Humanity have ended up with (rightly) doubting its ability to keep itself healthy, with being able to decide what is good for it.

Our instincts seem to tell us to eat foods, which, eaten daily and in the quantities we would like, would damage our health. I, for one, desire cheese in quantities which would delight dairy farmers everywhere.

As humanity is maturing, we find more and more ways that generations of our evolutionary instinct is steering us in the wrong direction. The scientific method is a machine for making discoveries which are reported by the media with the opening sentence ‘It turns out…’. As in, ‘It turns out that our mother’s were wrong: eating red meat every day does not give you chest hair…’

I was wondering if we should start having the same lack of self confidence, and doubt in our ability to make healthy choices, when it comes to happiness and contentment. For example, everyone I know seems to think they would be much happier if they won the lottery.

But research shows lottery winners are roughly  as happy (or unhappy) a year after they won as they were before. So. maybe money is like water – if you have less than you really need, you cannot survive. If you have very little, you spend all your time thinking about it. But if you amass a lake of the stuff, you will discover that you can’t drink all that much of it.

So with money – having enough for basic comfort is great. But more will guarantee only as much happiness as you already have the aptitude to provide for yourself.