Who Deserves to be Happy?
By: Benjamin Cain
Tags: Philosophy, Ethics, Morality, Happiness, Society

Social Happiness and Higher Morality

Here we encounter a paradox. Once we introduce moral values into the means of acquiring a happy life, we discover that the individuals who most desire happiness, who satisfy the moral rather than just the material conditions are precisely the least likely even to attempt to achieve that contentment, let alone to find much joy.

Conversely, those who eagerly obey social expectations and find a world of pleasures opening up to them are the least deserving of the happy outcome because they’ve necessarily violated moral principles.

Morality is at odds with the social pursuit of happiness. In an immoral society, you forfeit your moral standing if you’re preoccupied with making yourself happy, that is, successful and content with your social status. Thus, even if you prove proficient in pursuing that goal, you can no longer be said to deserve the rewards. The rewards must be drained of their moral worth to accommodate the departure from morality that’s entailed by the self-interested search for happiness.

If you prove inept in pleasing yourself, if your life is a shambles not just by chance but because you’re preoccupied with morality, with what ought to be happening, you must be both among the least happy creatures and the most deserving of what you can never obtain.

Notice that I assume the society in question is immoral. But not every society is equally so. Consider a dystopia such as Nazi Germany or the Kim dynasty’s North Korea. Pursuing personal contentment by following the egregious social conventions that prevail in those nightmare worlds would compel you to violate universal moral standards. You might have to join the Nazi party, cheer on genocide, or please a tyrannical dictator.

You could train yourself to overlook the wrongness of that society as a whole, to enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of your labor. But again, that would be only a psychological or a sociological achievement, a matter of causality that would have no moral implications as such. Applying moral standards vitiates not just those achievements or that “upstanding” individual’s life, but the appalling society that’s dehumanized its population.

But what of the free societies that even orient their political constitutions around the right to pursue happiness? As flawed as they may be, they’re hardly the most abominable places that could be established. Any conflict between morality and the society’s governing norms, however, threatens to taint the successes that are obtained under those conditions.

This is why the American’s boasts about the greatness of her society ring hollow, when we reflect on the atrocities committed by Americans throughout their history, including the genocide of Native Americans; the enslavement of an African workforce; the financial and military support for dictators around the world who crushed their citizens’ democratic aspirations; and the leadership in the capitalistic despoliation of the earth.

To be sure, the Enlightenment principles of rationality and liberty have empowered the United States. But you begin to fabricate a mere evasive sales pitch when you equate superpower status with moral excellence; just because a country is powerful enough to enable its citizens to do what they please doesn’t mean those citizens are blameless according to universal (trans-American), moral, spiritual or existential ideals.

This isn’t to say no one deserves to be happy in a liberal society. But any such comfort must almost be accidental to overcome the paradox. If our society expects us to excel in profane terms and to ignore or trample our higher ideals, so that the most successful persons even in these “enlightened” parts of the world are disproportionately sociopathic, our creature comforts ought to repulse us.

Imagine a saintly character that would languish in any realistic social arrangement, assuming she’s left to her devices. She wouldn’t sell out, wouldn’t buckle under offensive social expectations, wouldn’t intentionally degrade herself, shirk her ethical responsibilities, or surrender her intellectual integrity. Now suppose she wins the lottery or otherwise comes by success by a stroke of luck. Perhaps she’s born with prized genes so that she can model for a living or she has artistic talent or brilliant scientific insights that usher her to the front of the line.

At best, such a person would be happy in spite of her inner identity and her life’s major choices. She’s condemned to marginalize herself, because her ideals lead her to stand in opposition to the grotesque norms that prevail in any civilized setting, especially in the most powerful stations and the failed states. She can’t make herself happy under those conditions, but in rare, random occasions the world might please her. Once again, though, no natural event as such is morally praiseworthy. A saint could be exactly as proud of her pleasures and successes as a lottery-winner who wins but doesn’t earn the fortune.