More than Money

In the years following her 16th century New World conquests, countless barrows of gold and silver filled the coffers of mother Spain to the delight of Crown and country. Yet the influx of precious metal made Spain neither rich nor a lasting great power. Larger empires require larger war chests. The one thing that kept King Phillip II awake at night was a lack of funds: "Everything comes down to one thing," Phillip would say, "money and more money." Such were the priorities of a king whose empire shouldered a war debt more than twelve times the size of its annual income. The failure of the Spanish Armada and the eventual decline of colonial remittances slammed the door on Spain's quest for greatness. And it has yet to recover.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Today, political leaders with a limitless ability to tax generally concur with Phillip's simplified view of life and believe that they have not yet found the problem for which money is not a welcome solution. Throwing the weight of money around is quite the obvious thing to do to keep natives happy and ballot boxes stuffed with wads of affirmation for those who know what the greedy masses really want. Economists in the service of such pols would be the first to agree, for their training is to equate utility maximization with wealth maximization and to regard a dollar richer as a dollar happier.

While money is not the wellspring of evil and there is nothing wrong or immoral with money itself, all too often it is the short-sighted of us, politician and hand-out recipient alike, who fail to see how the obsession with money has derailed our true sense of ourselves. For it is not money or wealth which makes one happy. And those things in life which do are quite often displaced when money is given the respect it doesn't deserve.

Everyone knows that there is more to life than money. But what is it that contributes to human happiness? How is money part of it or related to it? What is it that people want?

If we are to define happiness as simply that which people want in life, we may say that happiness is ultimately derived from four pursuits: pleasure, love, respect, and longevity. For clarity, these may each be defined as follows:

• Pleasure is the stimulation and gratification of the senses. It is of immediate short-term consequence only, but we may plan long-term for its continued indulgence. It is a purely personal objective, in the sense that it's achievement does not require another person (or being).

• Love is the sense of value that we feel when another being desires us, needs us, and cares for us specifically and uniquely because of our own individual character. It is a purely social objective, in the sense that it requires the expression of another being to be felt.

• Respect is the sense of value that we feel when another being expresses the worth of one or more facets of our individual character, relative to other beings of a similar nature. These facets may be endowments, skills, achievements, beliefs, or personality traits. An important distinction between love and respect is that respect is relative (to what others achieve, to what one started with, etc.) while love is absolute. Respect is both a personal and a social objective—one seeks self-respect as well as the respect of others.

• Longevity is the extension of life into the future. This includes efforts to prolong one's worldly existence (through health, avoidance of accidental death, etc.) and, if we believe in the possibility, efforts to achieve lasting spiritual existence in an afterlife. It is also a purely personal objective, in that it's achievement is not strictly dependent on others.

How much do each of these objectives contribute to happiness? That depends on an individual's personal situation and psychology. A soldier who faces death in battle is trained (or trains himself) to pursue respect (in his case, through courage) and suppress concerns for longevity. A spinster or bachelor who fails to find love dedicates life to the pursuit of respect through personal achievements.

An individual has the power to achieve results in each of these objectives by more than simply working them himself: he may create or influence agents of the self which either directly or indirectly add to his happiness. These may include living agents (children, protégés, etc.) or property agents (businesses founded, art created, literature written, etc.). Living agents may directly affect one's happiness by remitting love and respect. Both kinds of agents may indirectly affect one's happiness by garnering respect from others for the effort invested in the agent, such happiness being reflected by pride in the individual's creation.

All other purposes to which we commit ourselves can be explained in terms of these four objectives or other intermediate objectives in ultimate pursuit of these. Fame is an objective only in the sense that it extends the boundaries of respect. Beauty is an objective that ultimately satisfies pleasure (visual), respect, and love (through adoration). Piety is an effort to garner respect and longevity (through religious belief of everlasting life). Sex is the attainment of pleasure through love. And so forth.

And what about wealth? Money and wealth appear to be intermediate objectives, not objectives in themselves. A miserly business owner may work tirelessly, day-in and day-out, consuming next to nothing, only to reach a short and untimely death due to his careless pursuit of but one thing, a mass of wealth. Yet his objective is ultimately not the money. It is most certainly either pursuit of respect, or self-respect, or the love of his children. Money can always only be a means. Money may increase respect for our productive ability. It may facilitate pleasure through creature comforts and exotic vacations. It may avoid the displeasure of rain and snow without shelter or a certain supply of food for an aching belly. It may facilitate longevity through better health and a legacy of inheritance to our children. But it never serves happiness directly.

This is the success of welfare reform: while money in itself was part of the problem, doling out money led to real losses for those who received it—loss of dignity, loss of self-respect, loss of control over their own lives. It is only when these are salvaged from the evisceration of a charitable yet arrogating hand that the poor can gain in happiness. Money earned rather than merely attained offers much more than the pleasures of consumption: it engenders the self-respect and respect from others that is crucial to a person's freedom and happiness.

Phillip II and the conquistadors were unable to secure lasting riches for Spain. Yet with its language today second only to Chinese in number of native speakers, and with the Latin world saturated with its religious and cultural legacy, Phillip's empire had lasting influence. He might be proper in his grave to consider the possibility that money wasn't everything. And more money was not the answer either.

"More than Money" is the first of a four-part series, "What People Want".