In a society obsessed with growth, speed, and accumulation, the phrase “the rich life” is most often used to describe an existence of luxury and exclusivity—curated vacations, designer goods, elite diplomas, and six-figure job offers. Elite universities in the United States, with their billion-dollar endowments and glossy marketing, have long sold students on this vision. Success is measured in metrics: earnings, endowment size, prestige rankings, and placement in the upper tiers of a system that quietly rewards exploitation.
But beneath the glittering surfaces lies a deeper poverty—a poverty of meaning, connection, and collective well-being. The GDP may rise, but so do depression, ecological collapse, burnout, and social fragmentation. In this context, the rich life must be reimagined. It cannot mean more consumption and more isolation. It must mean deeper joy, chosen simplicity, and solidarity with others. It must reject GDP as a measure of progress, and instead embrace a fuller, more humane vision of what it means to thrive.
Since World War II, Gross Domestic Product has been the dominant measure of national health and success. But GDP counts weapons manufacturing, fossil fuel extraction, and fast food sales as positives. It says nothing about equity, sustainability, or whether people have their basic needs met. It is a deeply distorted metric that treats all economic activity as inherently good—even when that activity is war, incarceration, deforestation, or cancer treatment. When universities follow this logic, they end up celebrating job placement in exploitative industries, increased student consumption, and rising tuition as signs of vitality. Entire institutions become addicted to a model of growth that quietly undermines the very conditions of human and planetary survival.
To understand what a truly rich life looks like, we might turn not to economic models but to psychological and philosophical ones. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, often misunderstood and oversimplified, offers a more nuanced framework. At the base are physiological needs: food, water, shelter, rest. Above that are safety needs—security, health, freedom from violence. Next come love and belonging, followed by esteem and the need to be respected. At the top is self-actualization: the ability to live with purpose, creativity, and integrity.
In a society driven by GDP and status competition, many people are stuck in the lower tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy—working long hours just to meet their physiological needs, or trapped in precarity with no sense of safety. Even among the affluent, the higher needs—belonging, self-worth, purpose—are often unmet. Elite universities contribute to this problem when they promise that self-actualization will follow prestige, when in fact they often deepen student anxiety and isolation through competition and debt.
The modern economy creates the illusion of abundance while delivering profound scarcity—scarcity of time, attention, care, and community. That’s where asceticism comes in, not as a form of self-denial, but as a conscious disengagement from toxic excess. True asceticism is not about suffering. It is about choosing a life that centers intention over impulse, relationships over acquisition. It allows us to reclaim our attention, our agency, and our sense of enoughness. When you no longer define your worth by your salary or possessions, space opens up—for joy, for learning, for resistance.
The joy that emerges from this way of living is not found in consumption, but in connection. It’s the joy of a shared meal, a collective project, a moment of awe in nature. It is not fleeting or hollow. It’s grounded in the rhythms of real life. In resisting the culture of more, we make room for what actually nourishes us.
Solidarity is what makes this kind of joy sustainable. Without solidarity, simplicity becomes privatized and performative. With solidarity, it becomes transformative. Solidarity means recognizing that none of us can be truly free while others are suffering. It means organizing not only for ourselves, but with and for others—workers, debtors, the unhoused, the planet itself. It is in solidarity that we find the courage to say no to extractive systems and yes to mutual care.
Maslow’s model, when viewed through a collective lens, demands that we create conditions where everyone—not just the privileged few—can ascend the ladder toward self-actualization. That means addressing structural violence, not just personal healing. It means challenging the dominance of GDP and the institutions that promote it. And it means building systems that nourish every layer of our shared humanity.
The richest life is not the most expensive or exclusive. It is the most grounded, the most connected, the most free. It is a life where basic needs are met without destroying others’ ability to meet theirs. It is a life where safety comes from community, not surveillance. Where belonging is unconditional. Where esteem is earned not through domination, but through care. Where self-actualization is not an individual escape, but a collective unfolding.
Elite universities, with their resources and visibility, have a responsibility to shift the narrative. They must abandon GDP-driven metrics and begin teaching students how to live and act for collective well-being. That means investing in degrowth, sustainability, and solidarity—not in fossil fuels, consulting firms, and Silicon Valley pipedreams. It means embracing joy, not just success. It means returning to education as a path toward wisdom, not just wealth.
The rich life is here. It is in the soil, the story circle, the union hall, the community fridge, the silent meetinghouse, the protest march, the long walk at dusk. It is in every act that centers sufficiency over supremacy, care over conquest.
Let us stop measuring the wrong things. Let us live lives that matter. Let us be rich in what counts.
Sources and Influences:
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being
Jason Hickel, Less Is More
bell hooks, All About Love
Juliet Schor, Plenitude
David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything
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