Money can’t buy happiness or safety

I'm not a scrooge. I come from a decades-long marketing background. I understand well the art of sales and marketing. At the same time, I am like the average person -- born and raised in a materialistic society and presently living in a society where materialism is on the increase. Although I love to go window-shopping, or even better the real thing, I believe happiness comes from within. İstanbul has been described by some guidebooks as a shopper's paradise. You can find many things in abundance here.

I had never seen real poverty in my entire life until I visited the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. The unregistered camps were even poorer. During the 1980s when the Russians were fighting against the Afghan resistance -- the Mujahedeen -- I remember hearing stories from the Afghan refugees who said they had won another battle. Many Russian soldiers lost their lives even though they were better outfitted. I wondered how the Mujahedeen could win against such a powerful army as the Russians.

Although our paths never crossed in the mid-1980s, when I was conducting my own research among the Afghan refugees, Doris Lessing, author of “The Wind Blows Away Our Words,” was conducting her research among the Afghan resistance. She writes this about the battles: “Some of the most extraordinary battles of our time have been fought between armies of tanks and gunships on one side, and ragged men, women and children armed with homemade grenades, catapults and ancient rifles on the other.”

The ability to win or be happy is not always about having all the latest technology, fashion or expensive “know-how.” It's about attitude and determination.

Has there ever been a time when you have looked at something you purchased that made you so happy on the day of purchase to find that a few months later you no longer have the same reaction? Probably if we are really honest with ourselves, we'd have to say “yes.”

Before I witnessed the poverty of those homeless Afghans, I never gave the idea of materialism much thought. I just continued acquiring more material possessions.

I came across a blog post called "Materialism Breeds Unhappiness," by Celestine Chua on her Personal Excellence blog, where Chua suggests that as a society, we use material possessions to value ourselves. This breeds discontent and unhappiness because we constantly want the newest fashions, etc. She even takes it a step further by saying that there is something wrong within you that causes you to want material possessions.

I can't help but wonder if there is some truth in this.

John Kenneth Galbraith in his book “The Affluent Society” cuts to the heart of what economic security means (and doesn't mean) in today's world and lays bare the hazards of complacency about economic inequity.

Unlike some places in Central Asia, Turkey is rapidly changing in many ways. Contemporary Turkey has much of the latest technology for warfare and modern shopping centers, hospitals, schools and stadiums.

The days are gone when Turkey was a land of small shopkeepers, of tiny industrial enterprises, of some degree of poverty and suffering, of arranged marriages and of obligation to the social hierarchy, where the voices of superiors carried weight and where the wants of the individual must stand in second place to those of the group.

It is hard for some to imagine that Turkey used to be a land where sheep roamed the countryside and towns while women worked side by side in the rice paddies or picking cotton by hand. Not that long ago, the average Turk did not own a car, had never ridden in an airplane, lived in an intensely cramped house or apartment and practiced the utmost thrift in order to survive. Yet people made the best of it and appreciated what they had.

I wonder how many of you remember those days, before the 1980s?

True, without money, we can't live. It's all about balance: being able to consume the things you need or want, having and enjoying them and not being consumed by the pursuit.