Betsy Hart column: "Staying off the hedonic treadmill"
leno...@yahoo.com
She's a divorced mother of four. (The oldest, her son, is 14, I
think.)
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/betsyhart/1367236,CST-FTR-HART08.article
First third of article........
At a recent gathering of my large family (I'm the youngest of five
kids), nieces, nephews, etc., my brother called out at the top of his
voice, "What kind of ice cream is it?" And as always, laughter ensued,
especially from our good-natured dad.
You see years ago (and I mean years ago) when I was about 5, my family
had just finished eating dinner and my mom announced there was ice
cream for desert. One of my brothers made the mistake of asking, "What
flavor is it?" That lead to exclamations of outrage from my dad. Why?
Because when he was a kid during the Great Depression, they were lucky
to get ice cream at all, darn it! It was the biggest treat imaginable!
In fact most of the time the only way to get it was to make it
themselves and no one, especially not a kid, would have even dreamed
of asking what flavor the ice cream was!
And on it went. I'm not sure if any one of us ever did get ice cream
that night, but I do know that we learned a lot about the history of
ice cream, at least in our father's life. We also learned that my
parents thought we kids were ungrateful. Imagine that.
Flash forward, and things have changed - for the worse........
(snip)
Lenona.
Rod Speed
Silly to claim that things have changed for the worst when we dont get great depressions anymore.
leno...@yahoo.com
> Silly to claim that things have changed for the worst when we dont get great depressions anymore.
You don't REALLY think Hart was suggesting that the current recession
is going to turn into something worse than the Great Depression, do
you?
If you'd bother to read the whole article, you'd know, but I thought
it was obvious what she was going to start talking about, anyway.
Here are the next two paragraphs, if you like:
"Flash forward, and things have changed -- for the worse. For
starters, today's parents spend five times as much on our kids'
'stuff,' on average, as our parents did. And that's in real dollars.
But would anyone suggest that today's children are more grateful in
general than we were as kids?
"It seems there is a theory in psychology, the 'hedonic treadmill,'
that explains why the acquisition of more stuff doesn't in and of
itself lead to happiness. Supposedly it's the case that when we get
more 'stuff,' our expectations for more 'stuff' rise in tandem, so
while we can be satisfied in the short term by a thing, over the long
term acquiring more things will never make us happy because we'll just
want more, well, things (i.e., exactly how we Americans got into our
current economic mess)......"
She then talks about her gentle methods for combating the vicious
cycle in her own kids.
I enjoy her sometimes, but I wish she'd realize that some things she
does are not cute, such as when she admits to not knowing how to
pronounce a Greek name. So, I say, look it up! Not that readers want
or need any patronizing explanation of how to pronounce it when they
won't be using it in their everyday lives anyway. It's just that
flaunting one's ignorance is childish - and, again, not cute in men or
women. And Google makes looking up such things easy enough.
Lenona.
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote
>>> Flash forward, and things have changed - for the worse........
>> Silly to claim that things have changed for the worst when we dont get great depressions anymore.
> You don't REALLY think Hart was suggesting that the current recession
> is going to turn into something worse than the Great Depression, do you?
Nope, I was JUST commenting on that mindlessly silly line about things having changed for the worst.
> If you'd bother to read the whole article, you'd know, but I thought
> it was obvious what she was going to start talking about, anyway.
> Here are the next two paragraphs, if you like:
> "Flash forward, and things have changed -- for the worse. For
> starters, today's parents spend five times as much on our kids'
> 'stuff,' on average, as our parents did. And that's in real dollars.
It would be a hell of a lot more surprising if they didnt
when the parents were products of the great depression.
And my parents were products of the great depression and we didnt see that result ourselves.
The only real downside my father got from the great depression was
that he didnt get to attend university after leaving school, because it
was decided that it made more sense to start working instead, and
he had to do the tertiary education after work instead, and later ended
up being part of the tertiary education system in the military after the war.
> But would anyone suggest that today's children
> are more grateful in general than we were as kids?
It would be a hell of a lot more surprising if they were
given the radically different economic circumstances.
> "It seems there is a theory in psychology, the 'hedonic
> treadmill,' that explains why the acquisition of more
> stuff doesn't in and of itself lead to happiness.
Anyone with even half a clue realises that there is a hell of a lot more that matters than 'happiness'
> Supposedly it's the case that when we get more 'stuff,' our
> expectations for more 'stuff' rise in tandem, so while we can
> be satisfied in the short term by a thing, over the long term
> acquiring more things will never make us happy because
> we'll just want more, well, things (i.e., exactly how we
> Americans got into our current economic mess)......"
Absolutely NOTHING do with how the US got into the current economic mess, actually.
> She then talks about her gentle methods for combating the vicious cycle in her own kids.
Unlikely those make any more sense than the mindless shit just above.
> I enjoy her sometimes, but I wish she'd realize that some things she
> does are not cute, such as when she admits to not knowing how to
> pronounce a Greek name. So, I say, look it up! Not that readers want
> or need any patronizing explanation of how to pronounce it when they
> won't be using it in their everyday lives anyway. It's just that
> flaunting one's ignorance is childish - and, again, not cute in men or
> women. And Google makes looking up such things easy enough.
Yeah, she strikes me as being a silly cow, but then I can be a bit jaundiced |-)