What is wealth?

What is wealth?


Merriam Webster defines it as an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. But is this the only way wealth comes? Well, I have heard several times in my life that one is wealthy because they have a large family or many friends or just good friends. I wouldn’t say that these are valuable possessions; because, we can’t possess people. So would they be a resource? Sounds like you’re just using others and loved ones for something calling them a resource. To me, it feels like the definition of wealth is just inadequate.

So, what is wealth? Well, let’s look at what or why we chase money, friends, things, whatever makes us feel wealthy. Having lots of money is absolutely worthless. Unless!!! One has something to spend that money on or for. So having lots of money and buying lots of stuff makes one wealthy? Well, that doesn’t feel right either. That sounds more like they just have a bunch of junk hanging around now. And having lots of friends to do stuff with sounds more like real wealth, but somehow I don’t think it’s just about doing stuff with people.

But if we look at what all these things have in common, it seems that they do have something in similar. Opportunity. Money allows one the opportunity to “get” things. Friends and family allow the opportunity to do things with others, share life experiences and life itself. The opportunity to “do” makes us wealthy. This sounds like a much more accurate definition of wealth to me. But is this the whole story?

No matter where one lives, what country or state of being, Natural Law affords us the same opportunities doesn’t it? There aren’t any rules, laws or principles in Natural Law that limit any of us are there? So wouldn’t we all have the same limitless opportunity to pursue what makes us happy or able to enrich ourselves?

After thinking about his for a while, it seems to me that we are all “wealthy” as in we have all the opportunity that anyone else would have. Some people may have more means in different kinds of opportunities, but we are all able to have the same.

So it is a realization of opportunity that provides our personal wealth?

So it is a realization of opportunity that provides our personal wealth?

I think being granted opportunities makes us wealthy , getting opportunities is not as simple as it sounds and not some birthright , even if people try to make us think it is , when i hear people in the 1 worlds talk about wealth i hear another story than when i hear the same discussion in a poor african country , they have great wealth even against all odds

I'd link the concept to 'security of freedom' more then anything else. With wealth being a 'type' of 'abundance'. I'd go further in that by saying both those aspects exist together, to anchor the concept in different circumstances, both security and freedom together, wealth being an abundance of them both together.

So for example, the functional family might be called wealthy in that way because its functionality is the freedom it affords by being ongoing (less dependent on conduct, and more forgiving), and its familiarity affords a different nature of behavioural freedoms ie less public but not quite fully private. They both work together to let people be a bit more 'free' in 'safety', and by having a greater range of expression available to members it can enable a closer bond and healthy space compared to the public world full of strangers working with zero or superficial assumptions about each other. So the wealth in a functional family is the extra relaxation it can bring, the different experiences it can bring, and the more readily helpful support that might be bought to bear faster. So from that you can easily see what starts to define a family as being less functional LOL, and though no family is perfect, it is always a bit annoying when you do see one which works better then your own

Because its all relative to something, and therefore has scope across anything which and everything but holds perhaps most value to markets because they are systems built on comparison.

So maybe money's value is not the extent of things it can buy, but the power to (opportunity to) acquire things - which add's the freedom for it's use, and then also its capacity to be possessed and its stability of value affords it the aspect of security.

Such that a financially wealthy person is the one who has the most money, not the most toys IMO. Or more accurately the one who generates the most money with least risk to it.

But one could argue that toys have a money value.... but the big difference is in the concept of liquidity - and basically the faster something can be moved/traded/created the less likely it's value is to change by large extents, instead it moves smaller amounts more often, which is more likely to remain closer to an equilibrium then tokens (qualitative type of something) which don't IMO.

And so because money is both the/a baseline token which serves all the other markets and that it is not a real physical thing which needs time and resources to manufacture or deteriorates with age, it moves the fastest.

But yea toys have their own markets, though these other markets are going to reflect different drivers on its particular token type, and therefore their value is going to be most accurately defined by those things - which means any comparison to another type of token is going to be on different qualitative attributes.

And perhaps it takes a paradigm shift from seeing stuff for what they give, to instead what others might give for them
Because that then facilitates the next paradigm shift to understand that possessions are more useful when they add to ones wealth rather then detract from ones wealth.

But sitting all alone in the dark inside a safe on a pile of gold might be going too far - very secure but the freedom has sort of been lost, and so a balance of ones values to these paradigms and perspectives might speak to what an individual finds important to define ones state with.

So then in our lived experience of judging living, the baseline one asserts as normality can most readily serve as a canvas to relate difference. How much freedom to we have to shape our normality would then play into that experience. But in these terms we have the tools intrinsically within us, and so it could be argued perhaps by various philosophies that the qualitative aspect can become one and the same with the quantitative aspect, such that abundance of living in the moment creates the sensation of wealth..... for as long as it can be maintained. The problem is of course this is trying to slow down the passage of time and disengage from the outside which might have different priorities and demands. It is trying to hold a particular state against the current.

Which is sort of what these spiritual paths might have to confront when they try to integrate beyond themselves, having to go onto assert that their techniques are tools to remain connected to that quality of life rather then artificially trying to ensure it, finding value as ways to help us all not be sucked into losing ourselves in the haggling of resources, outer and inner!!!

So I'd say when the proverbial near homeless person says they are 'wealthy with life and do not need possessions' are instead saying they have a sensation of living in abundance, rather then actual wealth to live it.