In a column two weeks ago, I argued that the United States is built on three pillars: the Declaration of Independence (which proclaims that we are a free people with natural rights), the U.S. constitution (which is how we secure and protect those rights), and the American Dream (which is how we exercise our right to pursue happiness).
Remove any of the three and we are not the same nation. Not the same people.
While the Founders proclaimed that we have an inalienable right to pursue happiness, it would surprise most today to discover what they meant by those words.
The Founders were well-versed in classical thinkers like Epictetus, Seneca, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, David Hume, and Montesquieu.
These philosophers defined happiness as the pursuit of virtue – as being good rather than feeling good.
They were inspired by Plutarch’s Lives, which compared and contrasted pairs of heroic characters from Greek and Roman history as examples of how to live a good life.
They studied Pythagoras’s Golden Verses, which emphasized the importance of moderation in diet, speech, lifestyle, and action.
And they read Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, a series of five philosophical books that fortified their minds with practical lessons about rising above their passions and pains.
The Founders viewed the pursuit of happiness as a daily and lifelong quest for character improvement, one that involves both rigorous time management and critical self-awareness.
It was not about getting or having more.
It was about the daily cultivation of learning, personal growth and character improvement… to better serve others.
Understood in these terms, happiness is something that is always pursued rather than obtained – a journey rather than a destination.
Cicero wrote, “The mere search for higher happiness, not merely its actual attainment, is a prize beyond all human wealth or honor or physical pleasure.”
To achieve tranquility and happiness, the Stoics believed, we should stop trying to control external events and instead focus on controlling the only things within our power to control: our own thoughts, desires, and behavior.
Only by mastering our selfish impulses (like greed, anger, and the desire for fleeting pleasures) as well as our ego-based emotions (like pride, envy, and jealousy) can we live in harmony and tranquility.
And thereby experience true happiness.
The Founders viewed life as a struggle between reason and passion.
The goal is to strengthen the intellect, to moderate harmful emotions, and achieve a measure of self-control that is the key to happiness.
They viewed this as a kind of spiritual practice.
It didn’t involve yoga or meditation. Rather it required intense focus on battling their own personal shortcomings.
And they had plenty. These men were made of flesh and blood not marble.
George Washington struggled with his temper his whole life. John Adams was vain and irritable. Thomas Jefferson was a spendthrift who could never balance hit books and died deeply in debt.
Benjamin Franklin was a prideful eccentric with a penchant for what he called “air baths,” sitting naked in front of an open window for extended periods.
Alexander Hamilton was arrogant and vengeful (which led to a fatal duel with Aaron Burr).
Aware of their own personal flaws, the Founders felt strongly that personal self-government was a necessary prerequisite for political self-government.
That’s the reason for Franklin’s famous quote when leaving Independence Hall after the final day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
A woman approached him and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
He knew that the citizens of ancient Rome had willingly surrendered their liberties in return for luxuries (bread and circuses).
For the American republic to endure, its citizens would have an ongoing responsibility to demonstrate fortitude, wisdom, and courage.
The Founders saw a strong parallel between the personal regulation of short-term desires and the government’s own system of checks and balances.
That’s why we have three branches of the federal government, two branches of the legislature, vetoes, veto overrides, super majorities, judicial review, and so on.
The president can check the impulsive passions of Congress with the veto, just as the Senate can cool the passions of the more democratic House.
And the Supreme Court can potentially counter both branches by ruling their actions unconstitutional.
The goal of each of these institutional checks is to slow down deliberation so that the government can act wisely… the same way individuals can slow down and check their worst impulses through virtuous self-mastery.
Because there are no perfect people.
As Madison declared, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
Unfortunately, stoic wisdom fell out of fashion in the 1960s with the Woodstock ethos: “If it feels good, do it.”
It continued into the ’70s (dubbed the “Me Decade”) and the materialistic ’80s.
Even today’s mantra – “You do you” – encourages everyone to follow their own personal bliss.
Unfortunately, this intense focus on the pursuit of pleasure has had the opposite effect, with rising rates of depression, anxiety, and even suicide.
To the Founders, the pursuit of happiness had a deeper and nobler meaning than it does today.
For them, happiness was the result of living a good life.
That required the cultivation of virtuous qualities: integrity, courage, equanimity, resolution, industry, frugality, and humility, among others.
They viewed the pursuit of happiness not as the liberty to do whatever feels good in the moment, but as the freedom to make wise choices that help us develop our character and talents throughout our lives.
One of these virtues is delayed gratification.
Its benefits were made clear in the famous marshmallow test, an experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1972.
Researchers gave young children a choice between an immediate reward (one marshmallow) or two rewards (two marshmallows) if they could wait 15 minutes to receive them.
The study found that those who were able to wait for two marshmallows rather than eating one immediately not only performed better in school years later but had much better life outcomes.
Our long-term happiness is better served by self-regulation rather than a surrender to short-term gratification.
But industry is also important.
“Determine never to be idle,” Jefferson wrote to his daughter Martha in 1787. “It is amazing how much may be done, if we are always doing.”
According to Jefferson, “[a] mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity The idle are the only wretched.”
The Founders’ idea of leisure was time away from business where they were free to develop their faculties through lifelong education.
Jefferson’s rigorous daily schedule of working, exercising and reading – a habit he shared with George Washington – allowed him to be remarkably productive throughout his life.
It also contributed to a positive state of mind.
In his first inaugural address in April 1789, Washington spoke of the “indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.”
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “Philosophers tell men that, to be happy in this life, they must watch their own passions and steadily control their excess; that lasting happiness can only be secured by renouncing a thousand transient gratifications;, and that a man must perpetually triumph over himself, in order to secure his own advantage.
The contemporary focus on self-gratification rather than self-improvement leads to a culture of narcissistic preoccupation rather than happiness.
But perhaps the most surprising thing is that the same virtues that the Founders insisted lead to a happier life – industry, thrift, humility, temperance, etc. – are the very ones that make the achievement of the American Dream easier.
I’ll explain how in Friday’s column…
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