Schopenhauer’s “The Wisdom of Life”: Poverty is not terrible, what is terrible is the limited “cognitive level”
Schopenhauer’s “The Wisdom of Life”: Poverty is not terrible, what is terrible is the limited “cognitive level”
The lottery player bought a lottery ticket and won 9 million pounds. After 4 years, he became an alcoholic and had to live in a relative’s house. This is a true story that happened in the UK. In 2005, Keith and his wife won 9 million pounds in the national lottery, which was a huge sum of money at the time.
Keith, 54, works in a bakery, his wife Louise works in a law firm and has a 14-year-old son. The family lives in a semi-detached house.
In June 2005, the couple won the lottery, and Keith’s life changed drastically.
Moved from an old house worth 160,000 to a new house worth 500,000, spent hundreds of thousands on horse racing, bought a BMW for 60,000, bought a house in Cheshire for 1 million, and spent 15,000 to hire A gardener to take care of it, and paid another £25,000 to hire a driver. This is not enough. He loves football and bought the president’s box for the Aston Villa football team!
“Without a normal life, I started spending money, spending money, spending money…because there was always money in my pocket.”
He drank heavily and profligately. Finally, two years later, his wife couldn’t bear to leave him, and the bonus had been squandered a lot when they broke up, but Keith still got £1.5 million and Louise a few million pounds.
After the divorce, Keith was mentally fragile and caught gambling. After that, he met an investment scammer and lost 700,000 pounds.
Four years after winning the prize, he lost his lover and friends, lived in a small house owned by his nephew, and rarely went out. He even regretted buying a lottery ticket. Originally thought to be the guarantee of happiness in the second half of my life, but it was the beginning of disaster.
After reading this story, we can’t help but wonder, why are ordinary people sad and happy after receiving high bonuses? Is money that scary? Aren’t ordinary people or poor people worthy of wealth?
Maybe you can’t imagine that this question about money and wealth was explained by a philosopher a hundred years ago.
Why do poor people enjoy more luxury when they have money?
In Schopenhauer’s famous work “The Wisdom of Life” in his later years, there is a special chapter called “The Property Owned by Man”, which discusses, analyzes, and explains the ideological gap between the poor and the rich, and how these gaps lead to making a huge difference.
According to the usual impression, poor people want to get out of poverty. Once they have money, they will be more frugal and guard their hard-earned wealth. But the fact is that poor people and those who have experienced poverty may not necessarily understand life better, and live better.
The poor are those who were born into poor families for two to three generations. They believe that they can change their fate by luck or hard work, but because of the lack of corresponding cognition and ideological guidance, their “belief” is just an imaginary-believing in their hearts without going through their brains.
What is even more frightening is that limited by their cognitive level, they take poverty for granted.
In this regard, Schopenhauer wrote:
People born into generations of poverty take poverty for granted.
The wealth they have inherited is just a superfluous thing to them, and it is only natural to use it for enjoyment or splurge!
Once they run out of money, they live on as they did when they had no money, and they are free from the same troubles!
That money beyond the usual subsistence allowances is an extra thing in their lives, and they cannot plan and manage them, nor do they belong to their cognition. Therefore, spending them and squandering them is the best choice.
In the end, the money is used for extravagant consumption, the pursuit of pomp, and imitation of what they perceive as “upper life” — a situation we prefer to call “upstarts”.
Shakespeare wrote:
Once a beggar gets on a mount, he has to run away from the horse.
Because beggars don’t know how to take care of horses, just like poor people don’t know how to manage wealth. In the end, they can only go back to the starting point, or even worse, they will even say that it is no big deal, after all, they are already used to poverty.
Schopenhauer, the founder of the “philosophy of pessimism”, was indeed pessimistic from the point of view that the poor could not escape poverty. Philosophy, however, does not come up with ideas based on fantasies but concludes after studying human nature.
Many people think that philosophy is far from our daily life, but in fact, it exists around us all the time, or it is the philosopher’s thinking on existence, human nature, and life.
Life is closely related to people. To understand human nature is to understand yourself, others, and life. Regarding the wisdom of life and the weaknesses of human nature, I believe that the works of masters must be more convincing.
In Schopenhauer’s “The Wisdom of Life”, we discover the closest distance between philosophy and life, discover philosophy from life and life, and let philosophical thoughts inspire and guide our future life.
Maybe when human beings think, God will laugh, but once human beings stop thinking, what is the difference between them and everything in the world?
May you and I live transparently, stretch our lives, and lighten our souls. Accompany each other’s growth together!
