Pursuit of Happiness

Libertarians and others have wondered why Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence concludes its explicitly incomplete list of unalienable rights with the pursuit of happiness rather than property ... Monticello.org states,

... [H]e was almost certainly influenced by George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights ... which referred to "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

... Carol V. Hamilton claims that Jefferson found the phrase [in] Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding ...

An action or policy is rational to the extent that it possesses utility, that is, contributes to human happiness. The measure of right and wrong is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Bentham fleshed out the concept of happiness by reference to four subordinate goals: security (from aggression by others), subsistence, abundance, and equality. The first two goals are more essential to happiness than the second two. Government can do much to provide security, through law, but little to provide subsistence, which must come from the efforts of the individual.

[Krugman's] message is that everyone's life is mortgaged to the needs of others and that no one can breathe free and live for his own happiness and pleasure so long as anyone else, anywhere on earth is suffering and in misery ... Cutting Medicaid and all other government programs while reducing and eliminating taxes is precisely the policy that is needed to restore the founding principle of the United States, which is the individual's right to the pursuit of his own happiness ... Implementing [this principle] means cutting government spending precisely for the purpose of cutting taxes.

That dissection of human nature which would be necessary for exhibiting ... the primary elements into which human happiness may be resolved, it is not compatible with the present design to undertake. We must content ourselves with assuming certain results. We may allow ... that the lot of every human being is determined by his pains and pleasures; and that his happiness corresponds with the degree in which his pleasures are great, and his pains are small. Human pains and pleasures are derived from two sources:—They are produced, either by our fellow-men, or by causes independent of other men.

Figure 8. Happiness quotient: "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are ..." ... Taking all things into consideration, 59% of the subjects reported that they were "very happy" with life, with another 39% declaring that they were "pretty happy" (Figure 8). Life is exciting for most (73%, Figure 9). When compared to the general population of the United States, homeschool graduates are just more content. [General U.S. - Happiness: Very happy 28%, Pretty happy 63%; Perspective on life: Exciting 47%]

Mill, in contrast, argued that pleasures could differ in qualitative as well as quantitative ways. Pleasures associated with the exercise and development of the higher faculties were, he maintained, intrinsically more valuable ... men are capable of appreciating the sorts of things that might bring a pig pleasure (food, sleep, sex), but the pig is incapable of comprehending distinctly human pleasures such as love, drama, or intellectual growth. Pushpin, a relatively mindless children's game, is not as good as poetry, even if one plays for hours, because it neither exercises nor develops the higher faculties.

Murray's late 1960s stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand informed his next book, In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government. Murray decided that, despite the relative destitution of life in the Thai villages he knew, the strength of the communities there allowed him to imagine he could have lived a quite happy life there, much happier than with greater wealth ... Murray concluded that human beings need self-respect born of satisfaction with their own achievements to be happy, and that the modern state too often deprives people of the opportunity to do things for themselves and their communities.

Vices are usually pleasurable, at least for the time being ... Virtues, on the other hand, often appear so harsh and rugged ... If ..., each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit, his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself what is, to him, virtue, and what is, to him, vice—in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness ... [T]hen each man's whole right, as a reasoning human being, to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," is denied him.

Everyone who isn't sleepwalking through life realizes that some of the greatest opportunities come disguised as obstacles ... The more action you take, the more your "mental paradigm" expands, which in turn gives you the capacity to see beyond the immediate problems ...
If a person is to have any hope of finding happiness in life, what is the one thing he must do?
I guess I would have to give the nod to having a meaningful purpose. A powerful, meaningful purpose to one's life leads to continual, bold action, and the happiest people I've known are those who are action-oriented.

John Stossel, anchorman of ABC's 20/20, what are you ...
... Reading?
Charles Murray's In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government was a good stimulus to my mind. It approached basic questions, which, from Aristotle, have been, "How do we best pursue happiness?" "What is happiness?" It just asked and answered many of the basic questions about which form of government is likely to provide happiness for more people. The essence of that turned me on to other libertarian concepts.