I am currently watching some documentaries on philosophy and in particular with happiness.
Epicusius felt that happiness came from the simple things in life, and that as Biggie pointed out, the”mo’ money we come across the mo’ problems we see.” He set up a home in the outskirts of the city, bought a huge house and invited his friends to live with him. He felt that one should never eat alone. I agree.
He went further to lay much of the blame for society’s ills at the feet of advertising. Advertising takes our desires and perverts them into a desire for things. For example:
What we want isn’t the beer, or the cigarettes; although sometimes we may want those things. What the ads are playing on is our desire for adventure, or need to be with friends. There are also deeper desires being played upon. The man in the cigarette ad represents our need to be capable; he is fixing a plane in the middle of the savanna while looking as though he his calm and relaxed. The beer ad plays upon the heterosexual male fantasy of a menage-a-trois with two beautiful women.
As people need to curb their spending with the oncoming recession, they may turn to family and friends for support. As for myself, I plan on turning down my spending and entertaining more at home rather than going out. The advertising will have less of an impact as I will have start to ignoring it, knowing that I can’t afford these things anyway.
As a result, in this time of economic downturn I think we may paradoxically come out the other end of it happier than when we went in.