything our hearts desired.

Ironically, this is the same question Santa asks. However, when Santa asks this question, it is not a prompt to action. Instead, it is held in front of the individual as a reward for good behavior. It is a call for individuals to conform and comply with the establishment. Be good, and Santa will give you what you want for Christmas. In fact, an individual who fights for what they want would be considered very naughty, and thus could expect coal in their stockings.

The heart of this transaction is obedience for a reward (often a material reward). Like Pavlov’s dogs, individuals are conditioned: when the bell rings, the dog becomes hungry, just as when Christmas time approaches, the children become expectant for their reward. It becomes an integral part of the individual’s behavior, just as it does for the dogs, manifesting itself in curious ways and causing potential harm.

But now imagine a world without these things. Specifically, imagine a world without Santa Claus, once a year granting everyone’s wish for the thing they most desire. For some, this will be easy. For other’s nearly impossible. For those who say it is easy, they will likely tell a story about how Santa is simply a myth. Of course a world without Santa can exist; it is the world we currently inhabit. To them, I ask if they are so certain…

Those who cannot imagine such a world, I suspect, are facing the same dilemma I face. Without those dangling rewards, without “proper” motivation, what ought I do with myself? This is the capitalist dogma, where the incentive of wealth and accumulation of property is the prime motivator to action. Santa Claus may be fictitious, but his face is the face of capitalism and consumerism.

I sometimes end up in discussions regarding universal basic income. My opponents suggest that if such a thing existed, people would lazily remain at home doing nothing indefinitely. They believe that without the motivation of money, nothing would get done and our societies would collapse. They often cite the former Soviet Union as proof of their claim. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union exhibited capitalist dogma better than the United States ever did, which led to its accelerated collapse; the Americans are well on their way to a similar outcome presently.

I keep beating around the topic. It is time I focus. All of this, as I see it, is for one purpose: purpose. Meaning. To direct large numbers of people in a direction. To motivate them to action. But not just any action. To the action that is deemed most beneficial to those decision makers in our world. This is why we are called “consumers.”

We don’t have to be though. For the nihilist, the world is without meaning or purpose. Period. No action is any better than any other action, because in a world devoid of value, all actions are truly equal. A world full of nihilists would never accomplish anything. But then again, they wouldn’t really care either, would they.

For the existentialist, there is no inherent meaning or purpose in the world. That is, there is no outside force or influence that has the privileged position of applying meaning to things. Instead, we all have that power within ourselves. It is our freedom. We choose the purpose and meaning in things. So things can have value, but only because we decide that things have that value. There are certainly better actions than others; generally the better actions are those that lead us to the things we value. But a world full of existentialists tends to have the same problem as the world of nihilists; each individual exercising their freedom is still an individual, and the actions they follow will not necessarily avoid conflict with the other individuals. Accomplishing of larger projects can be challenging.

The seemingly best option is to have an authority that establishes meaning and purpose for all. A single authority applying value to things guarantees that all individuals will agree to the value of those things. And where there is agreement, there is shared motivation toward common goals. No more pesky wasting energy assessing value on their own. No more fighting with others regarding the value of things. No, that energy can now be better spent on more important things, like innovation and progress and the accumulation of wealth.

Some will say that God is that external authority. Only God can establish the value of things. It is His will after all. In this, I will suggest that those of shared belief system will share an agreement. However, this is not the observance. Unfortunately, even those of the same faith cannot always agree on the same interpretation of that faith.

But there is still Santa Claus to save the day. Keeping all the little girls and boys highly motivated to behave in order to receive their reward. Their hearts’ greatest desires fulfilled at the flick of his nose. What better training could you hope for, for the future’s well grounded consumers.

Silence

crimson

It is not like me to have nothing to say. Talk to anyone who knows me; I am notorious for talking at length about almost anything. The fact that it has been nearly three weeks since my last post seems strange, at least to me.

This blog is for me. It is for me to write what is on my mind, when I wish to write. Perhaps I simply do not wish to write? I don’t think that is the issue. Honestly, I think it is a question of priorities. Many of my priorities have changed over the past few months, even the past few years. Those things I considered particularly important have now become much less so. Last year, I graduated secondary school, earning my first degree. This blog was, for me, a way to continue practicing and exercising my logic and reason. A way to continue writing. However, since graduating, I have slowly been sliding back into other areas of interest.

From a very young age, computers have been an integral part of my existence. I started programming at about five years old on a Texas Instruments TI99/4A. I learned to program in BASIC back then, a very slow and clunky language intended to make programming easy for people like me to learn. BASIC is very basic.

Among the reasons I think programming appealed to me was the fact that I could control something. In my life, I have observed that there is very little I have actual control over. My parents were a bit overbearing, and definitely overprotective. I had very few opportunities to express a freedom, assuming such a thing even exists. I am not surprised that I doubt the existence of free will when I consider my upbringing. I find it strange when my parents disagree with me on the topic of freedom; I guess they were on the other side of that equation.

I find myself frequently thinking about oppression and slavery. About situations where people are in some way forced to make certain sorts of decisions and choices. When I think about this long enough, I realize that everyone is a slave to determinism. That is, all the choices I make are influenced (heavily) by all the things that have come before. The insidious chain of cause and effect plays its part on all the choices I make, as much as I try to avoid it. Like an adversity to touch hot stoves, my upbringing led me directly to the point I am today. Not only was this situation I find myself in inevitable, but I really could not have done otherwise.

This is the point of contention I expect most people to dispute. This is the point my own mother argued against vehemently. As she suggested, if fate ruled then I ought to walk into the street in front of a moving bus; her reasoning was that if fate truly ruled, I’d somehow not be hit. Unfortunately, it is my belief that my mother did not truly understand what I was saying. Of course I would get hit by a moving bus were I to jump in front of one. It is just silly to suggest otherwise. After all, cause and effect is just as valid in that situation as any other.

However, I try to understand her point of view in this. I think she was trying to suggest that I don’t have to jump in front of a bus. After all, I understand the consequences of such actions, and therefore I can choose to do otherwise. That is what I think she was trying to suggest. Unfortunately, this simply reaffirms my side of the argument: I would never step in front of a moving bus because I KNOW that I would be hit by it. It is really no different than the hot stove at all, and my knowledge of how cause and effect works has already made my decision before I am aware of it. Like when the Oracle tells Neo that he has already made his choice, he only now must understand why he has made the choice. “Know thy self.”

This is why I am so passionate regarding recognition of the structures of society. This is why I fear patriarchy and consumerism. I KNOW that their influence has a hold on me, and on all those around me. I KNOW that when I feel the urge to control another person, especially a woman, it is patriarchy that has deemed that I do so. I KNOW that when I feel the motivation to make lots of money and buy lots of things, consumerism is behind it. I am smart enough to understand that control over other people is pointless, as is the accumulation of stuff.

It is at this point that I always remember what my professors told me during my education: if you don’t agree with the way something is, you need to be able to provide an alternative if you plan to argue it coherently. I can suggest that patriarchy and consumerism are the worst inventions that have ever been, but unless I can suggest an alternative system to exist under, my point is mute. What would life be without patriarchy or consumerism?

I hurt people, unintentionally, when I work my way down this rabbit hole. When I tell my wife that it is not her appearance that impresses me, but her empathy, she seems both happy and sad at my statements. I think she is happy because I see her, in the way Marilyn Frye suggests women should be seen. She is not a stage hand, she is the star of my show. However, I also think she wishes I looked at her as being the most attractive woman in the world, in the way that she exemplifies the eternal woman of patriarchy. She seems often depressed at her inability to attain the perfect hourglass shape and incomprehensible weight, the statistics fed to her through all the mass media we are exposed to. So when I indirectly suggest her appearance is not important to me, I think she might interpret it to mean that she is unattractive. Like how people, when trying to be polite about an ugly person, they suggest that the person’s personality is what is important. It is a veiled insult. I swear that is not what I intend at all, but we are all part of that same system, and so those sorts of interpretations are common.

What is the alternative? I cannot say. I don’t know. When I consider myself, all these systems and structures stripped away, it seems to me I would be nothing. That is, every aspect of my being is infused with these structures. One way or another, I am a victim of my conditioning. I am a slave. I see no escape from it. Only one thing ever remains in my deep thought: my raw consciousness.

To be clear, it is not the consciousness most people would think about. When René Descartes strips away everything he can doubt in his meditations, he suggests the only thing that remains is his existence: “I think, I am.” There is debate as to whether this actually works, but I will give him this. What comes next as he travels back to the world is where I find myself disputing. Because he follows a path brought about through his conditioning, conditioning brought about through his lived experience. He would not consider such things if he had not first lived and experienced the world, in some fashion. The very idea of God comes from lived experience.

For me, what I mean by raw consciousness is that there is this thing I have, or I am, that I cannot really describe or explain. The other term I often use is my “first person,” a term to denote that it is my perspective on the world. I recognize that this raw consciousness is fed information through the incredibly flawed interfaces that have been provided: my eyes, my ears, etc. I know that even those interfaces could have been hijacked, through something akin to simulation theory. In fact, unlike Descartes, I don’t even agree that my exercising a thought is sufficient to suggest I exist, as a particularly good simulation might be doing the work of thinking for me.

The best I can sort of suggest is that I am like a passive observer, receiving all this information from somewhere. And due to the causal nature of everything, even my choices and decisions could have been (likely are) also hijacked. I feel like the “job” of my formal consciousness (the consciousness that most people think of) is to tell stories. That is, stuff happens and I make choices (which are predetermined by causality), and my conscious mind finds a way to justify and explain what happened and why I chose as I did. My mind tells a story to explain the occurrences in the world, and the occurrences in my mind as well. That I am simply a story telling machine.

The story goes something like this: I am a raw consciousness, a passive observer of experience. I, in some fashion, inhabit this body and this mind, both which provide for me experiences to observe. But this body and this mind both are subject to a deterministic universe, where causal relationships have been playing out for some time. I have no control of this mind nor this body, I am simply a passive observer. It is sort of like watching a very long film.

It is even possible that what I think is my body, and what I think is the world, both do not exist as I think they do at all. It is possible that the experience information I receive is fabricated by some massive system, as in simulation theory. However, if this is true, it matters little. A fabricated reality is still a reality. The rules and laws of one universe don’t need to resemble the rules and laws of another, so long as there is at least some consistency. To be honest, even the question of consistency is irrelevant.

The purpose of my mind is to tell a story. Using the faculties of reason and memory, my mind tells a story about how things have come about and why, when it is able to consider a why. When a why is unavailable, magic often suffices. This is definitely why I can do something without good reasons; it simply means my mind is failing me at telling a good story, or perhaps even a bad one. If the story is unconvincing to me, then I am a hypocrite and a liar. If it is, I am honorable and trustworthy. As a person, I am really only as good as the stories I can tell.

In the end, I am always left with one thing that could possibly be me: this raw consciousness, this first person passive observer. Strip away patriarchy and consumerism, and the countless other systems and structures that exist, and I am nothing more than a remote feeling. A slave with absolutely no control over anything at all.

Reflections on the Pandemic

crimson

Progress has been made with the pandemic. Both progress by humans in attempts to defeat the virus, and by the virus in finding ways not to be defeated. Humans have generated several vaccines to combat the spread of the original virus, having been brought to the public with “unprecedented” speed. However, many mutations of the original strain have been identified as well, and those vaccines have been effective only partially in dealing with the mutations. The war rages on.

With all that has been going on, I have continued to be on lockdown. I’ve been cooped up at home for approximately 10 months now. That’s a long time to be told you need to stay at home. My wife and I have been suffering the effects of staying at home for so long, with depression and melancholy topping the list of side effects. It’s hard to know what to do in this situation. Should we continue to be the good citizens we have been, listening to the authority figures and remaining at home? Or should we revolt and return to how things were before the pandemic, going out and enjoying our lives again? This debate reminds me of the first post I made to this blog, and so I have read it again. Link here.

In that post, I presented my opinion regarding the pandemic. That what ought to be recognized was not a health crisis but a systemic crisis. That humans have been ignoring the significant problems and issues of society for a long time, and the pandemic has simply thrust those problems and issues into the spotlight. There were definitely sparks of promise out there over the past 10 months. Black Lives Matter protests. Hope for climate change issues with the clearing of waters in places like Venice, Italy. And even more recently, economic turmoil as hedge fund managers, having been manipulating the markets for years, have been highlighted by large numbers of Reddit users who have cooperated as amateur investors to beat those managers at their own game. It seems to me that it is clear as day what is going on; what has been going on for decades and even centuries. And others must have seen what I see too, as they have clearly taken action.

I hold onto hope that things will change. But there is a lot of evidence that things will not change as well. Particularly with regard to many countries’ approaches to the corona virus. Specifically, their banking on vaccines to solve the problem. It seems to me that many countries have simply spent their time focused on stop-gap or band-aid solutions for now—such as lockdowns, mask wearing, and social distancing—instead of working on long term systemic changes to attend to their populations—such as considering things like universal basic income, or even simply forcing the hyper wealthy to provide support to the world’s people in this time of great need. This last point is one I feel rather strongly about.

According to traditional capitalism, it is important to allow everyone their freedom to pursue their projects. Those who’s projects are good projects, and who are able to do a good job in pursuing those projects, will receive the benefits of their choices, amassing great wealth and power. Unfortunately, those who’s projects are not good projects, or who are unable to do a good job in pursuing good projects, will suffer. Technically, those who suffer are unfit for their world as such, and as per Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, will eventually die out, their genetics lost to time. This is the idea, at any rate. And during a pandemic, this formula still holds as true. Simply look at how much more wealth the hyper wealthy have amassed on the shoulders of the world’s people, who suffer and die as they are instructed to remain at home without the supports or resources to do so effectively.

I think upon what I learned about ancient Greek and Roman societies. Especially Roman. Where the name of the game was patron-client relations. It was fairly simple actually: those who were wealthy and powerful were the patrons, while those who were not as wealthy or powerful were the clients. The job of the clients was to do what the patrons wanted, often through labor. But the patrons also had a job too, to support their clients. No one was off the hook. It was the patrons who funded and organized the celebrations, set about the construction of buildings, and handled the politics and military. In other words, those who were wealthy spent their time not on the accumulation of more wealth (though increasing wealth did occur as a result of their actions), but instead spent their wealth on attracting followers and pleasing the people, their clients.

In ancient Greece, when it wasn’t yet called Greece, warlords and generals didn’t simply command obedient and loyal troops. They had to persuade those soldiers to follow them through the offering of benefits. As one without wealth, I might only be able to offer my service and labour, but I still could decide who to offer those things to. If a particular warlord wasn’t offering much in the way of benefits, my loyalty would likely wane as I pursued other avenues toward my own benefits.

It could be argued that these things still exist today. A large company with no loyal customers will not be a large company for long. However, as has been demonstrated time and again over the past couple decades at least, when a large company is large enough, they can receive a “bail out” when they may be in trouble. The “bail out” is assembled through the use of taxpayer money, which ultimately means that the large company has acquired the funds from the people whether the people liked it or not. In other words, the people, who’s service and labour should be up to them to decide where and how it is utilized, has been stripped of their freedom to choose. The large company has simply usurped the wealth from those who have no wealth. Sounds much like some tales of the Sheriff of Knottingham.

I have ranted on long enough for today. I hope my point is clear. Not much has changed since my first post. The pandemic is still a problem and is still revealing the cracks in the systems of our societies. We still have the opportunity to address those issues, however challenging such changes may be. It is unclear to me whether changes are actually coming or not, but I still have hope. And I’m not banking on a vaccine to bail me out.

Home Economics

crimson

I had a very productive conversation with a friend last night, and thought I would post today on a part of what we were talking about. Specifically, on how to get by in our world financially. While I recognize that the sorts of advice and tools I am about to share are not necessarily going to work for everyone, these are the strategies I have used in my life that allow me to maintain financial stability and even some degree of financial freedom. This is what has worked for me, so maybe you might find it helpful for yourself too.

When I was much younger, and still in high school, I believed that in order to do as I wanted at any time that I wanted, I would need to make over $500,000 per year for every year in my life. I came to this number by suggesting that for $1000 per day, I could freely do anything I wished. For example, perhaps I might like to fly to Paris, France to have lunch on a particular day. With the income I described, I could have lunch in Paris every day without worrying that I would run out of money.

That is a lot of money to be making by any individual, even in today’s standards. I would suggest it might even be an unreasonable goal, considering what one might have to do in their lives to earn such an amount of money. It was in part due to this belief that I attended university the first time trying to become a Mechanical Engineer. Such a profession would have put me on a path that could, at least potentially, lead to the achieving of such a goal. As I believe I have mentioned in other posts, this didn’t work out for me. Attending university with my aim being to gain employment that produced such large sums of money was ultimately a disaster for me.

What I’ve learned since then is that in order to actually do the things I want in this world, when I want to do them, actually only requires me to make about $30,000 per year, which amounts to making approximately $15 per hour at a full time job. And as many of you likely already know, $15 per hour is just above minimum wage in the area of the world I currently live. This is far more reasonable and attainable than the original goal of $500,000 per year.

Admittedly, such a discovery has a number of conditions attached. Firstly, this is how much I would need to make if I lived alone, with no dependents nor a companion. Also, it would assume I have no other debts (for example, my mortgages would all need to be paid off completely). While my current situation does not meet these requirements, the additional funding I require to fulfill my goals in my current circumstances is not drastically more than this. I have not actually worked out the numbers for my present circumstances, but if I suggested I needed about $60,000 per year now, I’m sure that would be enough. It may be double my previous estimate, but it is certainly far less than my original estimate of $500,000.

With this groundwork laid out, I will now reveal some of my strategies that allow for the achieving of this goal. While discussing these strategies, it is important to keep in mind these findings I have established. The goals above are intimately tied to the strategies below, and if you adjust your life to the strategies below, you will likely find that the goals above need to be adjusted as a result. This will become clearer as I proceed, so please bear with me.

The first, and possibly most important, observation that I learned to make is with regard to how I spend my time. Literally. How much does it cost for me to take part in various activities over time. This was not my discovery, but actually was advice offered to me by my father at a rather young age. To understand this idea better, I will present a few examples:

If I decide to go to the theater to watch a movie, how much does that cost me (these numbers are from about 2010 or so)? The movie tickets, in addition to the popcorn and drink that I often purchase, typically end up costing me about $20. The time I spend watching this movie will often take up about 2 hours of my life. As a result, doing the math, watching a movie in the theater costs me about $10 per hour to do.

If I decide to play Pokemon on my Gameboy, how much does that cost me (these numbers are from about 2000 or so)? The Gameboy cost me about $100 to purchase, and the Pokemon game cost me about $50. The playing of the game itself does not cost me any money, just time. So the question is how much time do I (or did I) spend playing that game? In this particular case, the Pokemon cartridge happened to track the time I played it, so I could see precisely how much time I had been playing the game by the time I decided to work out this math. It turned out I had played well over 100 hours in the game, and I was still continuing to play the game (I was far from completing the game). If I suggest that I spend 150 hours playing that game (a conservative estimate), then I find that it costs me about $1 per hour to play Pokemon on my Gameboy. Of further interest in this particular situation, the more I play the game, the less it costs. For example, if I continue playing this game and eventually accumulate 300 hours of play, the math will reveal that at that point it cost me $0.50 per hour to play. In other words, the more I play, the less money I seem to be spending per hour.

If I decide to write programs in Python on my computer, an activity I actually rather enjoy, how much does that cost me (these numbers are from this current time, as this is one of my present hobbies). The computer I use to program on was salvage, and so literally cost me no money. Furthermore, the computer I use is utilized for many, many other purposes than simply programming, so any number I suggest is already technically much more than it ought to be for this example. Having said all of this, I will pretend for a moment I purchased the computer ($1500), and that I spend approximately one sixth (about 17%) of my time writing Python programs on it. The operating system (linux) and the Python interpreter did not cost me any money as they are freely available online. Thus, very approximately, I might suggest that I have spent about $250 in order to program in Python. The act of programming itself does not cost me any money, just time. I have likely spent over 100 hours programming so far, and I continue to do so, as it is a current hobby of mine. Thus, programming in Python costs me (presently) about $2.50 per hour, but like the video game, continues to become cheaper and cheaper as I keep doing it. Knowing that I actually did not spend money on the computer, and the actual number is $0 per hour. This is (so far) the least expensive activity for me to engage in.

This is already quite telling. Between the above activities, I ought to preference Python programming, as I spend the least amount of money doing it. I don’t think it is an accident that this activity can also be quite productive, as the programs I write can be used for other purposes, such as increasing automation in other chores and activities I engage in. This raises a couple more examples I think it is worth presenting:

If I decide to work a job, how much does that cost me? The answer to this one should already be obvious. It costs me nothing to work a job. In fact, I actually make money when I work a job. If I used the example at the beginning of this post, I might earn $15 per hour while working a job. This activity is now even more desirable than Python programming, assuming I actually enjoy working. Thus, it is certainly of great benefit to me to work a job I enjoy, as it won’t feel like work, and I will be earning money from the activity.

If I decide to do absolutely nothing, how much does that cost me? Believe it or not, this ends up costing me something financially. For example, I am sitting in a rental property, sitting on a couch. The rental property costs me about $1500 per month to live in, and the couch cost me about $1000 to purchase. So even if I sit here doing nothing, there is some cost involved. Furthermore, I typically do many activities in this home and on this couch, which will affect the math. However, for the sake of argument, I will suggest I am purposely doing nothing just to see what kind of numbers I end up with. There are 720 hours in a month of 30 days. Thus, the rental costs me about $2 per hour, even when I do absolutely nothing else.

If I decide to stay in a hotel for a night, how much does that cost me? This gets a lot more complicated again, as I would be staying in the hotel often toward some other purpose. But again, just to see some numbers, I will again assume I do absolutely nothing except sit in the hotel, perhaps watching television. If the hotel room costs me $200 per night, and there are 24 hours in a day, then staying in the hotel costs me about $8 per hour to stay there. Clearly my rental is less expensive than the hotel.

This all may sound very pedantic, but it all has a point. If I am able to break down the cost of all my activities into a common time slice (in my case by the hour), then I can start to see how those activities compare to each other. In some cases I spend money, and in a few cases I make money. And in some cases, an activity becomes less expensive the more I engage in that activity. When I started to see all these things, I started to consciously decide to pursue more activities that cost me less money. Furthermore, I preferenced activities where the cost of the activity dropped as I engaged with the activity more. For those who know me, I do/did play a lot of video games, especially Pokemon. In all honesty, playing Pokemon might be the least expensive activity I perform at this point, putting aside using salvaged computers to program on.

By behaving as I have, despite having generated less income than most of my friends, I have also tended to save far more money than those same friends. Furthermore, I have been able to “splurge” more than those friends at times I may want to spend a bit more money as well, because of my having my savings. During this pandemic, when we are all expected to lockdown and remain at home, I have endured better than many of the people around me as a result of my life choices.

There is, of course, a drawback to much of what I’ve described, as my friend pointed out last night. If I really want to engage in the more costly activities, I will require a much higher income than I presently have. Activities like scuba diving, sky diving, or even playing golf or tennis generally cost a very substantial amount of money. I have heard from those people who do engage in those activities that they consider the rewards they receive from those activities to be quite spectacular. If it makes them happy, then who am I to criticize? However, in order to engage in those activities, those individuals will obviously need to sacrifice more in order to generate the larger incomes they require, possibly taking jobs they do not actually enjoy.

It can be hard to find enjoyment in certain mundane activities. Our society, constructed on structures of consumerism, can even seek to shame individuals who do take enjoyment in such activities. My friend last night told me he enjoys sweeping floors and cleaning, but seemed incredibly ashamed to admit such a thing. Personally, I am a bit envious that he has found such a productive and important activity enjoyable. I wish I found doing those activities more enjoyable myself. However, he indicated to me that among his circle of friends, doing such mundane activities is considered “beneath” them as well, suggesting that people around him are even discouraged from performing those activities, despite any enjoyment they may receive.

There is much more I could say about all of this, but I think I have rambled on long enough for the moment. And I believe my reader should by now see my point. I believe that living a life of financial stability, and possibly freedom, is not as far-fetched as we are often led to believe. I believe that structures such as consumerism seem to motivate people to desire the more expensive activities, leading people away from potential happiness. My friend likes to sweep floors, an activity that potentially earns him money while at the same time fulfilling a happiness for him, much as my hobby of writing Python programs does for me. By embracing these sorts of choices and activities, and by recognizing the significance of finding a job we enjoy rather than a job that pays well, I believe we have a much greater potential for happiness in our lives. And it won’t require making ridiculous sums of money in the process.