Matt, my compliments on this piece. I haven't done the research you have, but to me this conclusion seems both uncontroversial and inevitable.
I didn't inherit the cultural legacy of 'the right to pursue happiness' and have never believed it. If a right is a social affordance requiring others to sacrifice their convenience then this means either too much or nothing at all.
Too much: my desire to be self-satisfied can inconvenience you as much as I want, while never suffering meaningful censure;
Nothing at all: my 'right' is actually a permission that has never required your consent.
What I think was intended: the founders were trying to explain the difference between citizen and subject. Subjects do as they're told and are told that failing to be happy about it is sedition. Citizens do as they please within the law and are to be celebrated and accommodated in their diversity of aims to the extent that the fabric of society itself can accommodate them.
I think it's a massively overstated aspiration, perhaps because there were so few clear examples of how to run it.
A shifting context matters here too. The framers were largely Deists -- people who believed in a morally-ordered world where physical and moral consequences would prove to eventually align. But the last Deist of any stature was Einstein. His plaintive denial 'God does not play dice with man' was Deism's epitaph, lacking only an 'Oh, crap' at the end.
What I would offer instead:
Define respect as to embrace the inconvenience of good on another's terms. Define dignity as recognition of the good that's worth the inconvenience.
I think the framers were panning for 'respect' and 'dignity' and got the Fools Gold of 'equality' and 'pursuit of happiness' instead. One is outright false, the other naive.
I also don't think it mattered too much until it hit an economy built on industrialising consumer sales to atomised individualism -- the Boomers were the first generation to show how badly that fared, but not the last.
I also think this is not just a psychological issue but a cultural one. It acutely needs reform.
Thanks, Ruv. I appreciate the thoughtful comments.
What struck me most was your observation that the conclusion seemed both "uncontroversial and inevitable." I actually think that's part of what makes the topic interesting. Once you start looking at the psychological literature, it becomes surprisingly difficult to defend the idea of happiness as a stable end state. The three problems I discussed all seem to point in that direction.
I also think your point about this being cultural as well as psychological is an important one. The piece deliberately focused on the psychology because that's my background, but our ideas about what happiness is and what it means to pursue it are almost certainly shaped by broader cultural narratives.
Where I might differ slightly is on the Declaration itself. I found myself coming away with a greater appreciation for Jefferson's wording rather than less. Whether intentionally or not, the distinction between happiness and the pursuit of happiness struck me as surprisingly consistent with where the psychological research leads. The pursuit may turn out to be the more coherent concept.
In any case, thanks again for engaging so thoughtfully with the piece. Your comments always give me something to think about.
> Whether intentionally or not, the distinction between happiness and the pursuit of happiness struck me as surprisingly consistent with where the psychological research leads.
I agree that it's better, Matt: the strong implication is that this aim is individual responsibility rather than state responsibility, which of course is a sensible distinction.
Yet I still don't think it's realistic. We cannot ground human dignity in even the pursuit of happiness. We have citizens shouldering long-term care responsibilities which directly compete with this. Will we patronise them and tell them that's their happiness choice? Admit that it's the state responsibility to shoulder the burden so they *can* pursue happiness? Can we even find the political will to do so? If so, argued how?
And what do we do with incapacitating conditions and chronic diseases? With grief and bereavement? With people laid off because their job skills have been rendered irrelevant? With palliative care at end of life? With prohibited drugs, the attention economy and gaming advertising?
These are ordinary concerns and if we take it literally, declaring the pursuit of happiness a 'right' rather than merely a prerogative alters how we must deal with them. It tribally sorts people into libertarian literalists and communitarian aspirationalists, which already strains culture and society.
What I think: pursuit of happiness has been industrially decoupled from dignity in the same way that freedom of expression has left civic responsibility in the dust. If we were to lean one way or the other, would you incline to yet more, or accountably less?
Those are interesting questions, but I also think they're different kinds of questions than the one I was trying to explore in the post.
Most of the examples you raise involve competing values, competing priorities, and unavoidable trade-offs. Research can certainly inform those discussions. It can tell us something about likely consequences, human behavior, and well-being. But I don't think it can determine the "right" answer because, at the end of the day, those are judgment calls.
My own interest here was much narrower. I wasn't trying to answer how governments ought to balance liberty, dignity, responsibility, and social obligations. I was asking whether happiness itself behaves like a stable psychological end state. The research led me to conclude that it probably doesn't.
Ironically, that made me appreciate Jefferson's wording more than I expected. Whether intentionally or not, emphasizing the pursuit rather than happiness itself seems remarkably consistent with what we know about motivation, satisfaction, and engagement. What society ought to do with that observation is a much bigger question.
You're right, Matt. I was reacting with why I was interested; not telling you to share that interest.
But pertinently to you, this comes to us as a cultural predisposition. I'd offer that the psychology is not readily separable here. Shift culture even a little in geography or a few generations in time, and the entire question reframes. Consider what happiness is defined to mean in societies where women have no birth control. They're commonly told that happiness is either chastity or devoted maternity. Pursue whichever you like, but those are your choices.
I feel like I have had a good life, and I am reaching the end. Happiness was my goal all along the way, and I have mostly achieved it.
Sartre said we are “condemned to be free”. We need to welcome this tremendous responsibility as a first step to happiness. We also need to realise that life will have both ups and downs. There will be times when you are not happy, but it's up to you to move on and find the next happiness.
I have brain cancer now, and I will be leaving you in the not-too-distant future, but I have had a great time while I was here. I sailed the seas in the Royal Navy. I backpacked around the world. I've lived in four countries and 15 cities, including London, New York, Valletta, San Jose, Glasgow & Palo Alto. I have a wife and two kids. Now I am back in Bristol, reading my books and watching the boats go by.
Accepting that there will be downs as well as ups is the secret to happiness. And we all face the biggest down of all, but even that will pass. Enjoy the happiness while you can.
Epicurus had something to say about this.
"We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it."
We have to find our own meaning of happiness without worrying about what the philosophers say. You'll know happiness when you find it.
You describe a life filled with experiences, relationships, adventures, and challenges and not a permanent state of happiness that you eventually reached and then remained in. There were ups and downs, new pursuits, and new chapters along the way. That ongoing process is what led me to question whether happiness is best understood as a final destination or something that emerges from living a life well.
I also like the Epicurus quote. In a way, I think it reinforces the idea that happiness isn't something we permanently possess. As he notes, when it's absent, we find ourselves pursuing it again.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your story, which I know you've shared more broadly here on Substack. I genuinely appreciated both your comments and your perspective.
Matt, my compliments on this piece. I haven't done the research you have, but to me this conclusion seems both uncontroversial and inevitable.
I didn't inherit the cultural legacy of 'the right to pursue happiness' and have never believed it. If a right is a social affordance requiring others to sacrifice their convenience then this means either too much or nothing at all.
Too much: my desire to be self-satisfied can inconvenience you as much as I want, while never suffering meaningful censure;
Nothing at all: my 'right' is actually a permission that has never required your consent.
What I think was intended: the founders were trying to explain the difference between citizen and subject. Subjects do as they're told and are told that failing to be happy about it is sedition. Citizens do as they please within the law and are to be celebrated and accommodated in their diversity of aims to the extent that the fabric of society itself can accommodate them.
I think it's a massively overstated aspiration, perhaps because there were so few clear examples of how to run it.
A shifting context matters here too. The framers were largely Deists -- people who believed in a morally-ordered world where physical and moral consequences would prove to eventually align. But the last Deist of any stature was Einstein. His plaintive denial 'God does not play dice with man' was Deism's epitaph, lacking only an 'Oh, crap' at the end.
What I would offer instead:
Define respect as to embrace the inconvenience of good on another's terms. Define dignity as recognition of the good that's worth the inconvenience.
I think the framers were panning for 'respect' and 'dignity' and got the Fools Gold of 'equality' and 'pursuit of happiness' instead. One is outright false, the other naive.
I also don't think it mattered too much until it hit an economy built on industrialising consumer sales to atomised individualism -- the Boomers were the first generation to show how badly that fared, but not the last.
I also think this is not just a psychological issue but a cultural one. It acutely needs reform.
Thanks, Ruv. I appreciate the thoughtful comments.
What struck me most was your observation that the conclusion seemed both "uncontroversial and inevitable." I actually think that's part of what makes the topic interesting. Once you start looking at the psychological literature, it becomes surprisingly difficult to defend the idea of happiness as a stable end state. The three problems I discussed all seem to point in that direction.
I also think your point about this being cultural as well as psychological is an important one. The piece deliberately focused on the psychology because that's my background, but our ideas about what happiness is and what it means to pursue it are almost certainly shaped by broader cultural narratives.
Where I might differ slightly is on the Declaration itself. I found myself coming away with a greater appreciation for Jefferson's wording rather than less. Whether intentionally or not, the distinction between happiness and the pursuit of happiness struck me as surprisingly consistent with where the psychological research leads. The pursuit may turn out to be the more coherent concept.
In any case, thanks again for engaging so thoughtfully with the piece. Your comments always give me something to think about.
> Whether intentionally or not, the distinction between happiness and the pursuit of happiness struck me as surprisingly consistent with where the psychological research leads.
I agree that it's better, Matt: the strong implication is that this aim is individual responsibility rather than state responsibility, which of course is a sensible distinction.
Yet I still don't think it's realistic. We cannot ground human dignity in even the pursuit of happiness. We have citizens shouldering long-term care responsibilities which directly compete with this. Will we patronise them and tell them that's their happiness choice? Admit that it's the state responsibility to shoulder the burden so they *can* pursue happiness? Can we even find the political will to do so? If so, argued how?
And what do we do with incapacitating conditions and chronic diseases? With grief and bereavement? With people laid off because their job skills have been rendered irrelevant? With palliative care at end of life? With prohibited drugs, the attention economy and gaming advertising?
These are ordinary concerns and if we take it literally, declaring the pursuit of happiness a 'right' rather than merely a prerogative alters how we must deal with them. It tribally sorts people into libertarian literalists and communitarian aspirationalists, which already strains culture and society.
What I think: pursuit of happiness has been industrially decoupled from dignity in the same way that freedom of expression has left civic responsibility in the dust. If we were to lean one way or the other, would you incline to yet more, or accountably less?
Those are interesting questions, but I also think they're different kinds of questions than the one I was trying to explore in the post.
Most of the examples you raise involve competing values, competing priorities, and unavoidable trade-offs. Research can certainly inform those discussions. It can tell us something about likely consequences, human behavior, and well-being. But I don't think it can determine the "right" answer because, at the end of the day, those are judgment calls.
My own interest here was much narrower. I wasn't trying to answer how governments ought to balance liberty, dignity, responsibility, and social obligations. I was asking whether happiness itself behaves like a stable psychological end state. The research led me to conclude that it probably doesn't.
Ironically, that made me appreciate Jefferson's wording more than I expected. Whether intentionally or not, emphasizing the pursuit rather than happiness itself seems remarkably consistent with what we know about motivation, satisfaction, and engagement. What society ought to do with that observation is a much bigger question.
You're right, Matt. I was reacting with why I was interested; not telling you to share that interest.
But pertinently to you, this comes to us as a cultural predisposition. I'd offer that the psychology is not readily separable here. Shift culture even a little in geography or a few generations in time, and the entire question reframes. Consider what happiness is defined to mean in societies where women have no birth control. They're commonly told that happiness is either chastity or devoted maternity. Pursue whichever you like, but those are your choices.
I feel like I have had a good life, and I am reaching the end. Happiness was my goal all along the way, and I have mostly achieved it.
Sartre said we are “condemned to be free”. We need to welcome this tremendous responsibility as a first step to happiness. We also need to realise that life will have both ups and downs. There will be times when you are not happy, but it's up to you to move on and find the next happiness.
I have brain cancer now, and I will be leaving you in the not-too-distant future, but I have had a great time while I was here. I sailed the seas in the Royal Navy. I backpacked around the world. I've lived in four countries and 15 cities, including London, New York, Valletta, San Jose, Glasgow & Palo Alto. I have a wife and two kids. Now I am back in Bristol, reading my books and watching the boats go by.
Accepting that there will be downs as well as ups is the secret to happiness. And we all face the biggest down of all, but even that will pass. Enjoy the happiness while you can.
Epicurus had something to say about this.
"We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it."
We have to find our own meaning of happiness without worrying about what the philosophers say. You'll know happiness when you find it.
Thank you for sharing that.
You describe a life filled with experiences, relationships, adventures, and challenges and not a permanent state of happiness that you eventually reached and then remained in. There were ups and downs, new pursuits, and new chapters along the way. That ongoing process is what led me to question whether happiness is best understood as a final destination or something that emerges from living a life well.
I also like the Epicurus quote. In a way, I think it reinforces the idea that happiness isn't something we permanently possess. As he notes, when it's absent, we find ourselves pursuing it again.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your story, which I know you've shared more broadly here on Substack. I genuinely appreciated both your comments and your perspective.