The Malaise of Injustice: What Makes Happiness?

What makes happiness? Let's avoid a discussion of the chemical cocktails that please the brain and, instead, focus on the ancient-Greek word for happiness, eudaimonia, more-aptly defined as "human flourishing," to narrow our inquiry. In the modern age, we eventually grow past material needs and desires of our various bread and circuses. So, what actually causes human flourishing?

The outward quality of available food, televisions, games, movies, music, and various other forms of entertainment has all dramatically improved over the decades. And for those preferring the inward quality of bygone eras, classic forms of the same are largely available at a much lower cost in the modern day.

Can a man from the 1980s, playing Galaga on his Atari and watching '80s action films, be as a happy as one playing modern games and watching modern programs of 2021? Can a woman from the 1980s, with the fashion and makeup adornments of the era, be as happy as a modern one? If the quality of entertainment and fashion has improved, wouldn't happiness proportionally improve? If material quality has improved three-fold, should we be three-times happier?

The State Making Happiness
The classic libertarian argument for optimism involves material focus. More-free trade lowers the otherwise price of goods and services absent freer trade. And, independent of any government policies, natural market innovations lower the price of good and services. Thus, even if wealth inequality grows, the poor are in many ways wealthier than the rich of bygone eras. Would you rather be a poor American in 2021 or a European king in 17th century? From a material perspective, the poor American is better off. But is he happier?

To those who view government as a tool to advance human flourishing, which is almost everyone, a largely utilitarian, greatest good for the greatest many, approach is taken. The converse, a deontological first-principle approach, leads us to reject all government authority as an unjust monopoly, since the taxes to fund enforcement of any law, no matter how just, are not consensual (otherwise government would be a charity). Thus, a concession to any government policy is a concession to a degree of utilitarian ethics.

Leftists focus on the material aspect of happiness, just as libertarians do. Regardless of the American poor being better off than the European king of the 17th century, wouldn't aggregate happiness increase if we made the poor even more better-off by balancing the wealth? Assuming a diminishing marginal value of return on happiness with increasing material luxury and weighting the value of each citizen's happiness equally, wouldn't making the wealthiest 2% of the population 50% less happy be worth making 50% of the population 50% happier [*1]?

On morally-repugnant matters like abortion, leftists could argue in favor with utilitarian ethics as well. The material argument dances upon temporal mechanics. The fetus is not nearly as aware of his existence as the mother is. If the mother would be happier without the burden of birthing and rearing the child, little is lost in happiness of the fetus, while the mother gains great happiness by relieving her of the burden. But, if we think to the future, killing the fetus denies a possible full life-span of the child into adulthood and all the happiness that would entail. Unless one is an anti-natalist, believing all life is net unhappiness and an absence of birth is preferable, utilitarian ethics makes a strong case for banning abortion.

But the leftist can appeal to deontological ethics. The woman's body is her property. Thus, she has the right to terminate another life on her property, even if adoption is a viable option. Of course, a leftist would never argue that killing a trespasser on your property is just when eviction without killing him is a viable option. Gradients of property value need to be applied, with the physical body having more value to override the rights of others compared to external property (like land and objects) for a deontological argument for abortion to seem plausible.

The escape from material happiness to deontological ethics that public policy debates often result in reveals how material happiness is fleeting. Once a minimum threshold of material needs is met (and it is, considering obesity is the true pandemic for much of the world), we turn our pursuit to the true makings of happiness.

Happiness as an Activity
True human flourishing involves finding something deeper. And, as Aristotle wrote in extensive detail, it is an activity [*2]. Happiness isn't a feeling that can be maintained by merely absorbing life. We must act upon it with virtue.

One activity of virtue is improving the lives of others, either spiritually or materially. Priests and other religious servants handle the former, while entrepreneurs and artists create or make better goods and services that make life more materially long-lasting and pleasurable but, more importantly, free up our time to engage in activities that truly make us happy.

Perhaps the most fulfilling activity we truly enjoy is justice, paying what we owe (if we are virtuous) and making others pay what they owe (regardless if we, ourselves, are virtuous). Even when we read or watch fictional programs or play games, we appeal to our sense of justice in our engagement, as, without a sense of justice, such programs would be a meaningless waste of our time. We guide the protagonist in a game or watch him in a sport or program, because we want to see justice, people getting what they deserve, and the struggle for it resonates with our core being. But this kind of justice is mostly fictional, no substitute for the real thing.

This explains the emergence of cancel culture, especially among more-ontological thinkers who judge people for their beliefs moreso than their actions [*3]. As our material needs are met, and often far exceeded with modernity, we have more time to pursue truly fulfilling activities. Most of us don't have the innate talent and abilities to create or fulfill the spiritual or material needs or desires of others; so justice is what we seek. Leftists, being more-ontological thinkers, seek to exile from polite society figures they believe are innately unjust, and they enjoy typing words on social media to effect that result. The fictional justice they experience through entertainment mediums does not bring happiness, but taking action to punish enemies brings actual justice (from their perspective), which fills their void of purpose.

Focus on material luxury results in a malaise, especially to those without children, as childlessness increases by two-fold from the mid-20th century in the U.S. [*4] and nearly tops the world in it [*5], while experiencing a decline in Christianity [*6]. Improvements in material luxury result in a diminishing return on happiness as it increases, but to have it taken away is, perhaps, to suffer, if not cause depression. There's always an unease. Do I deserve more? What is the next high? What if I lose my wealth? What will my social group think of me when I lose it?

Rearing children results in a reorientation of happiness from the self to your children. The combination of focusing on their well being, happiness, and familial considerations of justice with the constant action to manage this, crowding out any free time, distracts from external considerations of justice.

C.S. Lewis even argues men should be head of the household for this reason. Because women are natural nurturers who spend more time with their children, a woman might be unjust to the outside world if she controlled household decisions [*7]. If her child did something wrong and were to be punished by an outsider, but she had an opportunity to lie to keep her child safe, would she cause external injustice to avoid negative consequences for her family?

Regardless of it being familial or external, justice lies at the core of happiness. Our pursuit of justice, being for ourselves, friends and family, to others, or even fictional characters, fuels most disagreements in our lives. And with these disagreements comes a struggle for power.

Happiness as a Tool for Power
So far, we've covered three orientations of happiness: personal-pleasure based, familial or community based, and external-justice based. To the degree we define wicked as a means to control behavior through deceit [*8], how can the wicked manipulate happiness as a tool of political power?

Our rulers and their handlers seek to control our action but mainly pacify us into inaction, allowing action only when it benefits them or, at least, doesn't harm them. We live in an era with enormous opportunity for bread and circuses. The world's libraries of books and virtually any audio-visual media now fit in our pockets. Any food we want can be delivered with the push of a button.

Our rulers would prefer us to work, pay our taxes, vote (to the extent that still matters), and largely keep quiet about anything that would interfere with their control. You are to consume the latest product, stay indulged in the luxuries of the era, work to pay for the next iteration, and repeat. The more luxuries we consume, the more bored we become with such luxuries and the more we seek to escape its malaise, especially with less children to rear, perpetual spinsterhood and bachelorhood, and a culture exhaling the virtues of personal gratification and "empowerment" (especially among minority classes). Anything to distract from the malaise of our post-democratic age [*9].

The true fear our rulers face is justice: our taking action to remove them from unjust power, be it the monopolies of Amazon and Google being broken up, our bureaucrats being stripped of their perpetual rule-making powers, or our king-maker politicians' reign ending with term limits.

Thus, our rulers seek to keep us happy to pacify us. But, in an age of decreasing fertility and diminishing value of return on luxury, society increasingly aims toward the natural orientation of happiness: the pursuit of justice.

The aftermath of the American election reveals the malaise in the American heart for justice. Our media constantly dangles new du jour causes before us. Examples: Black Lives Matter, a communist organization disguised as justice against police misconduct [*10], shaming those not wearing masks to stop purported asymptomatic carriers of the 2019 beer bug from selfishly poisoning the Earth with their beings like a walking bioweapon, and, recently, the campaign to "Stop Asian Hate."

Be wary of moral causes imposed from above. The latest cause for justice du jour, Stop Asian Hate, is particularly vexing, considering it's based on a shooting of mostly Asian people without evidence the intent of the shooter was the targets' essence of being Asian (based on the words of the killer himself, no less!). Any reasonable human being that's done more than two minutes of research beyond the rhetorical message of the media and ruling class understands the absurdity.

The media and ruling political classes must continue to steer the social consciousness of justice with more causes to fill the void materialism and childlessness imposes upon their subjects. The more causes they impose, the more we on the right waste time arguing against their causes. We have to explain how police do not intentionally target blacks, how masks are not the panacea for the 2019 beer bug, and, now, how white people, as a group, don't actually hate Asians. It's so tiring. When will it end?

The true cause of the right is to break our country up into separate jurisdictions where we can flourish independent of the corrupt authorities and culture imposing their will upon us. That is the most just cause of 2021. Nationalism. Independence. Allow leftists to degrade in their jurisdictions, and allow us to prosper in ours.

So, what is happiness? And what will you do in pursuit of it?

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FOOTNOTES
[*1] Let's put aside the libertarian counter-argument that reducing wealth from the 2% actually reduces the wealth in the long-term of the 50% getting the one-time goody allocation. Some reject this economic concept as theoretical and not actual. And our focus is to understand the leftist mindset more than to argue with them.
[*2] http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.mb.txt
[*3] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-ontology-of-cancel-culture-racists.html
[*4] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/06/25/childlessness-up-among-all-women-down-among-women-with-advanced-degrees/
[*5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/03/in-terms-of-childlessness-u-s-ranks-near-the-top-worldwide/
[*6] https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/
[*7] Mere Christianity at Book III, Chapter 6, "Christian Marriage." http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/Mere%20Christianity%20-%20Lewis.pdf

There must be something unnatural about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half ashamed of it and despise the husbands whom they rule. But there is also another reason; and here I speak quite frankly as a bachelor, because it is a reason you can see from outside even better than from inside. The relations of the family to the outer world—what might be called its foreign policy—must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally, almost, in a sense, rightly, their claims override, for her, all other claims. She is the special trustee of their interests.

The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife. If anyone doubts this, let me ask a simple question. If your dog has bitten the child next door, or if your child has hurt the dog next door, which would you sooner have to deal with, the master of that house or the mistress? Or, if you are a married woman, let me ask you this question. Much as you admire your husband, would you not say that his chief failing is his tendency not to stick up for his rights and yours against the neighbours as vigorously as you would like? A bit of an Appeaser?

[*8] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/02/what-is-wicked.html
[*9] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/01/planning-for-post-democratic-divided.html
[*10] https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/09/21/memory-hole-black-lives-matter-deletes-believe-page/
From the Black Lives Matter "What We Believe" page, before it was taken down:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. … We embody and practice justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.