What Does The Madness Of Materialism Mean To You Essay

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Happiness is yearned by all Americans. The standard way of thinking about happiness is that everyone is and obligated to be happy. The world surrounds you with the idea that you are happy, the idea that you can buy your happiness. Society is not always right. Happiness can be achieved by surrounding yourself with people you want to be around, to put your time and focus into something other than yourself, and to not fixate on being happy. Although I agree with materialistic items make you happy up to a point, I cannot accept the conclusion that they make you truly happy. In the article, The Madness of Materialism, it states “Research has shown, for example, that extremely rich people such as billionaires are not significantly happier than people with an average income, and suffer from higher levels of depression.” Being rich and having everything you want doesn’t make you happy. According to John Stuart Mill, “Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.” Materialistic items make you happy when you first get them, but when you fixate on them, it proves to not be good enough. Consider …show more content…

Put your time and focus on someone and something else. In John Stuart Mill’s view, “ Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself and ideal end.” People that are happy focus on something or someone other than their own happiness. They don’t do it to benefit themselves, they find the pleasure in the process of it. John Stuart Mill states, “The enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object.” The most simple things could and will make you happy enough, when they are enjoyed in the moment and without the hardship of trying to make them

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