I used to believe that the definition of wealth, was being able to do what I wanted, when I wanted, with whom I wanted, as much as I wanted to.
What a purely selfish definition… and there is nothing wrong with that if you are happy being a selfish person.
As you grow older you ‘hopefully’ (I’m talking third person but really it means me) grow a little wiser as well, and adopting humility and selflessness are, I believe, part of the process.
Anyway, I have found a definition that I believe is worthy of superseding my previous definition (how hard is that really? :D)
It’s from R. Buckminster Fuller, if you haven’t read any of his material I highly recommend it, just be prepared to have a dictionary next to you… his language level is so far above the average human it’s not funny!
So here is the definition.
“Wealth is the product of the progressive master of matter by mind, and is specifically accountable in forward man-days of established metabolic regeneration advantages spelt out in hours of life for specific numbers of individuals released from formerly prescribed entropy-preoccupying tasks for their respectively individual yet inherently co-operative elective investment in further anti-entropic effectiveness.”
At the end of his book, “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth”, here is his closing statements:
“So, planners, architects, and engineers take the initiative. Go to work, and above all co-operate and don’t hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another. Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short-lived. These are the synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us. They are not man-made laws. They are the infinitely accommodative laws of the intellectual integrity governing universe.”
Wow!
Here is a man that devoted his life to improving the human race… someone we can all learn from.
Wealth and Abundance,
Daniel Turner
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Wow, what a definition. It is a Truth that wealth by hording more and more material, money and natural resources will lead to spiritual ruin.
Unfortunately most people just don’t ‘get it’. That definition took me 3 or 4 reads to just grasp what he meant.
Daniel