Prosperity, Success and GrowthsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #life8 years ago (edited)

Today we find ourself in a world where some or most people associate prosperity with their wealth. This intern has led to an race for riches. In the form of money.

(Source wikipedia)

The nagging question in-my-mind is. What made people believe that a larger number of money assets equals prosperity. This analogy is, like falling from a high building and find yourself to got hurt from falling, oppose to the sudden stop. It is rather what money bought you which brings prosperity(sometimes).

Something to note is the physiology behind ownership of property and having a loan on said property.If you owe money on this or that asset, you're at the mercy of interest rates and the creditor. Not to mention the knowledge that a significant portion of this month and next is sole to pay a loan and how this would negatively affect your ability to live. All sorts of negative and depressing moods come up right?

If you owned your home and paid utilities, the cost of actually living would resemble your income appose to paying the off the loan and having to deal with maintenance. Much the same as with a car.

Let us use a primitive view of our fungible world.


I chopped seven pieces of wood. Lite a fire and cooked my meal. Regardless of the number of pieces of wood, I would get a fire going and chop some more, if my meal still was not cooked. And you wouldn't even notice if you only chopped 5 or 8 pieces cause their size was probably not the same.

In today's society, we no longer use what we need. We live with excess. In the world today "more.Is" and our governments use this on GDP. GDP is flawed because it's misleading as a wealth indicator. Just, because I chopped off five pieces wood today, does not mean I'm less wealth, all that it means is; I don't like working without a real incentive. My meal is cooked isn't it?

So how would you measure Prosperity?


noun: prosperity
the state of being prosperous.

adjective: prosperous
successful in material terms.

noun: success
the accomplishment of an aim or purpose

You know that leaky toilet, that you're going to get fixed. Just do it. No more drip-dripping in the bowl. That awful sound.

We tend to set ourselves aims or goals and shortly after get side tracked. Now, more than ever before it is evident to me that our lack of completing simple goals, we set ourselves, is the root of our unhappiness and the feeling of incompetence. Bundle these facts and you would realize that this greed for money, in reality, is our "hunger" to complete our goals. These desires, which is found from the most creative to the most inspiring individuals, and also the depressed. This desire or need is misplaced. With the need to accomplish our goals and not realizing by paying someone to reach your goals does you no good.

That awful, incompetent, depressed and cheating feeling. All because you know you cheated yourself from the opportunity to prove your competency.

Being an old farmer on his porch looks terribly welcome, doesn't it?

So, getting back to "the race." We have a race, our nagging guilty feeling vs. feeling competent.
You win on the days you decide to DIY and prove yourself worth.

Can we associate growth with prosperity?

No. You can't and here is why:
That old farmer reading the weekly news, with a jug full of coffee is longer growing as fast as he used to in his younger days. However, the farmer's prosperity did not change and In all likely hood is still being increased.

If I were to apply this analogy to myself. It's easy to see where I could become better and more prosperous.But, the key thing to remember is that accomplishing your aims and goals which set yourself out to get Get IT!
You would feel ten times better and more "self-approved" and avoided feeling miserable. All of this because you desired to do something and actually, did something about it.

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What made people believe that a larger number of money assets equals prosperity.

I think it is a natural extension of evolutionary imperatives - unfortunately on our planet at least (as far as we know) there is no other life-form that has gained the ability to dominate the planet and consume resources to the same degree.

The natural survival enhancing benefits of this belief now has a detrimental effect not just upon ourselves but also everything around us.

You sum up the problem well here:

In today's society, we no longer use what we need. We live with excess.

My Point is, using more because "more is" and giving for GDP a boost... Is wrong and simply not needed. We don't need to use, as much, resources to be prosperous or to be successful. Yet ,we believe we do... :(

@poseidon - Nice article. I liked it.

I guess at the end of the day it all comes to "What is your goal on the Earth?" question? What if to make your goal real you need money?

You need money to get to your goal. Yet some are stuck at, making money.

I always wonder about people who have 50,000 square foot houses. Like, do they honestly use all of that space? I bet if we tracked their movements, we'd find that they using only 3k to 10k of that space.

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