In election campaigns, the candidates of the different political parties usually agree on one promise: to improve the "Welfare State". This does not mean that all citizens will enjoy the well-being of feeling physically and mentally well, but rather that their material well-being will increase.

This promise, repeated over and over again, tends to arouse indifference and/or weariness in some people. They are disappointed both by the lack of imagination and by the appeal to such a hackneyed concept that has been discredited lately ("Welfare State"), both for its outdated protectionism and its proven shortcomings.

For Rafael Termes, "the mistake of the Welfare State is to have wanted this protection to be universalized, reaching the immense issue of those who, without peremptory needs, should have been put to test to bear the fruits that individual initiative is capable of. Accustomed to having all their basic needs covered, without effort, from the cradle to the grave, they have lost their love of risk and adventure, which creates wealth. The Welfare State, in the hands of politicians who seek their own objectives of perpetuation in power, produces effects contrary to those it claims to pursue".

A cartoon by the humorist Faro reflects this very well status. Four politicians smoking a huge Havana cigar "dialogue," from the top of a column, with a crowd gathered at their feet:

-We will only be able to maintain the welfare state by lowering wages and pensions.

-What subject welfare is that?

-Ours, of course.

Others are also disappointed by the attempt to reduce human aspirations (including the desire for happiness) to material well-being and consumerism.

After strolling through the Athens market, without buying anything, Socrates used to say, "I love to see how many things I don't need to be happy."

For Aristotle happiness is not in the ephemeral (things and sensible pleasures), but in the honest life, according to virtue; therefore he advised to live and act well (eudaimonia), which requires an austere life.

 Happiness includes a certain Degree of pleasure and material well-being, but these two factors are not, by themselves, source of happiness. Happiness is a spiritual reality; that is why no materialism has ever succeeded in making man happy. 

Despite these arguments, politicians know, through surveys, that we live in a society in which there is an exaggerated esteem for well-being (a mythification of material well-being).

One test of this is that the habit of buying fetish objects that are supposed to have magical properties to feel good and happy, such as, for example, a certain subject pillow, bracelets, armchair, bag, shoes... They are usually people who seek to fill some inner emptiness; they associate certain superfluous purchases with their lack of self-esteem and identity and cling to them as if they were salvation planks. After buying the latest and most expensive gadget they feel good about themselves, but when they discover that they are measuring themselves in relation to what they have bought and not to who they are, their self-esteem drops, which moves them to buy something new.

Gilles Lipovetsky demystified the model of the hyperconsumption society, which attributes happiness to the accumulation and enjoyment of material goods. It is obvious that there is some relationship between well-being and happiness, but they should never be confused. One can have a lot of well-being and be unhappy; one can also be happy with few material goods.

To reduce human beings to consumers is to simplify and impoverish their nature. In addition to homo consumens, he is homo sapiens, homo ludens and homo contemplans. The person becomes more valuable not by his capacity to produce, to have or to consume, but by his attitude of being more and better.

In the face of the predominant culture of having, today it is urgent to vindicate the culture of being, which is the cultivation of interiority: of intelligence and will.

Juan Haro points out that we invest much more time in wanting to have than in being (preparing ourselves, investing in values and knowledge). That is why he proposes the formula "being-doing-having: "if you first focus on being different, on learning, on thinking and innovating (being), then your actions (doing) will be different and, therefore, the results (having) will also be different".

The culture of well-being anesthetizes, massifies and enslaves us, while the culture of being awakens us, makes us protagonists and liberates us.

Hamlet: "To be or not to be?" My answer: to be.