The Pursuit of Happiness (Part Three)

(Editor’s note: This is the third and final segment in a three part series.  The first segment traced the pursuit of happiness to Thomas Jefferson, author of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, outlining Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan for capitalism.  The second segment explored Hamilton’s controversial methods and the basis of opposition, which also began with Jefferson.  ...)

While capitalism may have achieved a monopolistic grip over Western Civilization, scarcely can it be said that Western Civilization maintains such sway over the pursuit of happiness.  Or the ways of human nature.  It should come as little surprise, then, that criticism of Hamilton’s financial plan, ominous and foreboding as it was, could well have been predicted.

An ordinary citizen may recognize the same moral in a parallel story from the realm of Eastern Civilization.  More specifically, ancient Taoist thought also addresses the workings of human nature, dwelling in its unity.  Therein lay the same timeless, uncontroverted truths, offering merely a hint of the opposition attacks Hamilton’s plan would later face.

Cracking the Safe

For security against robbers who snatch purses, rifle luggage, and crack safes,

One must fasten all property with ropes, lock it up with locks, bolt it with bolts.

This (for property owners) is elementary good sense.

But when a strong thief comes along he picks up the whole lot,

Puts it on his back, and goes on his way with only one fear:

That ropes, locks and bolts may give way.

Thus what the world calls good business is only a way

To gather up the loot, pack it, make it secure

In one convenient load for the more enterprising thieves.

Who is there, among those called smart,

Who does not spend his time amassing loot

For a bigger robber than himself?

Taoist thought is also consistent with its Western counterpart in acknowledging the unfortunate fact of life that the world values money, reputation, long life.  Similarly, what the world counts as joy are health and bodily comforts, good food, beautiful things to look at.  Misfortune involves the opposite: lack of money, bodily discomfort, labor, no chance to get your fill of the finer things.  This concern for happiness creates anxiety and makes life unbearable.

The rich make life intolerable, driving themselves in order to get more and more money which they cannot really use.  In so doing they are alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as though they were the slaves of others.

The ambitious run day and night in pursuit of honor, constantly in anguish about the success of their plans, dreading the miscalculation that may wreck everything.  Thus, they are alienated from themselves, exhausting their real life in service of the shadow created by their insatiable hope.

Taoist thought teaches us that happiness is illusory, inasmuch as we as mere mortals are destined to die some day.  And so, we tend to expend all of our energies worrying, obsessed about it, trying to do what we can to delay this particular eventuality.  We don’t live in the present, where life is to be lived.  Instead, we squander the present, living in a precarious state of worry regarding a future, over which we have little control.

By contrast to the rich or ambitious man, or his counterpart the poor man,

Take the case of the minister who conscientiously and uprightly opposes an unjust decision of his king!  Some say, ‘Tell the truth, and if the King will not listen, let him do what he likes.  You have no further obligation.’

On the other hand, Tzu Shu continued to resist the unjust policy of his sovereign.  He was consequently destroyed.  But if he had not stood up for what he believed to be right, his name would not be held in honor.

So there is the question, Shall the course he took be called “good” if, at the same time, it was fatal to him?

I cannot tell if what the world considers “happiness” is happiness or not.  All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction.  All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness.

In the end, as with most things, it is supposed that the beauty of the pursuit of happiness lies in the eyes of the beholder.  Is there a higher purpose than profit?

-Michael D’Angelo