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To get a good life requires getting your relationships to happy, healthy, wise and wealthy right. If any of those virtues drops to a low level you won’t be living as good a life on the others. There may be easy opportunities for improvement on one of those virtues if you do the right thing. However, you might be out of balance with your optimum without even being aware of it, and need to pull a specific virtue up a bit and by doing that discover that the others will also be improved.

These recent posts have been comparing the concept of wealth to the other three virtues because it is more easily quantified. Basically, living a good life means having enough money in your normal social situation so you could live as comfortably as you currently do for over a year without any income and without any severe stress. 1. An ordinary American who is healthy and reasonable with a total estate of a million dollars ($1,000k)  can easily live without income for more than a year without difficulty. 2. But, dropping below one quarter of that amount ($200k) puts home ownership at risk, 3. and dropping below a quarter of that amount ($40k) puts even a rental residence at risk, 4. a quarter of that ($8k) puts a single rental room at risk, 5. a quarter of that ($1,600) is still a lot of money for a short term but it falls far below a year of living a normal life without any income. [ 2019/02/08 Six days ago the divisor was 4. I just changed it to 5 which now feels to me to illustrate the levels better.]

Happiness is largely an independent quality from money but we can arrange it on a scale in a similar way. 1. Perfect happiness is having daily enjoyable, meaningful things to accomplish with family, friends and thus living in a whole world with kind actions with everyone. 2. Good happiness is filled with pleasurable activities done together with family, friends, and community. 3. Okay happiness is having fun things to do with family and friends and community relationship mostly in the form of a job done as something to make money for oneself. 4. Difficult happiness is found in trying to make friends with people found in public places and just hanging out together. 5. Catastrophic happiness is when nothing seems to work, people can’t be trusted, and pleasure is only found in a release from pain found in large doses of drugs.

Health is measured independently of money, happiness, and wisdom but it can be arranged in a similar way. 1. Perfect health is to never have a physical or mental limitation of any kind. 2. Good health is to have minor problems once a year, like a cold, but always able to do all normal physical things with ease. 3. Okay health is to have a few chronic problems but they only impede a few activities so it is living by just avoiding doing those strenuous things. 4. Difficult health is a chronic problem and requires daily attention and some serious medical tracking. 5. Catastrophic health is a constant problem with frequent severe challenges to do anything and feeling rotten is a good day.

Wisdom is seemingly a totally independent virtue from those other qualities, but it too can be arranged on a scale. 1. Great wisdom is the cultivated ability to see all things clearly and thus be able to make optimum actions for making the whole future world function harmoniously. 2. Good wisdom is the ability to see the present clearly and adapt to its needs in ways that work out well for everyone within that world view. 3. Okay wisdom works well for seeing present needs and responding to them well enough to get needed things done and avoid serious trouble. 4. Difficult wisdom doesn’t see relationships between cause and effect accurately and sometimes makes serious mistakes that cause frequent personal problems and problems for others. 5. Catastrophic wisdom has a relationship with reality that causes serious problems for oneself and for everyone near and for all society in general.

The point is that Happy, Healthy, Wise, Wealthy can be arranged on a scale of 1. Wonderful, 2. Good, 3. Okay, 4. Difficult, 5. Catastrophic and then they can be compared and improved.