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By Root 1098 0

unrelated, and, above the poverty line, they are never in simple direct proportion. Why do the wise—religious or philosophical—all say that money doesn’t buy happiness and that you should give away all your stuff and “toil not,” like the lilies of the field? The answer is that they really don’t all say this. Only a few do, and they do not offer it as a way of living in the world. They offer it as a way of leaving the regular world in favor of an outrageous new community. Diogenes recommended that you walk away from all your property and live naturally with his group, like a pack of friendly street dogs. Jesus said to divest yourself of all your worldly possessions and go with him to embrace the coming kingdom of heaven. Eastern and Western mystics also hold that owning anything at all is a serious roadblock to enlightenment. But certainly in Western civilization, and in some of Eastern civilization as well, a lot of ardent followers live at a distance from this stark advice, choosing to miss out on the promised ecstatic otherworldly happiness and instead keep their stuff and their stake in this one. The same goes for philosophers and artists: some tell you to leave the world in order to more deeply reach states of beauty and awe, but most philosophers and artists want love and common pleasures and seek their beauty and awe from within the mundane world. In the great wisdom literature of history, this more average path—staying in the common world—is often considered the best one.

Consider one example from the history of philosophy and one from the history of religion. Aristotle said that if you are searching for a happy man, look for a man who is materially at ease. His Nicomachean Ethics is primarily devoted to the relationship between virtue and happiness, but it also acknowledges that wealth, fame, friends, and honor help flesh out a good life. Happiness, Aristotle held, requires a degree of comfort, and an ability to support those who are naturally dependent on us. Money gives us the means to entertain guests, do favors for people when appropriate, avoid debt, and negotiate the political marketplace. Likewise, from the camp of religion comes Koheleth—the author of Ecclesiastes—who advises us that if you have perfumed oil, you should anoint yourself. Dress well, he says; have a good time. True, he notes that riches can do you more harm than good: “The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.” But still: “Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.” If you have “riches and wealth, and…power to eat thereof,” Koheleth says, it is your role to “take [your] portion,” and to “rejoice in your labor.” In other words, as he famously put it: “Eat, drink, and be merry.” For Aristotle, and for Ecclesiastes’ Koheleth, riches could be of use in happiness. Still, money was of very small concern. The big issue was always more about getting one’s mind right.

The wise generally say that if you have money, you should enjoy it, and they argue that money is of use for a good life. However, sages and philosophers almost never say it is worth it to go out and get rich as a primary life project. Aristotle and Koheleth both brilliantly caution us away from seeking happiness by seeking money. To prove my point briefly and iconically, I will let one of capitalism’s greatest proponents caution us as to the folly of that plan. In 1759, a while before his Wealth of Nations of 1776, Adam Smith made his name with a work called The Theory of Moral Sentiments. We think of Smith as capitalism’s original and optimistic theorist, but he was wise and worried, too. In this earlier book, Smith says that when a poor man’s son has ambition, it is a curse. The condition of the rich “appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings,” and to reach it, the young man “sacrifices a real tranquility