From a post on happiness by Felix Salmon, who is Reuters' business/finance blogger (emphasis mine):
(Salmon's recipe for happiness is drinking somewhat more expensive than usual wine with friends in a nice setting. Fair enough, I suppose.)
And it’s also the kind of place where the idea of the hedonic treadmill — the theory which says that we all have our own set level of happiness. Good things can happen to us, which make us happy, and bad things can happen to us, which make us sad, but the effect doesn’t last very long. Even if very good things happen to us, like winning the lottery, or very bad things happen to us, like becoming quadriplegic or losing a spouse, we eventually end up back where we started. (The only reasonably sure-fire way of bringing the set point down, interestingly enough, is becoming and then staying unemployed.)I wish I didn't feel the need to remind The Powers That Be that long-term unemployment is A Bad Thing. It's probably just me.
(Salmon's recipe for happiness is drinking somewhat more expensive than usual wine with friends in a nice setting. Fair enough, I suppose.)
The Powers That Be need a lot of reminding. Sometimes it feels like trying to fill the ocean with a thimble.
ReplyDeleteIts hard to me imagine that if I was paid double what I make now (which should bring me up to where I should be in pay) I would be as happy as I am now in say 6 months. Why? Id get to retire a lot sooner!
ReplyDeleteIm sorry, but a life of being a poorly-paid scientist in academia is like taking a couple of barbiturates every day.
winning the lottery is hardly a "very good thing", by definition. And I don't like the mixed metaphore of a quadriplegic on a treadmill
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