How is that so many very smart people aren't more obsessed with the acquisition of wealth?

“Stuff” beyond what it takes to live comfortably is not always on everyones priority list. Being smart does not mean you have business sense or awareness of long-term consequences. I have one good friend who really is a genius but can’t think past a couple of weeks.

Hardly.

My thought is that very smart people see the corrupting and negative influences of wealth, and have made a conscious decision NOT to be obsessed over it. They want to have a good life, of course, but they see that a relentless push towards becoming rich is unhealthy and ultimately antisocial.

So the smart people are, perhaps, post-capitalist (or at least post-greedy) because their intellectual pursuits give them happiness and fulfillment, not their money.

It takes more dedication and single-mindedness than intelligence to garner and maintain wealth.

Unless you inherit it, acquisition of wealth can be a very time consuming activity. Some choose not to use their limited time in acquiring but in doing.

And, for the most part, with wealth comes goods and property which in addition to tying you down require upkeep which require more wealth which require more time.

Because very smart people know the negative consequences of being obsessed with anything.

I’d be perfectly happy living in a cabin in the woods if I had sufficient food, beer, and WiFi, and I’m one of the smartest people I know.

@Seek me too, if you replace wine with beer.

I’ve got a master’s degree and my husband has a PhD. I’m a librarian and he’s a maths teacher. We have what we need and jobs which fulfil us so that’s enough for us. I’d like a swimming pool though.

Perhaps because one of life’s lessons smart people know is that wealth is not a guaranteed path to wisdom self fulfillment.

@Stinley everyone wants a pool until they’ve had one, they quickly become time and money pits, I enjoyed it while I had it but would never do it again…. Might get a hot tub though

Hi, my name’s Al & I have more money than sense…<wipes arse with £20 note>

I think it’s incorrect that so many very smart people aren’t more obsessed with the acquisition of wealth. Many are not, but many are.

@jca so, according to your last sentence, it is actually correct then.

“Enough is abundance to the wise.”
—Euripides

Aside from the genius quote from @SavoirFaire (I guess the word can be used well as an adjective, after all), a lot of this comes down to how we define “smart”. A lot of people ARE “smart” about making money, and that’s their dedication. But I think that truly intelligent people – who also have the ability to manage their emotions – avoid all forms of “obsession”: with food and drink, with sex, with power and position and wealth, and with anything that has the power to control them, rather than the reverse. I wish that I could number myself among that group; I’m working on it.

@stanleybmanly Your question is Manichean.

As the responses above point out, there is a large “middle” where one is not broke, but one is not in the top 1% either. To the extent that one is comfortable and can afford to pursue modest pleasures, one can be happy. But excessive wealth is not inherently happy, and brings on a host of problems that can make it feel as a curse.

Smart people acquire experiences. That’s what makes them smart.
Stuff is just stuff. Useful to a point. But that’s it.

@stanleybmanly I have to ask what prompted you to make this connection of smart people and their level of intelligence with net worth and any obsession thereof that may be part of this equation?

@Cruiser It’s actually a more cynical variation on this theme that set me to thinking about this. I have a friend facing a minor crisis (again). I’ve known him all my life, and the man is brilliant- a veritable talking horse. He is a person who if he is speaking to you on any topic, a crowd will assemble to listen. And yet, he is so hopelessly impractical and clueless when it comes to managing his money, that I have for some 40 or so years regarded him as disabled. Talking with him last night, I came to realize that I have a number of brainy friends with curious attitudes when it comes to money. Many of them don’t seem to care that much about whether or not it is available—until they need it! There are variations in the crowd, but this is another one of those peculiar patterns that leads me to consider the feasibility of reincarnation. These people must be reincarnated royalty or denizens of some class unaccustomed to opening bills or looking at price tags.

@stanleybmanly If correlation means much here I have had a boat load of friends like this over the years. What I have come to understand about them is that their handicap (and they are handicapped in this regard) is a general lack of maturity. Many of them have come to expect a certain level of being catered to that in youth was normal but does not carry over into adulthood. They end up like 40 year old children with a 140 I.Q., always expecting someone to bail them out financially. It boggles the mind.

One might ask in the exact same tone what makes “smart” people vote for and support “more government and more control over all things” when all around the world the governments who loosen control of their economies see them grow beyond all previous imagining – and then start to institute more of the same controls – sometimes by the same people! – which they just jettisoned. This is not to chastise only Democratic voters in the USA, but also Republicans who want “the same thing, just a little slower or cheaper” or “more government control of other things” aside from the economy.

@ ARE you kidding me Yes it does. My friend for example, comes from a basic solid middle class background, yet even when we were kids, he had these aristocratic traits that drove his parents crazy, and peplexed we his peers. He is a study in absurd contradictions, yet one of the most colorful, interesting and affable people I know. Women hurl themselves at him in stupefying numbers, yet scant few are up to his “standards”. He is impeccable and disciplined in all matters such as his diet, the tidiness of his quarters, or the shine on his immaculate and expensive shoes. He is a man who will forgo groceries in preference to a $150 shirt, yet lacks the skill or understanding required to change a tire or roast a chicken. The stories I have regarding my friend are numerous and entertaining. I’m holding on to them on the slim chance that I may outlive him, which would be an otherwise ridiculous prospect considering his fastidious diet and obsession with fitness. But he is endowed with this vulnerability to exotic maladies usually restricted to upper crust folks who can afford them.

I think all of us Jellies have at one time or another been prey to raising a question based on generalizations from the example of one individual. As has been pointed out above, people vary widely in their interests and abilities and a person who is a genius or highly talented in one area may not be a financial wizard or a materialistic person at all.

If you’re smart enough, you understand that money is just money.

@Zaku Actually, I would dispute that. Up to a certain subjective amount, money is security and the ability to design your own life.

This is simply not one individual. I think it is a real phenomena. As
@stanleybmanly noted the technical ability of a turnip seems to be a common thread also. This is in line with the fact that these folks seldom do anything themselves.

Yeah, money is just money, if you can muster enough to satisfy what you regard as your requirements. But I think old age has soured whatever optimism I once possessed. To me it now seems more prudent to chase the bucks as the lyrics to that song dance thru my head. For in spite of all rosy appearances: “remember, the wolf is always at the door”

@CWOTUS Economic growth isn’t the only thing that matters in this world. Fortunately, 19th century American liberals—which is to say, the 1854 Republican Party—recognized this when they decided to fight and die for one of the most disruptive and longest lasting government regulations of all time: the abolition of slavery (much to the regret of many contemporary right-libertarian thinkers).

@janbb Of course, that is an entirely valid perspective to react to the line I posted.

I was going for pithy and snooty, but the truth I was aiming at is that money is what money is, but the attitudes around money are something else, and there are many many ideas and feelings and stigmas and complexes and other insubstantial but influential effects, many of which are subconscious, which are not what money actually is. Those ideas can and do cause vast amounts of suffering in ways that are not just accurate effects of the monetary situations themselves.

There are millionaires who act like they are in danger of becoming homeless all the time.

There are billionaires who crave ever more money and orient their whole lives around amassing as much as possible, who cause all sorts of damage to all sorts of people.

There are parents who dump all sorts of dysfunctional abuse on their children because of their own pathological complexes about money.

There are people who simply have enough money from whatever source, and pursue what interests them with little or no interest in having more money.

And so on.

Being able to separate the real actual existential thing that money is, from all the added psychology and ideas and feelings that many people carry around about money, and can’t separate from their models of reality, or even from their bodily reactions when money comes up, can be a very useful distinction/skill/practice to develop.

That’s what I was alluding to in a smartass one-liner kind of way.

So it seems we have reached the conclusion very smart people do not obsess over money. Who then does? I only know of 3 and they go out of their way to make this obsession with money obvious. All 3 a fairly miserable people and mired in their own self loathing of wishing they were richer and they all like @stanleybmanly‘s friend live outside their means. I do not consider any of them particularly intelligent either.

How much money are we referring to? To some people (poor people), I am rich. I have a good job, nice car, etc. However, I’m far from rich. To some people (for example, many in my family who have way more than I do), I’m the poor one. I shop at Kohl’s and might buy a handbag from Amazon, and my “nice” new car is a Honda CRV, hardly extravagant. To me, those who are very comfortable are still not at the level of the Koch Brothers, so it’s all depending on who you ask.

@Cruiser I would say that Donald Trump seems to obsess over his own money, how to make more and how to avoid sharing it. We could imagine that money seems to equal power and self-worth to him.

Anyone who makes it to retirement age and can’t afford to retire is stupid. I want no part of being anywhere near those idiots when I retire.

Many, many intelligent people are too wise to get caught up in equating money with happiness and in valuing it above more important things. I am one of them.

@Cruiser No, plenty of very smart people still have all sorts of issues around money. Even the ones who are aware of most of their own money issues and have tools for handling them, can still have major impacts on their life from their money issues. Obsession and intelligence aren’t mutually exclusive.

@Zaku You are injecting your own opinion into this question which is pretty clear in the OP about intelligence and “obsession” over money. Everyone rich or poor has “issues” over money…that is stating the obvious. This question again is focusing on obsession over money which IMO separates a vast of the majority of us smart or not-smart who simply have money “issues”.

I should not have used the word obsession in this question. Most of the people I’m talking about including the talking horse are single people whose casual regard for monetary concerns put themselves alone at hazard. The people displaying these characteristics who do have partners invariably find themselves stripped of control over financial matters by those partners as a matter of necessity. In the end, it’s almost certainly a colossal waste of time trying to figure people out. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving and spending the day with an assemblage of truly eclectic wonderful oddballs mixed in with rock steady sensible folks (usually the women).

@stanleybmanly So maybe obsessed->interested?

Hearing your description, I’d first observe that people in general think of themselves as being far more logical in our behavior than we really are. Often we know what would make sense to do, and/or think what we do makes sense, and avoid acknowledging how much we are being run by habits and other subconscious behavior patterns.

I don’t know the people you’re referring to, but I might guess that like most people, they have whole complexes around money that they don’t have much of a handle on, and in their cases, those patterns involve thinking and behavior around money that’s awful in a financial sense. There are many flavors of that (e.g. they make it about greed being wrong, or they are mad that they don’t feel supported, or they just feel powerless/helpless and wait for others to provide, or any number of others), none of which have very much to do with rational thinking. Those who are very “smart” rational types may tend to just have more complex rationalizations, opinions and feelings.

Because acquisition of wealth does not guarantee happiness.

Okay, the clarification was helpful.

This isn’t only about smart people and money, this could be about anything that otherwise intelligent people take for granted. Even something as seemingly mundane as electricity and fresh water. Or health, for that matter.

When people have been surrounded by “enough” money (or electricity, clean water, energy, whatever) for most or all of their lives, they tend to take it for granted. How many people think more deeply about electricity for 99.9% of every year than, “It comes out of those plastic receptacles in the wall.”? Or about fresh water: “Move the lever this way for hot or this way for cold, and push it this way to get more volume.”?

A lot of people (maybe not so many in Fluther, or so I’ve gleaned from the personal details that people share from time to time) have not had the same experience with money: they don’t take that for granted because they have to work hard for not-quite-enough of it. A lot of people have grown up in environments where this was not the case. They always had “enough” money for whatever they wanted to do and simply took it for granted that there would always be more.

Conversely, some who have to struggle to earn enough money to live comfortably don’t often realize how easily it can be acquired, if that’s where they want to focus their attention. They tend to think of it as a scare “substance” (in the same way that water can be scarce) that has to be hoarded, constantly striven for and diligently mastered. They can even develop fetishes and mysteries around it.

Sometimes, in fact, the smarter people are the more things they take for granted because of abundance – simply failing to realize the effort that has to go into some system somewhere to produce the resource – and the more mysteries and rituals they can get into when the thing becomes harder to find or produce.

On this basis, I like the question a lot. Something to think about.