Stoicism and the housing crisis
A kind of national insanity in the housing market has led to the current state of collective economic doom. While one is obligated to say that the cause of the housing boom and subsequent crash is due to many complicated and interlocking factors, one strong contributing factor was the idea, apparently held by millions, that housing prices would rise indefinitely (or, at least, until they could sell their houses and comfortably retire to Boca).
Alain de Botton, writer of accessible and insightful reflections on Proust and travel, among other topics, helps us understand this national mood through the lens of optimism:
For the last 200 years, despite occasional shocks, the Western world has been dominated by a belief in progress, based on its extraordinary scientific and entrepreneurial achievements. But from a broader historical perspective, this optimism is an anomaly. Humans have spent the greater part of their existence drawing a curious comfort from expecting the worst.
According to de Botton, the modern consciousness has been taught to locate happiness in two places: love and work. He continues:
It isn’t that love and work are invariably incapable of delivering fulfillment—only that they almost never do for too long. And when an exception is misrepresented as a rule, our individual misfortunes, instead of seeming inevitable, weigh down on us like curses. In denying the natural place reserved in the human lot for longing and disaster, this philosophy denies us the possibility of collective consolation for our fractious marriages, our unexploited ambitions, and our exploded portfolios, and condemns us instead to solitary feelings of shame and persecution for having stubbornly failed to make more of ourselves.
According to de Botton, then, the twin optimisms of love and work are believed to be a sort of implicit guarnatee of modern happiness. Whereas economies might fluctuate, the modern person believes that they may always rely on the happiness to be found in simple pleasures of family, community, and the belonging created by labor. Of course, de Botton’s point is that this happiness is in fact as transitory as economic success or the comforts of middle-class life.
de Botton quotes Seneca approvingly, argueing that a healthy pessimism surrounding the longevity of love and productive work will lead to a more realistic outlook on the tides of fortune. I do wish he would have taken the next step and recommended the classic Stoic alternative — ultimate reliance on inner-focused happiness. This is a theme that can be found throughout Seneca’s collected Letters and also appears approvingly in de Botton’s discussions of travel, where he reminds us that wherever we go we take our own neurosis and phobias with us — that there is no vacation from yourself.
Ultimately, pessimism as a philosophical alternative should not be viewed as only negative. It should instead be seen as an endorsement of reliance on inner dialogue and the self, the only entity that cannot easily be taken away by the tides of fortune (except, obviously, upon serious illness or death). What is missing in the western formulation of happiness is an unending desire to work on that only truly enduring relationship. According to Seneca, this relationship can best be improved by inner dialogue and study. Despite what car manufacturers or insurance companies might say, the picket-fence, house and home pleasures of our national imagination are ultimately as transient as $28 an hour starting manufacturing wages.
-John
Related posts:
- On commuting and value neutrality
- Who caused the financial crisis?
- Morality, meet the financial crisis
- My ancient Greek wedding
- Should government undo residential segregation?
ShareComments
Leave a Reply
