The Real Reason Expensive Things Ruin Us #021

Good morning and welcome back to Every Dawn.

There is one sentence of Epicurus that I always found the most profound of his whole work. I will read it to you: "No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves."

This needs a bit of unpacking. He says, "No pleasure is in itself evil," because we might think sometimes that if we want a simple life, then perhaps buying an expensive car or enjoying a good meal might itself be something evil, which I should avoid. Sometimes Christians might have this attitude—a simple life is better than a life in riches.

There are many adherents to downsizing and simple life, tiny home movements, and all these could perhaps bring their adherents to believe that having something big or having something expensive is something that is inherently bad. But Epicurus says this is not the case. It is not the thing that is expensive that is in itself bad. The problem is rather that the things which produce certain pleasures—expensive things—sometimes cause annoyances that are many times greater than the pleasures themselves.

So, an expensive car, let's say, is not a problem because the car is expensive. An expensive car is not bad in itself. What is bad about an expensive car is that, in order to be able to afford it, I have to work much more—I have to work, you know, perhaps 12 hours a day in a job that I don't really like. And during this time, I will not have time, for example, to find a mate or to found a family, or perhaps if I have a family, they will feel neglected because now I'm always away working. These are the annoyances that the car causes me, and the unhappiness I get from these annoyances is many times greater—this is what he says—than the pleasure I get from the car, which after all gives me only very little pleasure the moment I'm driving it. For a few minutes I get a good feeling, and even this, after a while, I get used to it.

So, it's only for a short time that a new car gives me pleasure, but it's for a long time that it gives me unhappiness. And if we realize this, then we will have developed a new way of judging options in our lives. I don't only look at a thing and ask myself what pleasure will it give me, but I look at the same thing and ask myself, "What unhappiness do I have to endure, and for how long, in order to get this pleasure? And is this pleasure then still worth it?"

Then you have the iPhone. It will cost me a ton of money. I cannot afford other things for, you know, a long time. I will have to restrict other things in order to buy the new iPhone, for example. And then, in order to get it on the day when it comes out, I have to perhaps stand all night on a street, queue up in an Apple shop, and wait for this thing to open so that I get a new iPhone. There are people who do this. But then, if you really ask yourself, "So, in what way is this different now from the old iPhone? Will it really change my life in any significant way?"

Probably not. It's after you've got used to it, after a few months, it will be just another phone. But you had all this unpleasant experience trying to get it in the first place, and so in the end, this was a bad thing to pursue because it made you more unhappy than happy, all things considered.

So, thank you for listening to this, and see you next time. Bye-bye.