About Happiness

I am an office worker. I work 8 hours a day, plus 1 hour for lunch and about 2 hours commuting. This means 11 hours a day. Almost half of my day is dedicated to work. And I consider myself lucky: I do not work on weekends, I hardly ever work overtime and I have a job doing something I like.

In case you are wondering, I'm a programmer. But as much as I love programming, I think that given the opportunity, I would spend much less time of my life programming. So having to work so much actually makes me unhappy.

You can call me lazy all you want, but if you had more money than you could spend in your entire lifetime, would you spend your time working?

Most of us think that we are happy with our lives (and our works) but I think not. I think we are just contempt. Certainly there are moments when I'm happy. I'm happy when I share time with my friends or family, or when I train, or when I enjoy a good movie. But this are brief moments. I cannot spend enough time in activities I like (and make me happy) because I have to work.

So why do I work? Why does anybody work? Well, except for a few exceptions, most of us work because we need money.

The answer to 'why do we need money' is pretty obvious, isn't it? We need money because even our basic needs like food and water have to be paid for. With money.

So what would happen if we didn't need to buy food? What if food was free? It doesn't matter, we would still need money, because we need to buy clothes. And if even clothes were free, we would still need money to pay the rent, taxes, a car, fuel for our car, education, a new TV, a phone, the phone bill, tickets for the theatre, and we could go on forever.

Capitalism is about this, about consuming, and generating more needs to further increase consuming. Earning money so we can produce more and earn more, so that we can spend more and have more. To what end? How much money is enough money? And there's the problem. No amount of money is enough. There is always something I want that I can't have. We are slaves to the system.

So what if everything was free? It's a crazy idea, but try to think about it. Consider it for just a moment... You could go to the supermarket and grab whatever you want and go home. You could go to the mall, take whatever clothes you like and just leave. You could go to the theatre, pick your movie, and watch it. You could get up at whatever time you like or even spend a whole day in bed if you want to. Then I think we would be truly happy. Not just contempt.

But let's go back to reality. This fantasy would not be possible because we would need someone working at the supermarket, someone working at the mall, and someone else working at the movie theatre. We would also need someone to produce the goods that we consume. Even the movies: Some people have to work as actors, directors and producers, or there would be no movies.

So is it not possible to come up with a better system? One that has no money because it is not needed? One where people don't starve to death? Where we can spend more time doing what makes us truly happy?

I think it is possible. But I don't think it would be easy to implement or maintain. Just to conceive and design such a system would prove to be very complex. And that is what this blog is about: Trying to create the guidelines for a system that is better for all of us, not just for a few lucky ones, not even for the talented ones. A system where we can all be happy.