Summary Of Howard C. Cutler's Inner Contentment

Raphael Ohazurike
Dr. Jamil
English 1302
March 23rd 2015. The True Antidote for Greed is Contentment
In Howard C. Cutler’s “Inner Contentment,” which was published in the “Art of Happiness” in 1998, -an American writer and psychiatrist- write about his argument with the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, on human’s desire for material acquisition. In the conversation, Cutler asks Dalai Lama to speak on desire and the Dalai starts by segregating desire into two terms, the positive and negative desire. The former is the reasonable desire that does not comes with trouble and is right for the surrounding circumstances while the latter is the unreasonable desire that tends to cause decline in our mutual affection for our society and our bank accounts
or that which causes problems in our surrounding society. This segregation of desire sparked the argument between the Dalai and Cutler. Cutler’s stand being that acquisition of materials based on self-satisfaction for such items as long as one can afford it is a good desire, while the Dalai position on desire is that self-satisfaction alone is not enough to determine if a desire is positive or negative.
A good amount of people view the term “materialism” as a shoddy behavior in humans, but it seems only natural that happiness should flow from having more money.
Even if they do not admit it, these same people still behave as though it were true. More money means you can have what you want and do what you want. The house you dream of? It is yours. The new car you desire? Here are the keys. Why should money bring the feeling of self-satisfaction? If we should view life as a movie, we notice the sole purpose of our life is to get an education as we get older so that we can be able to get a job and make a living by earning enough money. So there it is the answer to those questions. Basically, what we tend to do in our whole life time is to earn money to survive to our taste of satisfaction. I do understand that some people believe in the “myself before another” principle which Cutler expatiated on when he said, “having a more expensive car than your neighbors might be a problem for them –they might be jealous and so on- but having a new car would give you, yourself a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment.” (Bedau
393)
It is only right that we die knowing we tried fulfilling our taste of satisfaction like visiting exotic places, taking exorbitant vacations and so on, but then we should also bear in mind that life is not all about having fun sometimes. It 's very obvious that while those who enjoy their material goods which are not essential to their happiness are able to be happy without them. If we look at The Dalai’s view on positive and negative effects on desire, we notice that self-satisfaction is not enough reason to determine if we really need an item or not. Imagine a world where people were free to do whatever appeals to their sense of satisfaction, squabble and conflict would be the order of the day. People would walk into schools, kill students and say it is because it appealed to their sense of satisfaction. I do understand the saying that states, “money makes the world go round,” but do not forget that without money the world would still rotate, after all, people existed before the invention of wealth. A paper, published in Psychological Science, found that people in a controlled experiment that were repeatedly exposed to images of luxury goods, experienced immediate but temporary increase in material aspirations, anxiety and depression. They also became more competitive and more selfish, they had a reduced sense of social responsibility and they were less inclined to join in demanding social activities. The researchers pointed out that, as we are repeatedly bombarded with such images through advertisements, and constantly described by the media as consumers, these temporary effects could be triggered more or less continuously. (Thorin)
I know that in my life, I have very often set my sights on some material products, thinking that I would be much happier if I had it.
Sometimes, I spend money on things beyond my financial budget, and sometimes I just charged it, whether I had the money to pay for it or not. (I am lucky, though, because I have never had expensive tastes. I shudder to think where I would be if I did.) Never has a purchase made me a happier person, and sometimes after the newness has worn off, I even felt a great sense of regret that I purchased something that I did not use nearly as much as I thought I would. Let us look for a strategy we would use to conquer this feeling of self-satisfaction when it comes to desire. One can start by ignoring the urge to get things that are not essential and wait for a couple of weeks, if one truly needs it, it may still be a priority in two weeks. If not, the urge to buy it usually will fade fairly
quickly.
No doubt we would all agree with the sentiment: “There is more to life than things.” Yet much of our lives seem to be spent in the acquisition, maintenance, and disposal of material goods. Certainly we cannot enjoy the basics of food, shelter, and clothing without a concern for things. The truly important things of life, however, are those which cannot be encountered by the physical senses, purchased with money, or placed on a shelf. When we take a look at what we value most in life, we generally find family, friends, health, peace, contentment, laughter, helping others, and communion with God foremost on our list of priorities.

Cited Page
1. "Inner Contentment." Current Issues and Enduring Questions. 9th ed. Boston: Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Badau, 2011. 1000-0001. Print.
2. Thorin Klosowski, Thorin. "Why We 're So Materialistic, Even Though It Doesn 't Make Us Happy." Lifehacker. N.p., 19 Mar. 2001. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.