How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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in transmuting what began as a tool into a final goal of
life. His technique is often successful, but while he
gains the security of the hospital bed he forfeits the
happiness of the normal activity of being human. It is
well to examine our own mental traits to determine
whether we have not fallen into this profound error of
false compensation by substituting a neurotic tool of life
for living itself.
We shall have occasion to discuss alcoholism and drug
addiction in greater detail in a chapter devoted to the
side-shows of life, but it is well to indicate here that
alcoholism and drug addiction, gambling, sexual
conquest, pedantry, preciosity, piety, snobbery,
religiosity, and a host of related techniques of life fall
into this type of false compensation. Indeed, it may be
stated as an axiom that any man or woman who has one
single outstanding character trait or technique such as
religious fanaticism, dietetic faddism, crystal gazing, or
bridge playing which does not contribute to the commonweal
—and herein lies the difference between genius and
some forms of neurosis—is making the mistake of
substituting a tool or a technical device for the real goal
of living. Happiness must remain a closed book to
such a person.
Money as a Fiction of Power
The most common of all these false compensations for
the inferiority complex is the cult of money as a fiction of
power. While it is true that many individuals who have
achieved great social usefulness enjoy good incomes,
and seem to the onlooker to derive their social esteem and
power from the money they possess, the quest for money
as a source of power, esteem, and happiness is at once
one of the most common and perhaps the most deluded
techniques of life. We find men and women eating out
their hearts and wearing down their muscles in the quest
for gold, in the vain hope that its possession will give
them security, love, and happiness. The tragedy of this