Easterbrook, Thoreau, and a whole bunch of other people

On Tuesday, I attended the forum held in the Marriott Center. Greg Easterbrook, a well-known economist, writer, and lecturer addressed the audience. Among other things, he said that conditions in the world were improving, especially in material ways. As a world at large, we are more prosperous than our ancestors—but not more happy. Mr. Easterbrook said that satisfaction with life has not only not improved with rising conditions, but decreased.

I had just finished reading a chapter of Walden by Henry David Thoreau when I went into the forum. Thoreau writes that material possessions and property are fetters to a man’s soul, and effectively imprisoning him to a life of servitude to his possessions. He tells about a woman who tried to give him a mat for the house he had built by Walden Pond, which he declined. Following the story, he writes, “It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.”

Thoreau argues that self-sufficient people who live simply and have their needs satisfied—those of food, fuel, shelter, and clothing—are poets of a sort. I’ve often heard that poets are those with the clearest view of the world, and while Thoreau does not rally for a society of poets, I think that would be marvelous. Think of the Greeks. We are told that they lived very simply, and just look at the sheer volume of drama, poetry, and philosophy that comes from ancient Greece.

Speaking of Greece, I was recently reading a selection from Aristotle’s Politics for class, and he, too, makes a case against material possessions as the source of happiness. He writes, “Men fancy that external goods are the cause of happiness, yet we might as well say that a brilliant performance on the lyre was to be attributed to the instrument and not to the skill of the performer.” Socrates, too, is recorded as saying, “How many things I can live without!” upon entering a marketplace. More recently, in the Disney film The Jungle Book, Baloo the bear sings, “So don’t spend your time looking around/ for something you want that can’t be found./ When you find out you can live without it/ and go along, not thinking about it/ I’ll tell you something true:/the bare necessities of life will come to you.” I could name many more sources that say, in essence, the same thing.

So, it’s conventional wisdom that possessions don’t make us happy. Why, then, does the Lord bless his righteous people with prosperity in The Book of Mormon if He knows it won’t make them happy? The answer is found, among other places, in Jacob 2:19, which says, in essence, that our riches should be used to benefit our fellow men—particularly those who do not have their needs met from day to day.

Mr. Easterbrook listed forgiveness, gratitude, and optimism as characteristics of happy people. I have often heard service added to this list. When the Lord blesses us, He is giving us an opportunity to serve and become happier. Mr. Easterbrook ended his speech by saying that our generation would be known for lifting up the developing world. That seems to me to be the solution to the increasing dissatisfaction with rising living standards—raise the living standards of others.