STREET DOGS

FROM Melbourne Business School philosopher-in-residence John Armstrong: “An essential skill in alleviating our money worries is the ability to distinguish between wants and needs. The distinction is useful in warding off mere desires, like the longing for the latest shiny gadget with little utilitarian value. If we want to be wise about money we should resist the impulse to follow our desires and concentrate instead on getting what we need. Need is deeper — bound up with the serious narrative of one’s life. “Do I need this”? is a way of asking: how important is this thing, how central is it to my becoming a good version of myself? This interrogation is designed to distinguish needs from mere wants. But it is important to see that this is not the same as the “modest versus grand” distinction.

Our needs are not always for the smaller, lesser, cheaper thing. It’s not greedy to want to make a lot of money — if you want to make it as a reward for doing things that are genuinely good for other people. The crucial developmental step in the economic lives of individuals and societies is their ability to cross from the pursuit of middle-order goods to higher-order goods. Sometimes we need to lessen our attachment to the middle needs like status and glamour in order to concentrate on higher things. This doesn’t take more money; it takes more independence of mind.

What we expend our mental energy on, what we put our emotional resources into, where we deploy courage or daring or prudence or commitment: these are major parts of existence and are inevitably much connected with work and earning money.

And we need to find activities that deserve our best efforts. We don’t’ want to reserve our central capacities for the margins and weekends of life.”

Michel Pireu — e-mail: pireum@streetdogs.co.za