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

The Pursuit of Happiness (Part Two)

(Editor’s note: This is the second segment in a three part series.  The first segment traced happiness to Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence.  It outlined Alexander Hamilton’s vision in implementing a financial system of capitalism for the republic with the new constitution.)

Yes, Hamilton’s plan conceived a new class of speculative wealth and money-making, created out of thin air and to be endorsed by the full faith and credit of the US government.  Members of Congress, as well as the bankers and speculators, all more or less positioned on the inside, were the earliest plan subscribers and beneficiaries.  By and through its undertaking the new federal government created a system of preference for the so called moneyed class over the remaining classes of society that were not moneyed.

Nevertheless, understanding that this model had achieved unsurpassed economic dominance on the world stage through the British, Hamilton’s financial plan placed the new nation upon a solid economic foundation.  Moreover, the plan placed the new nation on a course for more than two centuries worth of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity for the masses of ordinary citizens.  It certainly turned out to be a wise decision --- for empire.

But, almost immediately upon enactment, Hamilton’s financial plan was the subject of intense criticism and attack.  On the one hand, there could be little doubt that it was a practical plan.  The nation needed a stable, secure banking system, without which the established European powers would supply neither loans nor credit.  It was also expedient.  Its proponents pointed for validation to a proven model.

But on the other hand, it was self-serving, Hamilton being a resident of New York with a multitude of personal and professional connections in the financial arena.  It unfairly and disproportionately rewarded Northern bankers at the expense of Southern farmers, thereby heightening sectional differences.  It created a preference for two distinct economic classes: the haves – and have nots.

It may come as no surprise, then, that Jefferson himself, the Secretary of State in President Washington’s cabinet, was the primary objector to what he viewed as Hamilton’s perversion of the idyllic pursuit of happiness.  But his objection had little to do either with numbers, economics or speculation.

According to Jefferson, the essence of the pursuit of happiness commenced with the removal of all forms of arbitrary, artificial or hereditary distinctions, influences or preconceived ideas.  The desire was to attain full, unencumbered intellectual and religious freedom of the mind, unconstrained by previous efforts to set authoritative delineation using lenses and filters.  Absent these external influences and thus empowered, the mind would exist in a completely and intellectually free state: to master its environment and attain its natural potentialities.  Central was the belief in the improvability of the human mind and the limitless progress of human knowledge.

The author of the document which set forth that “all men are created equal” viewed with consternation a plan which would not treat all men equally under the law.  Such a plan violated the unfettered freedom of the individual citizen to pursue happiness.  It flowed from principles adverse to liberty, accomplished by creating an influence of the US Treasury over members of Congress, inherently susceptible to corruption.  With the grant of inherent privileges artificially conferred upon certain of its benefactors, the plan tended to narrow the government into fewer hands and approximate it to a hereditary form.

In a later period, Andrew Jackson would declare war on and victory over Hamilton’s federal banking system.  In the throes of battle, Jackson astutely observe that “If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system there would be a revolution before morning.”

For his own part, Theodore Roosevelt had an interesting insight as to what was happiness:

But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.  It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching.  And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end – why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing.

(Next week’s third and final segment will explore The Pursuit of Happiness from the realm of Eastern Civilization, dating to a time period centuries prior to the American founding fathers.)

-Michael D’Angelo