Is Our Current Economic Situation Giving Us Perspective?
Written by: Tom Sawyer
First I would like to say thank you to Ryan, from JealousBrother, for the great article yesterday. We asked him to write a post about whatever he wanted to and he came through. The great thing about relationships with people is you don’t have to agree with everything they say to recognize the good in them. Kim and I don’t always agree with Ryan, but we see the goodness in him and that is very important.
Keeping Up With The Joneses
Material wealth. Isn’t that part of the American dream or “The Dream” period? There are millions and millions of people who dream of having wealth – that Gates/Winphrey/Murdoch/Walton kind of wealth. Chasing those material things may have got us into the economic situation we currently find ourselves in, but we have failed to achieve that goal.
According to Wikipedia, the catchphrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” is the desire to be seen as being as good as one’s neighbors or contemporaries using the comparative benchmarks of social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to “keep up with the Joneses” is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority. Now, even the Joneses are having a hard time keeping up.
The thought of having the bank account to buy anything I want has crossed my mind a time or two 
, but recently I’ve had to back away and look at things differently. Good people are losing their jobs and are scrambling to find a way to make ends meet by no fault of their own. At this time, keeping up with anyone is the furthest thing from my mind. One reason is I could be in a much worse situation than I currently find myself in. The second, and more important, reason is I prefer my family over chasing the almighty dollar. I recently realized I’m happy where I’m at and would be fortunate to maintain my current way of living. Besides maintaining, my only desire is to have a ceiling high enough to improve my situation through my own hard work.
I can only speak for myself, but the current economic situation has caused my perspective to change. Would this have ocurred if the housing market stayed the same and companies continued to hire as before? I’m not so sure, but there is one thing I think could be the result of this economy: we may get back to some form of family values and look at things differently than we did before. In many ways, that would make us more wealthy than we’ve been in a long time.
Tags: american dream, comparative benchmarks, economic distress, economic situation, keeping up with the joneses, material wealth, socio-economic or cultural inferiority
January 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I hope that the economic situation makes more people think and not just think that the government owes them. Unfortunately, there are people who refuse to work and want the handouts.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Tom,
You are right and to answer your question, no, our perspectives probably wouldn’t have changed if there was no housing crisis or economic down turn. The one thing I can say is when you’re faced with a horrible situation like we’ve found ourselves in, it becomes painfully obvious which things are necessities and which are pure luxuries. The status symbols of our society no longer matter, only staying afloat does.
Ryan Kazinecs last blog post..Is Job Security Becoming More Significant Than Compensation and Benefits?
January 6th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Yep, I agree that priorities and perspectives change during times like this. You really do begin to appreciate and be thankful for the provisions you already have.
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