Surviving in a Capitalist Society

Living in a capitalist society is an interesting experience. Within your network of family, friends and acquaintences you come across so many different perceptions of reality. Each persons little world is their own reality.How do we determine our reality- it is based on our experiences from the day we are born with some input from our inate senses along the way.

Why does capitalism exist? I believe it is due to the humans desire to have some sort of measurable guidelines that show one has "succeeded". This is then compounded by the need that humans have to continually achieve. Therefore the bar keeps getting raised.

How often is it that the first question you get asked when meeting someone is "how are you going?". The you think "how am I going - compared to what!".Money and material wealth is a means to an end - not an end itself. Unfortunately too many look as the magic million dollars as some sort of nirvana. Of course if they reach it then they have to work out how to maintain it. Often the puchasing power of the money is decoupled from the amount of money.

If you consider Malsow's Hierarchy of Needs, many in "developed" parts of the world have conquered the first 2 needs of sustainence and safety/security - to many this is an expectation of what is owed to them. The next few levels become more touchy feelly and less directly measurable. Hence the direction towards material wealth as a substitute measurement for success.

Human psychology is a challenging thing to keep control of.Why is one family of five with a 2 bedroom house happier than a one child family with a five bedroom house? What is happening around the world in many of the developed countries is that the material wealth that people have accumulated is not "Net Wealth" but "borrowed wealth", then thay have realised the challenge of maintaining this "wealth" and decided that it isn't as important as they originally thought so they bail out and down comes the "valuations" of these wealth measurements. (recessions and depressions)

Working with people in wealth protection and wealth accumulation is an interesting journey - the first step is to try to find out what "wealth" means to them!

Wealth and prosperity is different to money.