The Pursuit of Happiness

In this week after the 4th of July holiday, 2010, the east coast of the United States broils in a heat wave.  Nature exerts its pressure on us to slow down, to take a moment to linger in the shade, or to chill our feet in some cool pool of water.

It was blazing hot in Philadelphia during  these same July weeks in 1776, but the Continental Congress labored on to complete the Declaration of Independence.  Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration edited by the Congress, likewise worked in that heat.  No one knows whether or not Jefferson took some time out from his writing for a siesta.  But maybe in some very indirect way, the torpid environment affected his choice of words.  As most everyone knows, Jefferson wrote that humans are entitled to “unalienable” rights, including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

These words have become part of our unofficial  national American political poetry.  They are seen as nearly inseparable from each other.  In fact they are based on the words of one of Jefferson’s heroes, John Locke.  In Locke’s Second Treatise of Government the Englishman declared a natural right to “life, liberty, and property.” (italics added).  Jefferson’s innovation, hatched in the languid air of summertime Philadelphia,  was to substitute “pursuit of happiness” for “property.”  The change begs the question, why?

A socialist might say that Jefferson did not count “property” among such sacred rights as “life and liberty;”  taking property in the name of social justice is not out of bounds, a socialist might argue.  A libertarian might argue just the opposite; no one is entitled to property if born with none, but everyone is born with life and liberty and the right to pursue happiness, which might mean the acquisition of property.  The libertarian is surely closer to Jefferson’s actual world view, but Jefferson’s priorities give the socialist some room to maneuver as well.

At a more basic level, Jefferson suggests that mere “property” by itself is unworthy to sit in the company of “life” and “liberty.”  Property, says Jefferson, does not equal happiness.  We might pursue property to help make us happy, but property is a means, not an end.

So what does this have to do with the ungodly heat?    People from Protestant Europe have long blamed the hot climates for the perceived sloth of people unfortunate enough to live closer to the equator than they, themselves.  Indeed, Mediterranean cultures, less concerned than their Calvinist neighbors to the north about the acquisition of property, take more time off from work.  They linger over tables together in the relative cool of the evening with family and friends.  They take long vacations.  Rather than buy expensive cars or unnecessarily large houses, they pursue happiness in the truer forms of family and friendships that can only be achieved with the investment of time with others.

Gentleman like Jefferson who were products of an age known as the Enlightenment valued their time as a means to improve their knowledge.  Time free from labor meant the opportunity to study science, history, politics and art.  It is also true that in the age of the American Revolution gentlemen were under enormous social pressures to acquire and display their wealth and good taste; Jefferson himself was no slouch at this.  Perhaps Jefferson’s replacement of “property” with “pursuit of happiness” represented a social criticism of his own time and place.   In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson held up a set of ideals to the world, ideals that he himself did not live up to,  as he well knew.

The perpetuation of slavery in the new American republic was of course the greatest contradiction to the notion that everyone had a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  For Jefferson, slavery was not only a blemish, but an addiction.  He knew the system was immoral, but he personally depended on the existence of slavery in Virginia so that he would have the time to help build the new republic, study the arts, etc.   The terrible truth is that Jefferson’s own pursuit of happiness depended on the enslavement of others.

Thomas Jefferson’s friend, colleague, future rival, and ultimately friend again – John Adams – was burdened by slavery only to the extent he wished it abolished.  Adams had his own similar take on issues of time, property and priorities.  Writing from distant France to his wife Abigail, back in Massachusetts, he tried to justify his long sojourn away from home:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Adams’ formulation suggests that once we have established sufficient wealth, then our attention can turn to art.  For Adams, like Jefferson, the endless acquisition of wealth is not a worthy goal; it is rather a tool that can allow us as individuals to improve ourselves and the world around us.

These lesser known values of the founding fathers too often seem lost on us today, a time when Wall Street executives make astronomical sums of money mostly just for the sake of doing so.  For too many of today’s wealthy (and not so wealthy), vanity-driven consumption is the main end.  There are of course exceptions.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffett come to mind.

Relative to many other people from industrialized countries, Americans prioritize earning money over free time.  While some of us have no choice but to work harder, many others are opting for property over a broader and less superficial notion of happiness.  As recent data show, Americans take on average two weeks of vacation in comparison to some of their European counterparts, who take a whole month off each year.  According to the American Journal of Medicine, only 43% of American families  have dinner together every day, and of those, many watch television or use electronic devices at the same time.

In these months and years of economic trouble, the value of work seems at its height.  For those struggling to get by, this is understandable.  But for the rest of us, time away from work dedicated to family, learning, art, public service or just psychological or physical well-being is not laziness.  It is a pursuit of happiness beyond wealth and property.  In 1776 Jefferson and Adams could have stayed home only to build and display their own fortunes.  Instead, they risked everything, including  hanging at the hands of the British.  And even as they labored for the independence of their country in the summer swelter of Philadelphia, they surely also made sure to sit down as friends over a cool ale.   Let us make time, like them, to pursue happiness in its broadest and truest sense.