Money is the root of all hapiness

Money is the root of all happiness. There, I've said it, and it feels good.

Since caveman Ogg met cavewoman Oggette we have been judged worthy by our wealth. Ogg had two good spears and several fine pelts to woo Oggette, and it was good. He had the means to provide for her and that meant a better chance that their offspring Ogg Jr. and Poindexter would survive. I get that. It's an intrinsic part of animal nature to go with the winner.

It's always been part of our society. Kings and the noble are wealthy and therefore they have control. Would Julius Cesar, a rich, well-connected army general, have had a chance to become emperor if he was little more than a shop owner? No, and there's no argument that's going to change that fact.

OK, let's give the world and humankind that much.

Is that all there is? Is that what we are in the end? A bunch of creatures who only look to those with the obvious trappings of wealth and fall in line behind them?

I have to honestly say, I don't know. There are such things as social and economic revolutions, but they tend to be short-lived and open to corruption from within.

The usual pattern seems to be that the wealthy continue to get wealthy until society at large is so unbalanced that there has to be a reckoning. This usually takes place in the form of a revolution of some kind. It can be anything from a proletariat uprising to something as simple as a return to religious roots that call for a more just distribution of wealth. Heck, it could just be people deciding that being rich isn't everything. That was the upshot of the Depression. The common man was finally championed as a good thing and there was a great reallocation of wealth to the middle class. But in the end that gave way to the rampant consumerism of the 1950s and the eventual creation of a new class of the wealthy.

So, is wealth all there is?

No, of course not. We are much more than that. But it is true that if you don't have the basics, you will look at wealth as the ultimate goal because it eliminates the wants that plague us.

Money isn't the root of happiness, but it sure doesn't hurt. I'm going to buy a megamillions lotto ticket now.

Here's some links for thought.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/relgwlth.htm

http://www.gearbits.com/archives/2010/11/on_wealth_and_s.html

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wealth

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/2007/scf2007home.html