Recipe For Riches – Money, Angst, Selfishness and Existentialism

What’s the deal with getting rich? It’s the American obsession (of course it extends to many other global locales). We’ve got money on the brain. We’ve got the angst to prove it. I suppose the reasoning may follow this line: if we are miserable enough about not having an adequate income, we’ll bust our humps to try and find a way to make it, that is, unless we’ve given up. But, making a fortune would sure be better, wouldn’t it? And, we’d like it to be easy, fast and simple. We all want to be lottery winners and we are just sick reading about some other schlep winning instead of us. Oh, but he’ll keep his day job. Yeah, sure he will. For about 3 days. Still, we want to be that guy.

Selfishness also plays into wanting to make it big, although these days, selfishness can also be portrayed as a vital necessity when jobs are lost and homes are on the brink of foreclosure. It’s the survival instinct in us all. When selfishness goes unchecked, it can be a runaway train of greed, as we have seen in our current economic conditions. When it defines governments and their institutional partners, the public does not figure into the equation much anymore. Rather, it’s at the public’s expense that this type of wanton selfishness thrives.

Here’s where existentialism comes into play. This philosophy associated with Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, Feodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and others, goes against the grain of rationalism and empiricism (the undo reliance upon one’s experiences). Rather, it is based upon the individual’s unique standing as the self-determining agent who is responsible for the rightness or “wrongness” of his or her own choices and decisions. Therefore, people are completely free and thus bound by any actions they take. But, with this responsibility comes profound anguish or dread. Haven’t we all felt the pull of existential thought, especially when the chips are down?

With total freedom of choice comes the difficult realization that you, and only you, have to live with choices, directions and actions you make and take. There’s a lot of opportunity for feelings of depression and despair here. It can either take you down to the ground, or it can become a launching pad for growth, change and success, how ever you choose to define them.

So, what is the conclusion? We are all saddled with making our life our own. There are many factors seemingly out of our control, but we still have the responsibility to carry on in light of them all. Then, how shall we proceed? Good question.