Are We Happy Yet?

The United States was founded upon the idea that each human being possesses an unalienable right to pursue happiness. Yet, Americans today aren't very happy. Maybe we don't know what happiness is?

The United States was founded upon the idea that each individual human being—by nature—possesses an unalienable right to pursue happiness. It’s right there in our Declaration of Independence for the world to see: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is an amazing fact.

According to classical political philosophy, happiness is not merely important. It is one of two ultimate goals toward which the political part of human nature points: Safety and happiness.

Human beings are political by nature—they form political associations and governments and laws and armies, and they aim for justice—because they want to be safe. When people are safe—when they are free and secure in their own private property—what do human beings do? They pursue happiness.

Safety and happiness are both human goods. And, one is higher than the other: Human safety serves the higher purpose of human happiness, not vice versa.

We Americans are blessed beyond measure, especially when compared to other regimes throughout human history, to live in a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and that every human being has an unalienable right—a special gift from the Creator, with a special purpose, that cannot be destroyed or taken away—to try to achieve or experience happiness.

According to recent surveys, however, Americans are not very happy. While the United States overall has been dropping in international ranks of happy nations, the most noticeable decline is among young Americans, those under the age of 30, who are reporting with increasing frequency that they are dissatisfied, frustrated, and unhappy.

The problem is more than mere opinion polls. In the United States, rates of depression, addiction, abuse, and neglect, have been going up. Teenage suicides are at unprecedented, historic high levels.

What is going on? Why are citizens of the first nation ever dedicated to the proposition that all human beings should be free to pursue happiness, so unhappy?

Perhaps the reason is that many Americans don’t know what happiness is, or what happiness requires?

Perhaps part of the problem can be found in the first words of the article linked four paragraphs above, which opens with the assertion: “Happiness is a relative concept…” How does the author of that little essay know that happiness is “relative?” Why is Ms. Talmazan—a London-based reporter for NBC—so confident there is no objective, true definition of happiness?

The Pursuit of Whatever Desires You Are Experiencing In The Moment?

Many people in the postmodern Western World, including and especially Americans who have spent time in American colleges or universities, assume, without investigation, that there is no such thing as objective happiness, that there are merely different and differing opinions about what happiness is, none more correct or incorrect, none more right or more wrong, than others.

Perhaps, just maybe, they’re wrong?

Perhaps, just maybe, human happiness is more than fleeting, subjective feelings? Perhaps happiness is more than satisfying certain appetites and desires? Maybe happiness is something more real, something more concrete—a condition, or an activity—that can be studied and known objectively, at least to some degree?

It’s worth considering, yes?

If there is a true and objective meaning of happiness, wouldn’t a wise person want to learn about it? When record numbers of young Americans are reporting that they are unhappy, is this not a good time to step back, question our dogmatic insistence that happiness is merely a subjective, relativistic concept, and investigate what true happiness might be?

If one is willing to step outside the paradigm of moral relativism fueled by philosophic nihilism, if one is willing to look for an objective meaning of happiness, one would be well-served to turn to the classics because classical thinkers offer insights that challenge what we (post)modern people assume.

And if one is willing to learn from classical thinkers, then one should begin with Aristotle for the simple reason that he wrote the most famous of all books on happiness, the Nicomachean Ethics.

The Founders

The American Founders understood the classical concept of happiness. They wrote and spoke about it. They cited Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, Xenophon, and others. They agreed with the classical understanding of happiness.

They saw no conflict between happiness in the classical sense and their own principles of liberty and self-government. They benefited from ancient thinking regarding human happiness. It made them better people, better citizens, better thinkers, betters strategists, better statesmen.

Similarly, we too can benefit—we can be better people, happier people, and better citizens—if only we open our minds to learning what happiness is, take responsibility for our own happiness, and make choices that align with it.

To return to the Declaration of Independence, that famous document famously presents three of the most important unalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—before explaining that the only legitimate purpose of government is “to secure these rights.”

When a government fails its purpose and becomes a threat to the rights it is supposed to protect, the argument of the Declaration continues, “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

It’s curious, isn’t it?

In the most famous of all American political documents—one of the most important documents in all of history—the document to which Lincoln alluded in the opening statement of his brief remarks at Gettysburg (“four score and seven years ago”) — we find “happiness” mentioned not once, but twice. Why would the Founders give happiness such a place of prominence in their Declaration of Independence?

Here, it is a mistake to assume the Founders held the same postmodern, relativistic opinions many Americans today hold.

Certainly, many Americans assume and assert there is no moral or political truth that applies to all people, in all places, throughout all time. They assume there are merely diverse opinions, points of view, and prejudices, about human matters, all equally valid because none are more or less true than others.

That includes the subject of happiness: The modern, relativistic view—the view assumed by Yuliya Talmazan, the NBC journalist cited above—is that different cultures and even different individuals  have different opinions about what happiness is, but it’s impossible to know whether some opinions are more correct, or less correct, because there is no truth about human happiness.

From the premise of moral relativism springs the shallow modern assumption that happiness is nothing more than mere fleeting, and very personal, subjective feelings. If one person calls a certain feeling “happy,” then that feeling is happiness for that person at that moment. Another person might “feel” that happiness is something else, etc.

The problem of this modern view was summed up somewhat poetically in the 1996 song, “If It Makes You Happy,” by singer and musical artist Sheryl Crow, which includes the lyrics: If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?

Good question, Sheryl.

The American Founders, as well as Aristotle and many other classical thinkers, would likely respond that the person making choices that result in sadness doesn’t understand what happiness is. That person is mistaken.

VIRTUE & HAPPINESS: AN INDISSOLUBLE UNION

In his First Inaugural Address, George Washington wrote “there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.” He quickly added that also united, indissolubly, are “duty and advantage” as well as “the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.”

Virtue and happiness, according to Washington, are directly and forever linked. It’s impossible to have one without the other. The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of virtue.

Washington’s line might be the most succinct summary ever offered of the teaching of Aristotle. And we can summarize Washington: You have to be good to be happy.

Aristotle opens his Nicomachean Ethics, on the first page, by observing: “Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seem to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that the good is that at which all things aim.”

Aristotle goes on to explain that there is a hierarchy among our choices—there is a natural hierarchy among human goods—and the purposes or ends our choices are likely to achieve. For example, consider the ordinary practice of setting an alarm clock before going to bed. You choose to set your alarm not because you enjoy setting the alarm, or hearing the alarm sound. Rather, you set your alarm for a purpose higher than the alarm itself, the purpose of waking up on time the next morning.

In turn, you want to wake on time for even higher purposes, or ends: You want to get to work or school on time, or arrive at the airport in time to catch your flight. Even those purposes are chosen for yet higher purposes, ends: You want to get to work on time so that you can get a raise; you want a raise so you can buy a better car or house, or have more options in life, etc.

The question to which Aristotle directs our attention is: Is there a purpose or an end or some good that we choose never for the sake of something else, or something higher, but always for its own sake? Among many human purposes, ends, and goods, is there one that is highest toward which all our choices ultimately aim?

He answers, yes, there is: Happiness.

In the original Greek, the word is eudaimonia, from which we get English derivatives such as “euphoria.” While eudaimonia has been translated as “happiness” in modern English, the original word meant much more than mere pleasant fleeting feelings and emotions.

Eudaimonia is the goal at which all human choices aim. It is the ultimate purpose, the ultimate good that human beings desire, never to satisfy other desires, never for other or higher purposes. Eudaimonia means happiness in the deep philosophic sense of a life lived well in every respect.

The next question, then, is: What does it mean to live well? Or, what is human excellence?

Investigating these questions leads Aristotle to a lengthy discussion of the various virtues, including physical virtues (or excellences), moral virtues (or excellences), and intellectual virtues (or excellences).

Aristotle emphasizes that happiness, or eudaimonia, requires not merely knowing what the virtues are, but actually doingthem. He writes that the purpose of investing virtue is not merely to know how to be good, but to be good. Virtue is an activity. Virtue requires choice and volition and action.

Further, happiness requires exercising the virtues not once in awhile or occasionally, but over and over, until it becomes a habit, a way of life, continuing until death. To use his example, just as one warm day does not make a summer, one act of virtue does not make a virtuous, happy person.

We start to see that the classical teaching regarding happiness (eudaimonia) is a high and challenging goal to achieve. It is work. It requires discipline. It requires both knowledge and action.

The happy person is the person who, at the end of his life, has been consistently courageous, wise, just, and moderate (the four cardinal virtues). The happy person is one who is caring and generous to friends, who has treated enemies in ways that are fitting and just, who has cultivated friendships with others who want to help each other learn, understand, and be better human beings.

The person whose life can rightfully and accurately be described as eudaimonia is someone who is never petty, who is always big-souled, who uses reason to manage and rein over the passions, who works to improve the things he can improve, who doesn’t waste time and energy worrying about things beyond his control, and who suffers well, rather than suffering miserably.

According to our own Declaration of Independence, that’s what you and all other human beings have the unalienable right to pursue, which is strikingly different than the right to do whatever feels good in the moment.  

WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?

For modern Americans who assume happiness is a mere fleeting, pleasurable feeling, the classical teaching of Aristotle and many other classical thinkers is likely difficult to grasp and daunting once understood. It’s not a license to do anything you want.

Many are tempted to dismiss Aristotle as offering nothing but his own prejudice, no wiser than the prejudices of others, or to mock and ridicule Aristotle as old-fashioned and outdated.

Yet, when we look around us, and we observe many fellow Americans who are deeply unhappy — the many who are angry, depressed, addicted, or contemplating suicide — it would serve us well to ask: Are these unhappy people living lives of virtue and human excellence? Is their unhappiness the result of wise and good choices?

If Aristotle was wrong, what alternative, postmodern way of understanding happiness is better, or more conducive to human well-being?

We should also ask ourselves: Why did the Father of our Nation, George Washington, think it important to remind Americans, in the first speech he ever delivered as President, that there is woven right into human nature an “indissoluble union between virtue and happiness?”

Can Washington and Aristotle and other classical writers and thinkers and statesmen help Americans today understand better what happiness is, what it requires, and how best to exercise our unalienable right to pursue happiness? I think they can. We should give their teaching a try.

After all, what have we to lose? How much useful guidance comes from the dismissive, dogmatic postmodern relativism offered by our NBC reporter who breezily announces that “happiness is a relative concept?”