Money Can't Buy Me....Happiness?
Looks like LiveScience.com pulled this one from their deep and plentiful "duh bag." The title of the article? "Study: Money Does Not Buy Much Happiness," by none other than Captain Obvious.Apparently the crack scientists publishing their study in the journal Science can find very little correlation between the amount of money people make and their frequency of good moods.
Whew! I gotta tell you. This is lifting a serious burden off of me, because here I was doing everything I could to make more money so that I could finally get out of my perpetual deep blue funk.
Just kidding.
Actually, this article reminded me of a book I heard about recently titled, "Generation Me : Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before," by a lady named Jean M. Twenge. I haven't read the book, but I did see her in an interview on the Glenn Beck show and listened to what her book was about. Basically she's saying that the self-esteem movement, coupled with the fact that parents give their kids everything they want yet neither ask for them to be responsible nor discipline them for their poor decisions, has created a generation of narcissistic, self-loathing young people. Booklist says, "These young people were raised with the idea of self-esteem being more important than achievement, which has caused them to place the self above all else. Such beliefs also have created a generation of young people who believe every dream is attainable but who aren't prepared to deal with discovering it isn't so."
Granted, the two works are talking about two different things. I just wanted to point out the fact that this world is searching for something, whether it is happiness in riches or purpose in oneself. Sadly, neither of those things are found in either of those places. The challenge then is for the Church to show the world where these things can be found: In Jesus Christ. But has the Church bought into this same kind of mentality? I don't know. What do you think?
4 Comments:
But money can buy you cool threads like Captain Obvious.
LOL. Yeah, Captain Obvious boasts the finest threads. Apparently stating the obvious is quite a lucrative enterprise. I oughta look into that...
'Lil Scrib,
How's the fam? It's been a while...you know the funny thing is that somewhere along the way, people forgot to teach their children that accomplishment, money, and success all take a lot of hard work. Above all-else, these things take a strong, supportive family structure. Most of the time folks spend so much time striving for success, money, and power that they forget to ask their wife/kids/parents how their day was. It's a "hand me a load of money for not much experience or performance, then I'll dedicate every waking minute to your agenda without question" kind of attitude. Too bad most people miss the fact that none of that matters in the brief time that we spend on this planet (which we are trashing). Drop me a line, we should catch up....
Derek
Derek, great to hear from you. I'd love to catch up via e-mail. You can click on my blogger profile and then on 'E-mail' to shoot me something privately. Hope to hear from you, and come back to this and my other blog.
As for your comment, I was particularly interested in, "Most of the time folks spend so much time striving for success, money, and power that they forget to ask their wife/kids/parents how their day was." I believe you are referring to a case of severely misplaced priorities. The relationships the God desires us to have with one another, particularly in the family, transcend the temporal things like money and "success." It is in our relationships with one another that the life of God in us is lived out on a day-to-day basis. I reflect who God is when I love my wife and when she loves me. The moment I elevate something temporal above these things that are eternal I am in violation of God's intended way.
By His grace I will get it right. I certainly cannot do it on my own.
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