Several years ago, Tom Shadyac seemed to have it all: a multimillion-dollar career directing Hollywood blockbusters like Bruce Almighty and The Nutty Professor, a 17,000-square-foot mansion, fancy cars, the luxury of flying in private jets, invitations to extravagant parties and more. It was a life many people dream about.
Despite these many luxuries, Tom says something just didn't feel right.
"I was standing in the house that my culture had taught me was a measure of the good life," Tom recalls in his documentary I Am. "I was struck with one very clear, very strange feeling: I was no happier."
Tom says that part of what's wrong with our world—and the lie that he says he was living—is our culture's definition of success.
"[We have] a very extrinsic model of success," he explains. "You have to have a certain job status, a certain amount of wealth. ... I think true success is intrinsic. ... It's love. It's kindness. It's community."
As Tom journeyed on his quest to find out what would truly make him happy and help unearth what's wrong with our world, he made major changes to his lifestyle. Today, Tom lives in a modest mobile home, bikes to work and flies commercial airlines—and he says he's never been happier.
o find out why the world is the way it is, Tom explored the readings of scientists, philosophers, poets and others, and spoke with thought leaders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, scientist Dean Radin, researcher Rollin McCraty of the HeartMath Institute, journalist Lynn McTaggart, professor Dacher Keltner of U.C. Berkeley, author Thom Hartmann and more.
What he discovered revolves around three key concepts that are explored in I Am:
1. It is scientifically proven that the entire human race is connected.
2. It is human nature to be cooperative rather than competitive.
3. If you don't do what your heart wants you to do and follow your passion, it will destroy you.
In I Am, Tom says, "There's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law that's evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs."
In our culture, however, humans often take more than they need by buying large homes, driving expensive cars and living excessively, as Tom says he did.
"We have a term for something in the body when it takes more than its share," Tom says in the documentary. "We call it cancer."
Tom says he didn't want to be a part of that cancer—he wanted to be a part of the healing. "We must lose this cancerous idea that we have to take everything we can," he says.
In a culture that takes more than it needs and gets caught up in the quest for wealth and power, Oprah says that one of the ways we've gotten so off course is the obsession with celebrity.
Tom: Celebrity should be celebrated. We should celebrate you and others for your talent. For your gift. ... [However,] when we put people on a pedestal, [we get] in the way of our authentic selves.
Oprah: Aren't we the feeder system? Everybody who's watching it? We're the feeder system. You can see how it reflects us, and we reflect it.
Tom: The audience—you guys have all the power. You see, you have to stop elevating us. I don't want to be your hero. I want to be your brother. You know, I want to be your family member. I want to be your equal. And if you start seeing things as they are, like as the divine sees it...who will celebrate the women who swept this floor as much as any artist because she is an artist too. We're all artists. If you guys start doing that, it will change.
A big revelation in I Am is that our culture is wrongly built around the idea of competition. Tom says in the film, "That's pretty much the message that I got as a kid: 'Separate yourself from the pack.' 'Be number one.' And 'Win.'"
Though our culture may be built around competition, I Am strives to answer the question of whether it's competition or cooperation that is the essential nature of humans.
"If you talk to people in aboriginal or indigenous cultures, you find the highest societal values is cooperation. And competition is a very low value. And competition beyond certain boundaries is considered mental illness," says author Thom Hartmann in I Am. "You look at our culture, and cooperation is considered a relatively low value. And competition is considered the highest value. We celebrate the most powerful competitors."
But is competition the true essence of human nature? Thom says that scientists decided to test this hypothesis and found that it is not.
"What [scientists] found was that democracy was being played out literally every day by ... animals," Thom says. He recalls his own experiences of going scuba diving and seeing schools of fish dart around as a collective group, and also remembers watching flocks of birds in his backyard fly together and change directions suddenly while still remaining together.
"How did they know?" Thom asks. "Well, it turns out, when you do the slow-motion photography, they're all voting literally with every wing beat or with every gill beat. They're voting hundreds of times a minute. And [the scientists] said, 'We found this from insects all the way up to primates.' The basis of nature is cooperation and democracy. It's in our DNA."
Another one of the important concepts in I Am is one that Oprah has said for years: If you don't do what your heart wants you to do and follow your passion, it will destroy you.
"People find happiness in direct proportion to doing what they love," she says. "If you don't do what you love, you die a little every day."
Following one's heart may require him or her to make changes in life, and the way people change, Tom says, is to ask questions. The main question he wants people to ask themselves is this: Who are you? Not what your culture has told you to be, but who are you on the inside?
"I think many of us are living inauthentic lives," he says. "Authenticity means to be the author of your own life. I think many of us are telling stories that have been given to us rather than our own story."
"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Sun Dec 04, 2011 8:09 pm
oliverB
Joined: 23 Apr 2012
Posts: 4
Remember that old saying that money cannot buy happiness? Well, a brand new study states that may not be all together true. An improved lifestyle can do much for an individual's happiness. However, the effect breaks even at a certain point. Money may buy happiness after all. It was said that people with more money tend to have better marriages, are happier with the friends they make, and find their jobs more interesting.
Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:37 am
colibri
Joined: 12 Dec 2011
Posts: 114
Location: Méxicos bellybutton
Who said i wanted to be happy !LOL
HAHAHAH nah just kidding .
My happines is my superlarge family
_________________ If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining.
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!
CALVIN & HOBBES
Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:21 am
DarkMinxMish
Joined: 27 Mar 2012
Posts: 81
Hey,
hmm....that's actually pretty interesting. Yeah I really don't think at the end of the day money will make anyone happy, not truly happy at least.
It'll make you happy for a while. It's similar to being on a high you get the rush that money and status brings you, but eventually it wears off.
You'll get bored wondering if there's more then this. Money is a means to help a person survive, it's a tool, but it should never be the end goal.
I think inner wealth and value is far more important in the long run. That stays with you and makes a person a better human being by helping others and following your true bliss whatever that is. The state of being discontent is a human condition that'll never be solved unless consumption (in whatever form) is stopped being used as a replacement for our real needs.
That guy got it right!
_________________ Pricking up her golden head:
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:24 am
Winston Site Admin
Joined: 18 Aug 2007
Posts: 14004
The Fascinating Scientific Reason Why "Money Doesn't Buy Happiness"
No matter how you turn it, research says once your basic needs are taken care of, money and other rewards don’t make you happier.
"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Mon Oct 22, 2012 12:04 pm
Winston Site Admin
Joined: 18 Aug 2007
Posts: 14004
Check out these great points about true wealth and happiness.
Happiness studies consistently bring back a couple of findings: 1) that we derive far more happiness from experiences than we do from possessions, and 2) that we’re better off investing our energy in our relationships than the things we own.
Getting rid of unnecessary possessions can therefore indirectly improve our quality of life through the following ways:
1. Frees up more time and money to spend on experiences and with people.
2. Forces one to invest more of their identity in their behavior and attitude and less in objects around them.
3. Removes the stress of loss aversion and trying to hold on to what one already has.
4. Saves money (always a stress reducer).
Psychological studies on happiness in the past couple decades has supported this. Research shows that money correlates with happiness up until a middle-class income and after that, there’s no correlation between money and happiness. Happiness flatlines.
Money buys happiness only when it is spent on experiences and earned without costing too much time. This is why I find it less useful to define wealth in terms of money, and define it instead in terms of the quality of life experiences.
Wealth is having the freedom to maximize one’s life experiences.
Money is a requisite for wealth, but so is time and so is efficient use of that time and money. Money gives one opportunities for more experiences. But one must also have the time to pursue those experiences. Having the money to travel to Australia isn’t worth anything if you can’t ever take time off work to go there.
Your fundamental needs take precedence: health, food, shelter. If these three needs are not met, then nothing else is going to make you happy and not having them is going to make you miserable. But assuming you have those needs met, then research indicates that the experiences which create the most happiness are:
1. New and unique activities.
2. Shared experiences with others and building relationships.
3. Passion activities.
"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Mon Oct 22, 2012 12:32 pm
Jester
Joined: 20 Jan 2009
Posts: 3072
Location: California
.....Despite these many luxuries, Tom says something just didn't feel right.
"I was standing in the house that my culture had taught me was a measure of the good life," Tom recalls in his documentary I Am. "I was struck with one very clear, very strange feeling: I was no happier."
Tom says that part of what's wrong with our world—and the lie that he says he was living—is our culture's definition of success.
"[We have] a very extrinsic model of success," he explains. "You have to have a certain job status, a certain amount of wealth. ... I think true success is intrinsic. ... It's love. It's kindness. It's community."
As Tom journeyed on his quest to find out what would truly make him happy and help unearth what's wrong with our world, he made major changes to his lifestyle. Today, Tom lives in a modest mobile home, bikes to work and flies commercial airlines—and he says he's never been happier.
o find out why the world is the way it is, Tom explored the readings of scientists, philosophers, poets and others, and spoke with thought leaders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, scientist Dean Radin, researcher Rollin McCraty of the HeartMath Institute, journalist Lynn McTaggart, professor Dacher Keltner of U.C. Berkeley, author Thom Hartmann and more.
What he discovered revolves around three key concepts that are explored in I Am:
1. It is scientifically proven that the entire human race is connected.
2. It is human nature to be cooperative rather than competitive.
3. If you don't do what your heart wants you to do and follow your passion, it will destroy you.......
In a culture that takes more than it needs and gets caught up in the quest for wealth and power, Oprah says that one of the ways we've gotten so off course is the obsession with celebrity.
Tom: Celebrity should be celebrated. We should celebrate you and others for your talent. For your gift. ... [However,] when we put people on a pedestal, [we get] in the way of our authentic selves.
Oprah: Aren't we the feeder system? Everybody who's watching it? We're the feeder system. You can see how it reflects us, and we reflect it.
Tom: The audience—you guys have all the power. You see, you have to stop elevating us. I don't want to be your hero. I want to be your brother. You know, I want to be your family member. I want to be your equal. And if you start seeing things as they are, like as the divine sees it...who will celebrate the women who swept this floor as much as any artist because she is an artist too. We're all artists. If you guys start doing that, it will change.
A big revelation in I Am is that our culture is wrongly built around the idea of competition. Tom says in the film, "That's pretty much the message that I got as a kid: 'Separate yourself from the pack.' 'Be number one.' And 'Win.'"
Though our culture may be built around competition, I Am strives to answer the question of whether it's competition or cooperation that is the essential nature of humans.
"If you talk to people in aboriginal or indigenous cultures, you find the highest societal values is cooperation. And competition is a very low value. And competition beyond certain boundaries is considered mental illness," says author Thom Hartmann in I Am. "You look at our culture, and cooperation is considered a relatively low value. And competition is considered the highest value. We celebrate the most powerful competitors."
But is competition the true essence of human nature? Thom says that scientists decided to test this hypothesis and found that it is not.
"What [scientists] found was that democracy was being played out literally every day by ... animals," Thom says. He recalls his own experiences of going scuba diving and seeing schools of fish dart around as a collective group, and also remembers watching flocks of birds in his backyard fly together and change directions suddenly while still remaining together.
"How did they know?" Thom asks. "Well, it turns out, when you do the slow-motion photography, they're all voting literally with every wing beat or with every gill beat. They're voting hundreds of times a minute. And [the scientists] said, 'We found this from insects all the way up to primates.' The basis of nature is cooperation and democracy. It's in our DNA."
Another one of the important concepts in I Am is one that Oprah has said for years: If you don't do what your heart wants you to do and follow your passion, it will destroy you.
"People find happiness in direct proportion to doing what they love," she says. "If you don't do what you love, you die a little every day."
Following one's heart may require him or her to make changes in life, and the way people change, Tom says, is to ask questions. The main question he wants people to ask themselves is this: Who are you? Not what your culture has told you to be, but who are you on the inside?
"I think many of us are living inauthentic lives," he says. "Authenticity means to be the author of your own life. I think many of us are telling stories that have been given to us rather than our own story."
This is a great post, Winston. Thanks. A lot of the questions about where to live and whom to marry will be easier to answer once we are living and working according to what we deeply believe.
This really resonated with me right now, because I have been struggling with the hyper-competitveness of real estate brokerage. I am much more about collegiality and teamwork and win-win. But the structure of the modern real estate brokerage business and its professional-media propaganda, pulls you toward that dark side, toward a last-cannibal-standing survivor-game. I get nauseated and pull away. Just the last few days I have thought about turning loose of money goals, and just being prepared to offer help to people every day. So that it's fun to work.
That's what I got from the cooperation part.
Re being true to myself though, there is more. Need to write - and publish. Need to be authentic.
Again, thanks.
****
BTW it's a small quibble, but I don't agree with the fellow about taking only what you need. Sure, animals live that way, and so do Bushmen, and so do dopeheads. We are made for better than that. You should accumulate all you can, honorably. You can use your surplus to protect and provide for those you love.
But first - yes - you should decide who you are going to be. No point losing your soul.
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