Happiness and Virtue

Our nation was admirably founded on mankind's quest for happiness. But what is happiness? Today, part of the engine driving our increasingly decadent culture is the notion that one should be allowed to do whatever "makes me happy," which is variously interpreted as pleasure, wealth, and so on, depending on the individual. However, few actually achieve a state of happiness, despite all the wealth they accrue or pleasures they experience. Why is happiness so elusive? Why can't we achieve this emotion?

Perhaps because, according to Aristotle, happiness is not actually an emotion. It is the "activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue." It has long been known that virtue brings happiness. There are two problems, however:

The first problem is that few know what virtue is anymore. Many consider fighting for homosexuality to be a virtue. Similarly, our bookstores are filled with books about increasing one's assertiveness — as though becoming an arrogant loud-mouth is a virtue. Virtue, Aristotle says, is the balance between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Our society is in a permanent excess-seeking mode. The concept of self-sacrifice is alien to us.

That leads to the second problem: we always confuse pleasure with happiness. This has been a problem for all time, but today the problem is worse than ever because there are so many ways of getting pleasure, often at the expense of morality. For instance, pre-marital sex is not just accepted these days, it is the norm, and anyone speaking out against contraception is looked at as though he just stepped off a spaceship and asked to see our leader. No one can understand how giving up pleasure can in fact be beneficial to one's self, leading to genuine happiness rather than fleeting and empty emotions.

The ultimate result of these mistaken attitudes about virtue and happiness can be seen in the extremely tenuous, sex-based relationships which are forged and destroyed very quickly, often ending in messy divorce cases which leave any children involved with a really bad frame of reference when they try to build their own lives. Large, "traditional" families are a dying breed, and so is the happiness they bring. When people get married now, it isn't for life — rather, their vows are made for "as long as our love shall last," the selfishness of which leaves me breathless. Imagine: "So long, honey. I don't love you anymore, so I'm off to find someone with skinnier legs." Love, and happiness, require work, and especially self-sacrifice, but in our selfish society we demand them on our own terms — so we never get them.