Schopenhauer’s, The
Wisdom of Life, was picked up by a lark (not literally!). In the
beginning he suggests that there are three fundamental distinctions for us as humans:
1.
What a Man is.
(Personality, temperament, intelligence, moral character, etc.)
2.
What a Man has.
(Property, possessions).
3.
How a Man stands in
the estimation
of others. (Opinion, honor, reputation).
Society would have us believe that what matters most is
the amount of money we have in the bank or the number of “friends” we have on Facebook.
The focus is always on what one has, or how one is perceived. But these status
symbols will not make us truly happy. Schopenhauer suggests, “What a man has in
himself, is then the chief element in his happiness.” What and who you are
accompanies you wherever you go. You do not need a backpack full of new
objects or copies of your paychecks to see you through a good life, you need
only a clear conscience, and a cultured, contented core.
Schopenhauer bemoans that still “men are a thousand times
more intent on becoming rich than acquiring culture.” Being cultured aids in
the development of who we are, and yet this is not the first goal. A man with a
new paycheck of $600 is more apt to spend it on an X-box, some shirts at Ralph
Lauren and sneaks at Nike than on anything that can cultivate his core self. So
what is this unalloyed pursuit of money, property and honors? What is the
benefit of wealth to a man who only uses it to pursue trivial, degenerate
pastimes, anyway?
Throughout history the poor have been envious of the
wealthy for their supposed happiness in their fine clothes and lifestyles.
And yet, a man can live in a fine house and be as melancholy as one whose home
is a trailer. As Epictetus says, “Men are not influenced by things, but by
their thoughts of things.”Outward circumstance cannot necessarily account for
inward contentment.
Then there is the fact that there is great disparity of outward circumstances everywhere. Schopenhauer
compares the uneven fortune and circumstance distributed amongst us to players
on a stage. One is a Prince, one a minister, another a servant; yet these are
mere surface differences. “The inner
reality, the kernel of all these appearances is the same—a poor player, with
all the anxieties of his lot.” What we as human beings are, once you strip away
the riches, the robes, or the rags, is essentially the same. Yet all society
sees is the purple cloth or the disheveled hair and connects that with identity.
Schopenhauer inadvertently suggests that while we may not
have control over our lot in terms of what we amass or how we are seen, we can
always look back to who we are, and refine and elevate that which is already
innate. “Our lot, in this sense may improve; but we do not ask much of it if we
are inwardly rich.” In this way, Schopenhauer is a proponent of subjective
experience over objective experience. External factors may present themselves,
for good or ill, but if we know who we are, we will not be so easily affected. In
this way we are never victims of circumstance. “The world in which a man lives
shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it.”
This is both unsettling and affirming.Unsettling because so few people are making a point to talk about this. Affirming because this is what I've always known to be true. "How much there is in the world that I do not want." Socrates might as well have been talking about living in our world today.
