Chasing Wealth and Status: the Illusion of Happiness

March 24 2023, by Matt Perez

Seen in Sydney, Australia.^∇

Wealth and Status

According to chatGPT, Wealth and status can provide many benefits, such as financial security, social recognition, and professional fulfillment. However, these benefits may come at a cost, such as long working hours, high-pressure environments, and the feeling of being trapped in a job that does not align with your values or interests.

The benefits that chatGPT is referring to are very, very fragile. Financial security and status, for example, always are at the mercy of the boss and you can be put in the penalty box at anytime and for any reason. When I was at the height of my salary range, this is the thing that always hung over me and my family.

Existential Dread

Tapping one more time into the collective wisdom that is chatGPT, Existential dread is a feeling of uncertainty, anxiety, or despair about the meaning and purpose of one’ life. It can be triggered by various factors, including the sense of emptiness or disconnection from one’s work or the world around them.

It recommends that you ask yourself certain questions…

Questions, Questions

ChatGPT suggests these questions,

Are you satisfied with your current lifestyle and financial situation, or do you feel that you need to maintain a certain level of wealth and status to be happy?
Are you passionate about your job, or is it just a means to an end?
Do you feel fulfilled by your job, or do you feel like you are just going through the motions?
What are your values and priorities in life, and how does your job align with them?

Notice that chatGPT never questions the “job” concept, it assumes that you will have one. It never asks, Why should you have a job at all? Its language training base assumes that you must exchange your time and skills for a wage, that you must exchange your life for enough money to exist. But working for a Fiat wage is the critical question for systemic change.

Such is the Fiat system we live in: the grand majority of us only aspire to a good paying job, regardless of the cost.

The Fiat system has provided good results: heating on cold nights, amazing medicines, and even electric cars. And at least in democratic systems, it has to produce enough public goods to survive, but a huge amount of its wealth goes to the lucky few. And since 1972, it goes to even fewer, the people that the Fiat system has made extremely wealthy at one one and the poor at the other. The folks in the middle of these extremes get wealth and status, but their position is fragile. They live, the life I lived, in existential dread.