Money Chapter 1: At least you can live a painful life comfortably

“Money cannot bring you happiness, but at least you can be miserable in comfort.” (Money cannot bring you happiness, but at least you can be miserable in comfort.) – This is Oscar Wilde ) famous sentence.

Author: GUDORDI | 2014-10-21

The first series of articles in this column will be about money. In the following series of articles, the author will explore the issue of money from a different perspective and in a more intellectual and logical way. However, these multiple articles represent more than just different perspectives, because there is a certain degree of coherence between them. The point of view of the second article should be able to include the argument of the first article, and so on, layer by layer. And finally, I hope that I can look at relevant issues from a higher footing with readers.

The author’s hope is that the entire series of articles taken together can be like a few thought-provoking, or even touching photos or drawings – they can be viewed independently, but when put together, they will have a unique charm. “Money cannot bring you happiness, but at least you can be miserable in comfort.” – This is Oscar Wilde famous sentences. Wilde was a talented writer. He was born into a family with a high status in Irish society and was a top student at Oxford. As early as his thirties, he became famous and successful with his writing talent and thought-provoking aphorisms. , many people at the time speculated that he would become another Bacon or Shakespeare. As he himself recalled, he spent the first half of his life tasting all the good things in the world. He once wrote: God seems to have given me everything. I have not only genius, but also a prominent name, a noble social status, extraordinary sharpness, and wisdom. I turned art into philosophy, and philosophy into art… (The gods had given me almost everything. I had genies a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring, I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art… )

However, fate plays tricks on people; just when Wilde’s career was at its peak, bad luck was slowly accumulating. As the king’s wife said, Wilde needed to have disciples. Gradually, Wang develops feelings for a young man who initially admires him, and eventually develops into a love affair that lasts forever. However, this young man Alfred Douglas did not come from an ordinary family; he came from a British aristocratic family, but his mother died young and his father had a bad temper and violent tendencies. Douglas’s father sneered at Wang’s relationship with Douglas. The feud between Wang and Douglas’s father eventually turned into a lawsuit. Since homosexuality was considered a serious crime in British society at the time, Wang was disgraced and was even imprisoned and tortured. After he was released from prison, he was destitute and abandoned by society. He was not allowed to see his relatives, so he could only live a life of extreme poverty. Are his words self-deprecating in his later years?

Is money the abstract embodiment of human happiness?

Undoubtedly, what wealth can bring us is to “at least suffer comfortably”, but in fact, many people in the world have no chance to obtain this small request, and even the hope of having this small request seems very far away. Being out of reach, how can this not make people feel regretful and lamentable? Perhaps, high-level happiness is essentially a luxury, or even something that has always been elusive! If we can’t even meet the basic requirements of life, how can we talk about those high-level happiness that are not marginal? From this perspective, chasing money does not seem so irrational.

Arthur Schopenhauer said it well: Money is human happiness in the abstract. Many great thinkers such as Freud, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, etc. have admitted to being influenced by Schopenhauer. Uncle Shu indeed has extraordinary insight into human nature. I believe readers will agree that this statement is true, right?

Undoubtedly, the difference between rich people who are poor in spirit and poor people is only that the former has money. However, this slight difference may actually be a “big leap forward” for most secular people. It is easy for rich people to try to be poor, but for poor people to become rich, they have to go through thousands of mountains and rivers and overcome all difficulties. Perhaps, for most of us secular people: no matter how limited the role of money is, “having money” is better than “having no money”.