The pursuit of happiness is one of three rights originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson in the “Declaration of Independence.” These “unalienable rights” are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is an odd turn of phrase, but one that has a profound backdrop to it, one which we have perhaps lost today.
It is likely that Jefferson borrowed the three rights from John Locke. Almost a century prior to the American declaration, the English philosopher had written in Two Treatises on Government that government existed to protect a person’s “life, liberty and estate.” By estate, Locke surely meant property or “the possession of outward things,” as expressed in A Letter Concerning Toleration. We can find, however, in Jefferson’s revision of Locke’s three rights, a synthesis of Lockean philosophy, particularly drawing upon Locke’s phrase the “pursuit of true and solid happiness” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Jefferson’s synthesis of Lockean philosophy marked a turn away from previous expressions of rights in the Americas, particularly in the “Virginia Declaration of Rights” adopted in his home state a month prior to the ratification of the U.S. Declaration.
What all this means in terms of political philosophy is for greater minds than mine to figure out. The idea of happiness and the pursuit of it ought to capture our attention. What is “true and solid happiness?” To answer this, we need to address the matter of what we mean by “the good life.” I like how Jonathan Pennington puts it in Jesus the Great Philosopher:
“The Good Life is not referring to the lives of the rich and famous as revealed in the tabloid or expose show. The Good Life refers to the habits of practiced wisdom that produce in the human soul deep and lasting flourishing.”
Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 29.
The good life requires an amount of practice in the habits of virtue. Only when well-practiced in the way of wisdom can a person experience “true and solid happiness.”
What is Happiness?
So what exactly is happiness? This is a question that goes all the way back to the ancient philosophers. Plato, for instance, understands happiness as the highest aim or goal of life. There is a moral aspect to this happiness encompassed in the word eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία). It could be the stronger feeling of unhappiness occurs when one falls short of this goal or target. Sin or hamartia (ἁμαρτία) in this understanding is a falling short of the highest aims of life or missing the mark, to draw upon the imagery of archery. This is the essence of tragedy, according to ancient writers. The individual who is not heroic enough to live up to the highest aim of life and yet is not truly a villain, falls short of the eudaimonic standard. Misfortune befalls that person though the simple circumstances of life, and that individual falls prey to their own frailty, thereby experiencing unhappiness not because they are the worst of villains, but rather because of not living up to the high ideal of the good life.
Plato spells out different forms of happiness in the allegory “The Charioteer” that is instructive. In the Phaedrus, he shares the story of a charioteer driving two winged horses each having an opposite character. The first is wild with passion and impulsivity. It is easily distracted by fleeting desires and would easily be led off course. This horse is most interested in instant pleasures. These characteristics make it such that the charioteer must ever be watchful over this horse and can never have a moment of ease, because he cannot trust the horse to guide itself toward the proper path ahead.
The second horse is a noble creature. It loves what is honorable, modest and temperate. Guided by a simple direction, this horse pursues a pathway to that end despite the many distractions that might meet it on the highway. The charioteer has instilled many good habits, training the noble horse such that the charioteer has implicit trust in the animal, safe in the knowledge that nothing could cause this horse to stray from the proper path ahead.
I think this allegory speaks to something within all of us. We are simultaneously the wild and the well-trained horse, contain both base passions and noble bearing. And yet, we can differ from one another in how much we entrust to which horse to guide us in life. It is this very idea that has caused confusion as to the meaning of Jefferson’s phrasing, “the pursuit of happiness.” In the guise of the first horse, this is the pursuit of fleeting desires, it is the distracted life of instant pleasures. These are simply not the hallmarks of the highest aim of life. Rarely would we say that a life spent in fleeting desires and instant pleasures is a life well lived. After many years inundated by advertisements that equate these desires and pleasures with the good life, we are often tempted to consider these as the status symbols of nobility. But I think this is hardly the Jeffersonian vision. It is certainly not envisioned in the ancient philosophical tradition. And hardly the biblical vision of the good life.
Our definition of happiness seems more associated with the second horse. The horse of noble bearing charts a course towards the true end of the journey, recognizing fleeting desires and instant pleasures as distractions from the deeply satisfying bliss of accomplishing life’s highest aim. Now it might be argued that we cannot arrive at that highest aim, so wouldn’t it just be good enough to simply enjoy the fleeting desires and instant pleasures life affords. But what one notices about the second horse is that the deeply satisfying bliss comes not in the conclusion of the journey, but on the entirety of the pathway towards that end. Whether we arrive at our highest aim or not, it is the pursuit of that deeply satisfying bliss that is itself deeply satisfying. This, then, must be our definition of happiness.
The Dopamine Problem
I alluded a moment ago to the fact that both horses reside within. It would be too simple to equate our dopaminergic system with the wild horse, even though dopamine generally gets a bad rap. Our motivational system utilizes an array of neurotransmitters to reward us, giving us that feeling of pleasure in response to stimuli our body wants more of. It would be all too easy to equate happiness with hormones in our brains. And yet, this whole system is entirely relevant.
Suffice it to say that the dopaminergic system is rather blind to the type of stimulus it receives. One can experience a dopamine release from reading a good book or taking a bite of cotton candy. You and I know there’s a significant difference in time invested as well as the relative the health benefits of these two activities. But our neurology cares not. There is a release of dopamine for either activity. To put it another way, both horses get fed even though one is a wild horse liable to go astray in pursuit of fleeting pleasures while the other is a noble and faithful creature.
A recent study was able to find, though, a dopaminergic answer to the question of instant versus delayed gratification. Yes, we get a dopamine hit regardless. However, a 2021 study investigated the dopaminergic (DAergic) release differential during delayed gratification in comparison to instant gratification. They write:
“We found remarkable and sustained DAergic activation when mice managed to wait longer and further demonstrated a causal link between DAergic activation and the increase in transient waiting probability. Furthermore, we found DAergic activity ramps up in a consistent manner during waiting, mimicking the value of waiting along with a series of states in our Continuous Deliberation RL model, both of which presumably contributed to pursuing a more valuable future goal and resisting the distraction of the less-optimal immediate options in our task.”
Gao, Zilong et al. “The neural basis of delayed gratification.” Science Advances vol. 7,49 (2021).
In exchange for an allegory of horses, we now have the mythology of mice in rather modern garb. Let’s break down what this study finds. For mice that waited, or experienced delayed gratification, the dopamine release was stronger, and there was more of it experienced over time. Not only that, but there was another impact in that the anticipation of a future goal caused an amount of dopamine to be released. In simple terms, the dopamine experienced with fleeting desires and instant pleases does not stack up against the dopamine experienced with deeply satisfying bliss. Or to put it yet another way. Although both horses get fed, one gets a basic meal while the other receives a more balanced diet.
So what keeps us from the pursuit of this better quality dopamine reward? Why is it that today we tend not to feed our better horse with a healthy diet and are quite happy to go on feeding a fattened wild horse? The answer to this is effort.
The pursuit of true happiness is effortful work. The pathway to deeply satisfying bliss is often not much fun and is associated with highly demanding practices. If we take seriously, however, the thesis of Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, it is the effortful work that is both rare and valuable in our world of distraction. What emerges is an economy of higher and lower values. I could scroll Facebook, and my dopaminergic system really likes that in the moment. In fact, it will tell me to keep on scrolling to squeeze out just a little bit more dopamine. But when I wake up from the rather shallow world of Facebook scrolling, I end up feeling empty and hollow. I get the symptoms of effortful work, but nothing to show for it. I feel like I did something, but in the end it amounts to nothing.
Compare this to, say, writing a 3000-word article on happiness (or reading a 3000-word article on happiness as you are now doing). It takes genuine effort to piece together a stream of thoughts. One must be careful to write clearly and accurately. There is intellectual work to be done both in the writing and in the reading of such a work. And when one is done with such a work, the feeling of tiredness occurs because effort was spent. It is demanding work. Attention must remain focused. There are moments when it is not quite fun. But in the end, not only does one feel like something was done, there is something of quality to show for one’s effort. Obviously, the reader will have to evaluate the relative quality of the writing and the thinking. But let’s say the writing is of rather middling quality. It still stands as something accomplished. Sure, one could go on to improve upon the ideas and the clarity of expression. The deep satisfaction comes at the thought that good effort has been spent, even if one has not arrived at the highest ideal.
Practicing Happiness
Practicing happiness has been a bit of a catch phrase in positive psychology. It is a method of proactively cultivating positive emotions to improve our wellbeing. When we cultivate gratitude, kindness, and optimism, there are positive effects that can be seen in our physical and mental health. In light of the discussion above, I want to add to this line of reasoning that effortful work put into our moral formation seems to be exactly the kind of endeavor that aligns with this concept of practicing happiness.
Many turn to positive psychology in an effort to alleviate stress. So it might seem strange to engage in effortful work. Here I think the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on “flow” gives us a framework for understanding how effortful work can actually be a stress management tool. A very basic understanding of flow is the experience a person has when they are fully immersed in what they are doing. I often imagine my son immersed in building with Legos when he was younger. He could sit for hours building without any real sense of an outside world. He was fully absorbed in what he was doing.
In his work on “flow” Csikszentmihalyi considers two realities that are present. The first reality we might call detachment. The immersive state causes an individual to “forget all the unpleasant aspects of life.” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) Thus, a deep engagement in effortful work can be a practice of detachment from anxiety and stress. We frequently engage in stress relieving activities such as watching YouTube videos or playing video games to create a type of detachment. But these activities are rarely ones that get us into the flow state that Csikszentmihalyi describes. So, the next time you are beset with anxiety or stress, consider some kind of more effortful practice that could get you into a state of flow. It could be as simple as piecing together a puzzle, tending a garden plot or reading a book.
The second reality we might call experiential happiness. Csikszentmihalyi shares how the flow state is associated less with hedonic pleasure and more with eudemonic happiness. This sounds rather familiar! By choosing experiences that immerse us into effortful work, we build up a reservoir of happiness that deepens as we acquire greater skill, see progress in our work, and have something to show for our work. Consider the happiness that is gained as a puzzle is completed, a garden bed blooms in season after season, or our bookshelf showcases a number of beloved favorites. For me the practice of running has been a place of flow. For years I have tracked my mileage and feel a deep satisfaction in the places I’ve run, the people I’ve run with, and the insights I’ve gained out on the trails.
This kind of deep work, of entering into flow, is an investment in yourself and you reap the reward of better mental and physical health. Now what I would like to add to my basic thesis here is that effortful work on our moral formation can’t help but contribute to a betterment of our mental and physical health. This takes me back to the ancient philosophers. Happiness or eudaimonia occurred as a result of virtues or arete (ἀρετή). Both Plato and Aristotle see virtues as excellences that we practice.
Newport, for his part, seems to have a profound understanding of this philosophical tradition when he describes the “sacredness inherent in traditional craftsmanship.” (Newport, Deep Work). Virtues are practices just like a wheelwright or blacksmith practices their craft. We grow in the skill of courage or faithfulness. We don’t acquire courage and then consider that done. In other words, there is always more to learn as we exercise the moral part of ourselves.
This leads to a consideration of how all of life is the pursuit of virtue. I really like how Alasdair MacIntyre captures the interplay of the virtues and the good life in his book After Virtue. He writes:
“The virtues are precisely those qualities the possession of which will enable an individual to achieve eudaimonia and the lack of which will frustrate his movement toward that telos. But although it would not be incorrect to describe the exercise of virtues as a means to the end of achieving the good for man, that description is ambiguous.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 148.
From this we gather that one cannot pursue happiness without the possession of virtues. This speaks to how important it is to set our young ones on a path of virtue from an early age. To do otherwise is to set them on a course of frustration throughout life. This does not mean that virtue cannot be acquired when older. But how much easier is it when a course is set properly from the beginning. MacIntyre goes on, though, to elaborate how the good life entails the continual practicing of virtues.
“But the exercise of the virtues is not in this sense a means to the end of the good for man. For what constitutes the good for man is a complete human life lived at its best, and the exercise of the virtues is a necessary and central part of such a life, not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such a life.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 149.
This sounds like a call for daily exercise, not of the physical sort, but of the moral sort. The virtues are to be practiced like a basketball free throw is practiced. One considers good moral exemplars, and then tries to “follow through” like they do. Each new day brings a new opportunity to practice patience or moderation or humility or any other virtue. Many of us will have daily practices such as a time of prayer, a run, or a family dinner. These are highly commendable and worth maintaining. To these I would recommend a daily virtue practice. It might look like the virtue journal kept by Benjamin Franklin. Or it might simply be a daily contemplation of a virtue you will practice. The idea here is to treat virtue as something to be continually exercised in the pursuit of true happiness.
A Biblical Exposition on Happiness
Far from being a coda or a proforma addition to what has largely been a philosophical article up to this point, I find it striking how the biblical testimony has always had an undercurrent of moral direction connected to personal happiness in communion with God. I recollect coming across this in my research on 1 Peter where Peter quotes Psalm 34. Despite his reputation as an “uneducated, common” man (Acts 4:13), Peter’s epistle stands alongside the great philosophers for its depth of thought and expression.
Psalm 34 as he quotes it reads:
“Whoever desires to love life and see good days,
Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit;
Let him turn away from evil and do good;
Let him seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
And his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Surrounding this quotation, Peter calls his readers to live a blessed life through the practice of virtues. He list several in 1 Peter 3:8—unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, a humble mind. In this life, we won’t be able to follow the path of happiness unhindered. This he writes, “But even if you should suffer for righteousess’ sake, you will be blessed” (1 Peter 3:14).
What we can take from this is that the Christian life is a well-practiced life. I am quick to point out how much we are reliant on the work of Christ to make us righteous and to provide the energies of our sanctification. But let us be clear that in following in the footsteps of Christ (1 Peter 2:21), we are indeed a fellowship of virtue practicers. Our course in following Christ is set on seeing good days and desiring to love life.
I am mindful as I conclude that I haven’t mentioned one word about education. And that is fine. As this is the summertime, this article is meant first and foremost to feed the souls of educators rather than to provide a teaching methodology. Yet, I think one can discern in and through much that is written here how central these ideas are to a sound philosophy of education. What is the highest calling for us as educators, but to show our students the pathway to happiness in life. And that will come as we ourselves enter into this pursuit of happiness.
