Five good reasons for not wanting to be too rich

For some people gets to be heresy to say that there is some reason for not wanting to have too much money . Even more nowadays. For Clovis de Barros Filho , ethics professor at USP , there is only one good reason not to have a fat bank account , but five . "I dare say that the rich are traversed by suffering that the poor would not dream of having ," he argues , who teaches the course Five Reasons Not to Be Rich Power in the House of Knowledge , in São Paulo . According to Barros Filho , beyond the ethical dilemma of having too much money - especially in Brazil - in some cases , wealth leaves the immobilized people. " The very rich have many choices and life demands that these people play plenty in the trash . And for the rich , throw away is much more problematic than for the poor ," he explains . To bolster its argument, the teacher uses theories of philosophers enshrined in Ancient Greece as well as contemporary thinkers . Still, he acknowledges that he is rarely able to influence someone . " The pursuit of money and the increase in equity is something that is not questioned in society." Here Barros Filho raises reflections that describes in its course. All based on the line of thought of five major philosophers : Plato , Aristotle , Epicurus , Hobbes and Spinoza .


1 ) Do not love or desire anything

In the Symposium , Plato talks about the Greek Eros . For him , love and desire are the same thing. You love what you want and only want what does not. Thus , according to Plato , is the desire appears with the absence in the presence of what one desires no desire - and no desire , no love. The person finds himself in a Catch- : or love and want what you have or do not have everything and do not love or want anything. The logic is the logic of Eros " bottomless pit ." In wealth, the person has everything and does not want or love anything and therefore leads an unhappy life .


2 ) Fear of losing everything

According to the Dutch Benedict Spinoza , the essence of man is his vital energy , which he calls " power to act " . This leads to two main concepts : the joy and sadness. Joy is related to a more powerful state of being itself and sadness is the transition to a less powerful state. You may be affected by a world that is in front or a world you think. A fall from power determined by something that is in your consciousness or your imagination is the so-called fear or fear . This brings the problem of being too rich perspective of fear: the chance to have fear of impoverishment increases as wealth. The individual who has nothing has several fears : death , of not having enough to eat, being stabbed , but not afraid to let have. On the other hand, a guy who has everything going all the time tormented by the fear of losing what they have won .


3 ) Do not feel pleasure

For the Greek Epicurus , the good life is a life with pleasure. But his thesis is not " hath pleasure now and every time ," but that the good life is one that allows for pleasure and continue to have , namely Epicurus advocates sustainable pleasure. For example : for those who just sipping champagne Veuve Clicquot rosé vintage 1968 take pleasure depends on a combination of very complicated elements . For that person , the pleasure is rare . As the material conditions of pleasure become more sophisticated , you lose the condition of having pleasure with what is simple . And that makes bad life because , when no longer able to sponsor the sophistication , the person will be without pleasure .


4 ) Feel always insecure

The Englishman Thomas Hobbes , who lived in the 17th century , wrote an important work called Leviathan and argues that although life in society implies a number of restrictions , is better than life in the state of nature. According to Hobbes , a fear exists that makes life unbearable : the violent death . He believes that the state of society has the prerogative to protect the citizen against it . Sophisticated analysis that we can consider that , in a way , that has nothing does not require much protection. This person would need less protection from the state - with regard to safety - than who has everything . With that , the happiness of the individual who has nothing is not at the mercy of state effectiveness . Now who has everything is in hand the effectiveness of the State to maintain what you have. Thus , the individual who has nothing or little can have out into the world - regardless of the effectiveness of the State to protect it . Ie , in view of Hobbes , the poor , interestingly , is more secure than the rich .


5 ) Having fake friends

According to the Greek Aristotle Love is joy. Joy by not lacking , so is good for you , the world as it is. In a perspective of affective relationship there is always the assumption that the affections of another is equivalent to yours. So if I love you because you make me glad , really wish the reciprocal was true . The problem is that this does not happen the same way in terms of material living conditions who relates to you . Because you can cheer me up by their attributes which are , for example , moral and physical characteristics or virtues can rejoice for things to it, ie , I feel cheerful near you , especially when I'm in the pool of his mansion . Following this reasoning , it is much more difficult to know which is the real cause of the joy of being loved when someone is rich - as is much easier to realize that the real cause of joy is simply a lover when she has nothing . I'm not talking about self-serving people, but those who rejoice with one another and can not discern the true cause of your happiness .