(Let n = a subset of Greek philosophers : Socrates was 1st gen., Plato the 2nd gen., Aristotle the 3rd gen.)
How do you want to spend time on earth? What values should you select for?
You are a billionaire or were, you just didn’t realize it. It may not be in the form of actual cash or valuation of your business. When you are born, you are a time billionaire. If the average human lifespan is about 75 years, take out a calculator and do the math. This is approximately 2.3 billion seconds of time. Your first asset is time. Time is your most scarce resource as a human, and is lost to entropy (disorder or death). I cannot transfer my cosmic bank account to your cosmic bank account. You most likely would not trade places with 92 year old Warren Buffet. So what is a human to do with all this time? Or better said, while you spend time, what knowledge should we know to implement a better life on earth?
Where should we start when accumulating knowledge on time spent on a good life?
The majority of time spent on earth is dedicated to survival. Human biology and neurobiology has selected traits in humans to survive, and exist on a hostile planet. Knowledge or understanding of ideas updates the human OS (operating system) on top of the survival layer. Ancient Greek philosophy is the general starting point for western civilization. In the beginning, there was Socrates. Socrates thought that the idea of virtue itself is a form of knowledge. Virtue: the knowledge of good and evil. Good and evil are somewhat subjective in definition, but I would not say that they are vague or unknown. Aristotle used the term eudemonia to describe the knowledge we should seek, which is health, wealth, and happiness for human flourishing. Human flourishing is flawed, but ideal. Are humans in an area across time flourishing? This would be good time spent. Evil could be defined as human flourishing in reverse or human deterioration or civilization decay. Or at an individual level, are you behaving in ways that are flourishing or behaving in ways that are deteriorating? Am I behaving in a way that is virtuous? Am I growing or decaying? Most humans focus on mere survival or fighting natural decay, which is not the ideal life. How do we surpass the state of just surviving? A visualization of Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire illustrates the use of time within a civilization through periods of a growth and decay cycle.
You can interpret these as the potential phases in one’s life. Abraham Maslow (psychologist) developed a similar structure in personal human development in a hierarchy of human needs.
This is how you determine if you are living a virtuous (good) life. Welcome to the good life. Are you progressing up the pyramid? Personal growth out of a survival state towards the state of self-actualization is how you should spend your time riches. What frees up time during the day to focus on moving up the hierarchy to the pursuit of the good life? Focus on the study of trade to get out of the state of survival. Essentially trading time for financial assets, things that make money, like a metaphorical tree that produces money as its fruit.
We live on an economic planet.
– Grant Cardone
So how do we begin to move out of the survival state economically? Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s chief confidant) said,
“The safest way to get what you want, is to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.”
Its simple, are you deserving of getting out of survival? How much are your skills, career, businesses, and assets paying you? Usually the easier it is to do a task, the less it will return back to you in the form of monetary value you are providing the world so if you can solve a more difficult problem in the world, you will receive more. The more useful you are, the more you will be rewarded. Seek knowledge from people who are solving highly rewarded problems.
You can never make too much money (unless your accountant said so), but is there an optimal number where there are marginal returns on happiness from making money? The number was quantified by Harvard economic psychologists to be around $75k in 2010 inside the US, so in inflation adjusted terms by John Williams at shadow stats, this would be about $166k/yr today in 2022. The person who makes $1B per year or $1m per year or $166k per year doesn’t change how happy they are in general while moving up the self-actualization pyramid. They all can afford to get out of survival. This number adjusts depending on which city, and country you live in since the cost of living changes everywhere on the planet. Look at where you’re living and where you want to live to evaluate cost of living. $166k/yr give or take should be enough to build a financial base, and begin working on progress up the self-actualization pyramid of human development out of a survival state. Money, and assets are a means to an end, and not an end all be all. There is much more to life.
This blog will mostly focus on finance, and will not go much further up the pyramid for now. That’s a journey with another sherpa. I am not the Dalai Lama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Mark Anthony & Cleopatra. I might not even be qualified to define happiness itself, but in my parting thoughts: the journey combination of good health, good wealth, good love (usually in this order) all leads to happiness and satisfaction. You want to be in a state in which if you had no more time on earth, you would be satisfied with how you spent your most scarce asset, time.
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien