The pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of evil

Since America’s inception, the pursuit of happiness has been considered one of the essential human rights owed to our citizens, and has lately been used to defend the “rights” of people traditionally on morality’s bad side: advocates of sexual revolutions, easy divorces, gay marriage, abortion, and even Satanism.  But just as almost everything our forefathers said has been redefined and misconstrued due to a lack of either morality or intelligence (as gun rights are definitely not for hunting), so has the pursuit of happiness been turned into a mockery of what it should be.  The reader should note that this can only happen if you don’t understand how happiness works.  As such, let us consider three points.

First, thinkers must understand that all evils are relational, either being between the offender and a person or between an offender and God.  It is conceptually impossible to commit an evil when you’re the only person in existence.

Second, all people in all portions of the globe pursue happiness, but both where they look and how they look determine whether happiness results, and even the happiness of those around them. Obviously, some pursuits are noble and others aren’t, with some leading to considerably more unhappiness as a result of immoral pleasure-seeking.  A man who seeks happiness through financial stability may either work hard or con people.  A person who seeks to maintain power can either persuade the masses with his good policies or by chopping heads off in the public square.  And most of us–excluding actual sociopaths with mental disabilities or the perverse–recognize the difference between proper and improper methods of pursuit.

Third, there is no evil committed in the entire universe that is not predicated upon someone believing that they will make themselves happier–in some way, shape, for form–by engaging in evil.  In short, the pursuit of happiness can be translated as “the pursuit of evil” if not pursued within a strict realm of concise, understood, and objective morality.  After all, if there’s no objective standard by which to regard a person’s behavior as good or evil, and we all have a right to pursue happiness, then there’s no philosophical case for defending the innocent from Ted Bundy.

And this is one of the reasons that God is important.  Without a moral code existing beyond the realm of temporal and constant change, a moral code simply can’t exist.  Even Godless (modern?) utilitarian moral codes–which equate the moral status of a behavior with the amount of happiness produced–can’t technically consider the pursuit of happiness to be a legitimate right because there are so many different opinions about what happiness is, or whose happiness is more important than others’ (1).   This ultimately results in the destruction of the code’s egalitarian nature, which it and other reprehensible ideas require for mass acceptance.

With this kind of thinking, it’s difficult to even differentiate between a murderer and a policeman, considering that a policeman may kill a lawbreaker who had an extensive family and many social connections who loved him.  Also with this incredibly popular code, it is nearly impossible to differentiate between a terrorist and a freedom fighter (sound familiar?), a torturer and a defender of the public, a war criminal and a liberator, or a liar and a protector of civil rights (4)(5)(3).  Utilitarian morality also gives immense emotional appeal to communism and other forms of wealth redistribution, since it could be argued that the masses of poor need to confiscate the wealth of the rich to pay their medical bills or send their kids to college.  When macrosocial outcomes are involved, this kind of morality becomes imprecise and leads to confusion, leaving almost no standards available other than opinions.

Adding even more problems to our “modern” interpretation of the pursuit of happiness, when God is removed from the realm of existence (or believed to be removed, rather), the cornucopia of “non-relational sins” –meaning, those sins such as lust or envy–are completely permissible, since no second person is perceived to be involved, and thus no offense perceived to be made. But without considering these “non-relational” sins to be moral trespasses, humans are given a green-light to stew in their sinful thoughts, increasing the likelihood that they will engage in evil behavior in the future. After all, a man can’t pursue an evil without having meditated on it first, just like you can’t open the fridge door and grab a glass of milk without having imagined doing so beforehand; and a man filled with lusts will be controlled by his lusts, one way or another.  For this reason a man is defiled by what comes out of him: because what comes out of a man indicates what’s inside a man. 

And this is why you can expect people to become mastered by their own lusts when they refuse to recognize God’s presence.  The pursuit of emotional comfort–the entrapment of the human soul within the boundaries of chemical existence–takes supremacy over all.  We become slaves to our very selves, allowing all kinds of abominations to flow from within us.  No wonder our banking system is full of thieves.  No wonder our fathers have abandoned their families for other women.  No wonder our mothers have left their children to the government.  No wonder our churches have stood by and watched every abomination creep within holy walls in the name of tolerance.  No wonder our families are pumped full of unnecessary medications for the profit of others, and our children are drugged.  No wonder those taking public moral stances are now considered immoral and persecuted(2).

With God in the picture, all sins—whether internal or acted upon—represent a fall from grace, and require confession and reform.  As such, we are not all the same because we “desire the same things,” no matter how many times people will tell you that we are.  How we react to those desires indicates where our heart is: in the Spirit or with the Devil. 

As a side note, this is why “understanding” as a cure for the world’s problems is a self-defeating and pernicious lie. Not only do most of the world’s problems come from people seeking happiness in the wrong places and the wrong way, but people almost always rationalize their behavior according to the same moral code God gave us in the first place, and to the same ideals we were meant to yearn for (justice, anyone?). When a person does something wrong, they tend to validate their wrongdoing with another right, therefore showing “understanding” to be nothing more than a lack of desire to embrace the morality which we all consciously embrace.  Where is utilitarian morality then?  

Therefore, wisdom and universally righteous direction–the acceptable pathways for achieving the desires within us (and coming from God himself)–provide the only legitimate solutions to the desires we have, though the desires we have for happiness and perfection are an indication that we recognize good and that it ultimately has a place within each of us.  In short, happiness is a highly desired byproduct of living the way you were intended to live, never a goal in itself.

When we get that right, then the pursuit of happiness will be a legitimate thing to promote.  Until then, expect more confusion, unhappiness, and social decay.

1) Utilitarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

2)  Mormons stole our rights

http://www.mormonsstoleourrights.com/

3) Michael Moore, hero of the left

http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/

4) Dick Cheney, the war criminal

http://www.democrats.com/dick-cheney-is-a-war-criminal

5) George Bush, the war criminal

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-wallechinsky/is-george-bush-guilty-of-_b_26669.html

This entry was posted on 26. April 2009 at 17:34 and is filed under philosophy, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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