[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Re: Happiness, Money, and Giving It Away (Peter Singer)

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** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral 
scholarship, kunjungi 
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **"Mengapa orang mengejar material world 
(lagunya madonna) kalau tau 
materi itu tidak bisa membawa kebahagiaan?" Gitu kira2 pertanyaan 
Mr. Singer. Mungkin Mr. Singer ini gak pernah merasakan jadi orang 
miskin...:-).

Ini antara uang/materi dengan kebahagiaan. Bagaimana dengan 
kesuksesan? Dimana letaknya 'sukses' tsb? Apakah kebahagiaan 
merupakan salah satu tolok ukur kesuksesan?

Kebahagiaan itu relatif banget yak. Cuma orang yang sering bersyukur 
dengan ikhlas yang mengerti arti bahagia. Menurut saya sih begitu, 
pak Singer...:-)

wass.,

--- In ppiindia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, sidqy suyitno <sidqy_suyitno@...> 
wrote:
>
> Happiness, Money, and Giving It Away
>   Peter Singer
>    
>   Would you be happier if you were richer? Many people believe 
that they would be. But research conducted over many years suggests 
that greater wealth implies greater happiness only at quite low 
levels of income. People in the United States, for example, are, on 
average, richer than New Zealanders, but they are not happier. More 
dramatically, people in Austria, France, Japan, and Germany appear 
to be no happier than people in much poorer countries, like Brazil, 
Colombia, and the Philippines. 
>   Comparisons between countries with different cultures are 
difficult, but the same effect appears within countries, except at 
very low income levels, such as below $12,000 annually for the US. 
Beyond that point, an increase in income doesn't make a lot of 
difference to people's happiness. Americans are richer than they 
were in the 1950's, but they are not happier. Americans in the 
middle-income range today ? that is, a family income of $50,000-
$90,000 ? have a level of happiness that is almost identical to well-
off Americans, with a family income of more than $90,000. 
>   Most surveys of happiness simply ask people how satisfied they 
are with their lives. We cannot place great confidence in such 
studies, because this kind of overall "life satisfaction" judgment 
may not reflect how much people really enjoy the way they spend 
their time. 
>   My Princeton University colleague Daniel Kahneman and several co-
researchers tried to measure people's subjective well-being by 
asking them about their mood at frequent intervals during a day. In 
an article published in Science on June 30, they report that their 
data confirm that there is little correlation between income and 
happiness. On the contrary, Kahneman and his colleagues found that 
people with higher incomes spent more time in activities that are 
associated with negative feelings, such as tension and stress. 
Instead of having more time for leisure, they spent more time at and 
commuting to work. They were more often in moods that they described 
as hostile, angry, anxious, and tense. 
>   Of course, there is nothing new in the idea that money does not 
buy happiness. Many religions instruct us that attachment to 
material possessions makes us unhappy. The Beatles reminded us that 
money can't buy us love. Even Adam Smith, who told us that it is not 
from the butcher's benevolence that we get our dinner, but from his 
regard for his self-interest, described the imagined pleasures of 
wealth as "a deception" (though one that "rouses and keeps in 
continual motion the industry of mankind"). 
>   Nevertheless, there is something paradoxical about this. Why do 
governments all focus on increasing per capita national income? Why 
do so many of us strive to obtain more money, if it won't make us 
happier? 
>   Perhaps the answer lies in our nature as purposive beings. We 
evolved from beings who had to work hard to feed themselves, find a 
mate, and raise children. For nomadic societies, there was no point 
in owning anything that one could not carry, but once humans settled 
down and developed a system of money, that limit to acquisition 
disappeared. 
>   Accumulating money up to a certain amount provides a safeguard 
against lean times, but today it has become an end in itself, a way 
of measuring one's status or success, and a goal to fall back on 
when we can think of no other reason for doing anything, but would 
be bored doing nothing. Making money gives us something to do that 
feels worthwhile, as long as we do not reflect too much on why we 
are doing it. 
>   Consider, in this light, the life of the American investor 
Warren Buffett. For 50 years, Buffett, now 75, has worked at 
accumulating a vast fortune. According to Forbes magazine , he is 
the second wealthiest person in the world, after Bill Gates, with 
assets of $42 billion. Yet his frugal lifestyle shows that he does 
not particularly enjoy spending large amounts of money. Even if his 
tastes were more lavish, he would be hard-pressed to spend more than 
a tiny fraction of his wealth. 
>   From this perspective, once Buffett earned his first few 
millions in the 1960's, his efforts to accumulate more money can 
easily seem completely pointless. Is Buffett a victim of 
the "deception" that Adam Smith described, and that Kahneman and his 
colleagues have studied in more depth? 
>   Coincidentally, Kahneman's article appeared the same week that 
Buffett announced the largest philanthropic donation in US history ? 
$30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and another $7 
billion to other charitable foundations. Even when the donations 
made by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller are adjusted for 
inflation, Buffett's is greater. 
>   At a single stroke, Buffett has given purpose to his life. Since 
he is an agnostic, his gift is not motivated by any belief that it 
will benefit him in an afterlife. What, then, does Buffett's life 
tell us about the nature of happiness? 
>   Perhaps, as Kahneman's research would lead us to expect, Buffett 
spent less of his life in a positive mood than he would have if, at 
some point in the 1960's, he had quit working, lived on his assets, 
and played a lot more bridge. But, in that case, he surely would not 
have experienced the satisfaction that he can now rightly feel at 
the thought that his hard work and remarkable investment skills 
will, through the Gates Foundation, help to cure diseases that cause 
death and disability to billions of the world's poorest people. 
Buffett reminds us that there is more to happiness than being in a 
good mood. 
>   ** Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton 
University and the author, with Jim Mason, of The Way We Eat: Why 
Our Food Choices Matter. 
>   Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006. http://www.project-
syndicate.org/commentary/singer13
> 
>                               
> ---------------------------------
> Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business. 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>







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