Wealth, Trauma, Splendor - Introduction

Virtues for the future

We are at a time in western society, or at least American society, where we seem to be grasping for meaning. Our lives are better in all the ways our ancestors wanted, but we now have no obvious projects. We are disillusioned with utopias because they never come, and pursuing them has historically led to so much human suffering.

I feel like I have a possible framework that can give people some more purpose in their lives.

I start with the purpose of life. I borrow the belief from Aristotle and the Dalai Lama that happiness is the meaning of life. Happiness is the end goal of all that we do. Every culture and society on earth pursues happiness as its own end goal. We never use happiness to pursue some other goal, everything is in the pursuit of some form of happiness.

How do we go about obtaining happiness? It is a very individualized process. According to modern research, living a happy life is some combination of moment to moment joys, fulfilling relationships, long term goals to work towards, and acts of service to other people.

But even with those markers on what makes people happy, the task is still daunting. There are infinite paths! You could live a life of hedonism, just going from pleasure to pleasure. You could spend your life working towards building something that only comes together in the last year of your life. Or you could give up all worldly possessions and take a vow of poverty while you devote your work to helping the poor.

We need a more refined framework on what it means to help people. Most of the virtues we retain from the past were for societies much different from ours. How do we serve people with the world as complicated as it is? How do we do this our entire lives without reaching some fictitious end? What understandings from contemporary science and knowledge affect our philosophies? What are the virtues of the contemporary world?

Wealth, Trauma, Splendor

I believe these are the goals, for both the individual and society as a whole, to work towards to ensure increasing human happiness. Each of these serves a purpose in making people happy, improving their lives. And each one of these are problems that can be worked on infinitely. Increasing Wealth, Decreasing Trauma, and Increasing Splendor can be forever good in increasing the happiness of humanity. I believe working towards these are the higher virtues of our times.

Wealth

Wealth I define as “surplus resources”, more than is needed to merely survive. While wealth can certainly be in money, it can also be in health, energy, mental capacity, relationships, or intellectual ability. Everything we want to do beyond mere surviving takes wealth.

Therefore, it takes wealth to do everything good we want to do in the world. To feed the poor, develop new medicine, restore the environment, build housing, provide welfare, develop new technologies, pursue deeper philosophy– they all take wealth. Even if something is a good investment, there needs to be a pool of wealth to invest in the first place.

To be able to do more in this world we’ll need more resources. We get more resources from increasing our individual and collective wealth.

Increasing Wealth is good for human happiness.

Trauma

Trauma I think of as a sort of injury to humans, can be physical or psychological. The range of what can cause such a trauma under this definition is wide reaching. It includes things like abuse, car crashes, homelessness, disease, crime, hunger, war. I also view every death, especially pre-natural deaths, as traumas.

The main issue with trauma is that it can perpetuate itself. It’s a very common story among sex offenders that they themselves were the victims of sexual crimes. Victims of violence are more likely to commit acts of violence. We all carry various traumas in ourselves that make us act out in ways that aren’t productive.

I see no productive benefit in trauma. Sure, people can grow from their traumas, but that is hardly guaranteed. There are plenty of problems to be worked on in this world besides traumas.

Reductions in trauma leads to people having a better capacity to live happy lives, giving them a better place to go from. To reduce trauma takes wealth, it takes surplus resources. It can take that in the form of therapy or space to work things out. Prevention takes wealth to eliminate sources of trauma. The reduction, prevention, and elimination of trauma, both in oneself and in society, is almost always good and can be worked on infinitely into the future.

Decreasing Trauma is good for human happiness.

Splendor

Splendor is about the splendid, the good in life. I think of it as a sort of “at bats” for happiness. Like last year I really enjoyed the movie “Challengers”. It’s a fun movie that left me in an excited daze. While I was happy to have seen the movie, I wouldn’t say that it caused me to have a happy life. My life isn’t forever happy because I saw “Challengers” but my life is certainly happier having seen it.

There is some research that suggests that life happiness is really just how many happy moments you can have in series. Every 15 minutes is an opportunity to experience something to make you happy. Sure, delayed gratification is great, but we also need other things to fill the time while we work on big goals.

Splendor is all things that give us joy and other positive feelings. Like the National Parks are a source of splendor, but also spending time with family and hobbies is splendid, as well as all art. All of these take some amount of wealth to either bring into this world, or space to enjoy. Increasing the amount of splendor in the world can be good and done infinitely, but like with trauma it takes wealth to materialize the splendid.

Increasing Splendor is good for human happiness.

WHAT TO DO

I believe there is much purpose to be found in life if you work on these three virtues for the modern era. Increasing Wealth, Decreasing Trauma, and Increasing Splendor. Maximizing these three certainly makes the world a better place. This is almost regardless if you only do it within yourself or for other people. You are part of society, and individual happiness can help others achieve happiness as well. But very few people ever are truly happy from only focusing on their own happiness, so it’s good to work for others too.

The nice part is that there is never an end goal for these. There will always be more wealth that can be created, traumas treated or prevented, and new splendors to be realized. With each you are improving the lives of humanity as a whole.

Another takeaway is that the bar for each individual to improve the world is much lower than we believe. We tend to believe that doing good requires going above and beyond, yet there is still plenty of good coming from our normal routines. Most of us living our lives as we do currently are net positive in bettering people’s lives. Large amounts of self-interested behavior can have pro-social ends. And it also gives us more direct direction should we want to do even more. Almost all people contribute to the whole, very very few are actual drains on society.

If you don’t read anymore than just this intro I want you to take away this main point – If you work a job, are able to save and invest even a tiny bit money, work on yourself, occasionally do some acts for others, and pursue hobbies and joys especially with others, you are well on your way to making the world a better place for humanity. You may be doing a lot to improve human happiness and you don’t even know it. A simple mindset change can take you from a life of selfish toil for the self to a life of meaningful overcoming that benefits not just yourself but others as well.

I have much more to expand on these ideas, and many potential critiques to respond to. There are many nuances to be had, particularly in the area of increasing wealth. But I firmly believe that Increasing Wealth, Decreasing Trauma, and Increasing Splendor are good for both you and society as a whole. I believe these are the new virtues to add to our lives.