Hi Kitos
Please check my work and give your advice.
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Topic. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Wealth leads to unhappiness.
The conception of “happiness” is already very complex itself. According to many philosophers, happiness is one’s feeling when completing his desires. Based on that conception, I think that money brings people’s happiness by helping them achieve their desires and that unhappiness happens when people define wrongly their main goal.
First of all, people feel happy when money helps them achieve their desires. For example, Bill Gate’s dream and desire are to make the world better, help poor people and the disadvantaged; by using his money wisely, he achieves his goals and receives happiness from the welfare of those people. Another example is a robber. For many people, a robber’s robbing money and spending his life in jail can not be considered to be happiness, but as he robs money and spends it on his desires even that are unworthy, he still feels happy for a short time.
Secondly, unhappiness happens when people define incorrectly their main desires. There is no better example of this case except people who are working too hard everyday and forget to care about their families. Those people consider wealth to be the final goal but forget their first motivation and desire that should be to earn money to help their families. Obviously, they become rich but there is no one who shares their success; what they receive is unhappiness.
Thirdly, unhappiness is also caused by people’s wrong use of money. This is demonstrated by situations in which people use money and receive happiness from achieving their desires at first but afterwards, they are regretful for their wrong use. For example, many young men become wealthy by inheriting or earning illegally; they spend money on drugs, alcohol and girls, which seems desirable and happy at first, but makes them regretful and unhappy later. They suffer from sickness and loneliness.
For all reasons above, it is obvious that the root of unhappiness to humans is all dependent on humans: their attitudes toward money, their ways of using money, etc. Money and wealth have no fault for making people unhappy, but they are means of making people happy by helping them achieve their desires.
TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture by a professor of Social History