Here’s the latest installment of my AMA sessions, this segment focusing on how I feel about the mainstream consumer/worker lifestyle I left behind and how to get over the dark lust for money and status.
In other news, I punted on getting my CRF250 fixed in time, bought a CB500F and rode it 3,749 miles to Fairbanks, Alaska in 9 days (two of which were spent waiting out a storm closure).
It was not a sightseeing trip: I was on a mission. I didn’t take many pictures and I didn’t stop much. Most days were over 500 miles. My longest day was 716 miles. I’ll do a write-up later.
Camping spot the night before crossing in to Canada
What I’m Reading
I’m reading The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning by Paul Bloom. He digs in to (among other things) the research on the impact of wealth on life happiness, satisfaction, and meaning, and starts asking some pointed questions about whether or not those are worthwhile aims in the first place.
But I’m not sure that life satisfaction is all that we are looking for. Keep in mind that the big finding from the research is that when we aspire to a life that we are, in Mathews’s words, “on the whole, happy with,” we focus a lot on social comparison. Notably, we try to make more money than everyone else. This sort of one-upmanship seems hard to defend and might be poor advice for a life well lived. Is there something besides this sort of happiness that we should be striving for? What else is on the table?