The Pursuit of Happiness

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Such was one of the great call to arms, a true raison d’être, of so many revolutionaries during the 18th century.

Yet we now live in a vastly different world. Although the core struggle for revolutionaries is still resistance against tryanny and oppression, the terrible two are recognised as being explicit in almost every aspect of our lives. Primarily we see a great inequality in society, the sort of inequality which the slave-owning revolutionaries of the colonies too often seemed blind to. It was the chauvinism of the north-western hemisphere which allowed them to determine freedom as being their own right to make money and exploit the New World, rather than freedom for all of humanity. I would argue that this is a narrow-minded tradition carried on from the Ancient Greeks - the so-called founders of democracy and philosophy. It is a Western tradition which is, basically, racist. We created ‘democracy’, we developed it, freedom is for us.

And yet ‘Happiness’ simply hasn’t arrived for ‘us’ (the westerners). Why? Because we are living stressful lives based on ‘rational’ concepts of time and competition. With the development of capitalism came goal-driven business - you must complete x task in y time. You are in open competition with the hundreds of other wage slaves who also have the same prescribed task, and who are competing with you for the privilege of undertaking it to meet their economic needs and stresses.

I believe that the following video articulates this view quite nicely. It speaks of an evidence base for the critique of individualism, and argues for a socially embedded model of autonomy. The entire video is well worth watching for an insightful and animated (literally) overview of the issue.

“The research is clear. If you want to be a happier person don’t read a self-help book, just have happier friends”.

Finally I’d like to mention one of the models of ‘happiness’ that comes from the Americas. It isn’t the sacred cow of ‘progress’ that we see in North America, but is instead the decolonising ‘buen vivir’ (Spanish translation) that originates from the Andean region of South America. My main source of information on this practice (and it is a practice, not an abstract concept, it is built on Indigenous experience) comes from this Independent article:


“buen vivir is a solid principle which means life in harmony and equilibrium between men and women, between different communities and, above all, between human beings and the natural environment of which they are part.”

For thousands of years these native peoples have carried out their philosophy of ‘live well’. They live sustainably in their environment, their society is built on consensus not social division, and they will always be opposed to the world model of ever-more-exploitative corporations churning up natural resources and defenceless ‘undeveloped’ communities in the name of ‘progress’. It is a praxis which we can learn from, a model which could be drawn from, while we build up alternative cooperative institutions to the State.

So let's forget about the ‘tradition’ of freedom that we supposedly inherit from the Ancient Greeks, the classical model imposed on every corner of the earth. There was a reason why the highly egalitarian contemporaries of Robin Hood were known as the ‘Merry Men’. Oppose the sacred cow of ‘progress’, let the pursuit of happiness truly begin.