On the "pursuit of Happiness"

The Declaration of Independence, in addition to declaring a new nation, also speaks of the "unalienable rights" of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." What does "the pursuit of Happiness" mean? What is this "Happiness" we are chasing? Even before we know that John Locke wrote prior to Jefferson about the rights to life, liberty, and property, we suspect that "the pursuit of Happiness" might have something to do with property.

We suspect this because hundreds of years later, we obsess over the perfect home. We dream about it. People start by playing video games like The Sims. You don't just build a home to your specifications; your characters build lives around the space you create. You want one of your characters to pursue the astronaut career, so you buy them posters of planets and aliens. There's a room you dedicate to their training: a set of weights in one corner, a computer for studying in another. Eventually they become an astronaut because the property was configured a certain way. In a certain sense, this is inevitable. If people desire to do something, to shape themselves, then the spaces they occupy will reflect what they want.

But I wonder to what degree our want of more space tells us who to be. That "property" isn't neutral, isn't merely reflective of our freedom. Think about all the shows dedicated to home repair, interior design, and buying and flipping houses. There are standards on those shows, and the ultimate standard is money. Are you making money from real estate? Are you able to turn your properties into a cash flow? Or make everyone envious of your living room? Or have people take photos of the Italian marble in the bathroom? When the standard isn't obviously money, it is implicitly money: here are things you should be jealous of; here are things that are expensive you should appreciate.

The materialism of the United States is not unintentional. Madison in Federalist 10, explaining the logic of the Constitution, sees freedom and property as inextricably linked. If you want people to be free, if you want them to enjoy their diverse faculties, then you have to protect their rights to various sorts of property. This sounds reasonable, but it also sounds like a lot of other aspects of human life are being disregarded. For example: what if people want to be known for their sacrifices? What if they have moral values or virtues? What if they have intellectual achievements that do not translate easily into intellectual property? What if they are serious artists?

Madison leans toward considering much of that "property," but that reveals the gap in the reasoning. To wit: if someone is morally correct about a big issue, and all of us are wrong, that doesn't translate into property. It translates into a right to rule for that person. It's not a claim you adjudicate in small claims court. It is the sort of claim which can redefine the purposes of government entirely, if it doesn't change society itself. Of course, one can say, we have a whole political system to work with such moral stances. Simply elect lawmakers and a President who believe in what you believe is right, and the problem need not cause issues with our desire for acquisition. Also, if someone believes in accumulating lots of wealth and property, good for them! Others have the property they want and are happy. Why should property rights ever be a problem for the government?

I mean, the trouble is that the country almost didn't make it 100 years. The Civil War was practically the end of the Constitution, which had to be amended with the 13, 14, and 15th amendments to prevent another war. Madison talks a lot about property and freedom, conveniently ignoring that some people (including some he "owned") were considered property and completely denied their freedom. This isn't merely hypocrisy, as it breaks the logic of property rights. You need something which sets limits. People cannot be allowed to declare others property or accumulate so much that others are practically property.

The materialism of the United States that we experience, I submit, has to do with a line of thought that is terribly incomplete. Not everything can be about property. Not everything can be about freedom as license. Many of my students write that the "pursuit of Happiness" is wide open–it can be whatever you want it to be!–and don't really reflect that some people feel their freest hurting others. Think about how many scams there are by people who aren't desperate, but rather addicted to defrauding others. They feel happy! They earn wealth! They should be in jail, but they're pursuing their American Dream. And often, they get away with it.

The thing about democracy is that it takes work. It has dedicated virtues. We all recognize those virtues when we see someone who is truly representative of the best of us. Fighting for people who are vulnerable and desperate, treating those who are annoying with grace, not hurting those who are out of line but bringing them back to reason. A representative democracy like the United States needs people like this, and there's an intuitive conception of happiness here distinctly at odds with the Declaration and Madison's Federalist 10. It isn't just any concept of happiness and it doesn't have anything to do with property. It's about being happy because others are happy, and doing the work to create something we can all share.