Have Americans overdone their pursuit of happiness
for
themselves at the expense of all else? Essayist Umberto
Eco offers his
thoughts.
What the U.S. Declaration of Independence Should Have Said (La Repubblica, Italy)
"Sometimes I wonder if many of the problems that plague us
- I refer to the crisis of values, the surrender to the seductions of advertising,
the craving to be on TV, the loss of historic and individual memory, in brief,
all the things we often complain about in columns like this, are due to the
unfortunate wording of the July 4th, 1776 American Declaration of Independence.
... which established that 'all men are endowed with the Right of Life, Liberty
and the Pursuit of Happiness.' ... The fact is that happiness, like complete
fullness, or the feeling of walking on air, is transient,
episodic, and short lived."
Sometimes
I wonder if many of the problems that plague us - I refer to the crisis of
values, the surrender to the seductions of advertising, the craving to be on TV,
the loss of historic and individual memory, in brief, all the things we often
complain about in columns like this, are due to the unfortunate wording of the July
4th, 1776 American Declaration of Independence, in which, with a Masonic faith
in the “magnificent
and progressive fate of the human race,” it was established that “all men
are endowed with the Right
of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
It
is often said that this was the first founding state law to include a right to happiness
rather than a duty to obedience or other grave imposition, and at first glance,
this really was a revolutionary statement. Yet for semiotic reasons,
I dare say, it has led to some ambiguities.
The
literature on happiness is immense, starting with Epicurus, and perhaps before,
but in the interests of common sense it seems to me that none of us can say
what happiness actually is. If it is
meant to be a permanent state, or the idea that a person is happy their entire
life, without doubts, grief, or crisis, such a life would appear to correspond
to that of an idiot, or at best a character living isolated from the world and
without aspirations beyond living without shock or disturbance - Baucis
and Philemon come into my mind. Yet even they, poetry aside, likely had a
few moments of anxiety, or if nothing else, at least a flu or a toothache.
The
fact is that happiness, like complete fullness, or I would like to say, like
the feeling of walking on air, is transient, episodic, and short lived. This is
the joy of a child’s birth, for when a beloved reveals he or she loves us in
return, or perhaps the excitement of winning the lottery or achieving a goal (an
Oscar, a cup, or a championship), or even a moment during a trip to the
countryside. These are all momentary experiences, after which moments of fear
and trembling, grief, anguish, or at the very least, worries, take the upper
hand.
Furthermore,
the idea of happiness always makes us think of our personal happiness, and rarely
that of the human race, and indeed, we are led to worry very little about the
happiness of others since we are so busy pursuing our own. Even when the
happiness of love corresponds to the unhappiness of the rejected, we care very
little about it, satisfied as we are by our own conquest.
This
idea of happiness pervades the world of advertising and consumption, where
every proposition looks like a call to a happy life: an anti-wrinkle cream, a detergent
for impeccably-clean laundry, a couch at half-price, a fine liquor to drink
after the storm, canned meat around which is gathered a happy family, a nice,
inexpensive car, or a tampon that allows you to enter an elevator without
worrying about the noses of people around you.
Posted By
Worldmeets.US
Rarely
do we think of happiness when voting or sending a child to school, but only
when buying things that are unnecessary, thinking that in this way, we have fulfilled
our right to the pursuit of happiness.
When
is the contrary the case - since we aren't heartless beasts, and we concern
ourselves with the happiness of others? We do when mass media shows us the misery
of starving Black children dying of hunger and devoured by flies, people
suffering from incurable diseases, or communities devastated by a tsunami. In such
cases, we are even willing to make a contribution, and in the best cases, give
the five
per thousand [a way Italians donate to non-profit organizations on their
tax returns].
The
Declaration of Independence should have said that all men have the right and duty
to reduce the amount of misery in the world, including of course our own. This
way, many Americans would have understood not to object to medical care for all,
which they oppose based on the bizarre idea that this harms their personal
right to individual fiscal happiness.
*Umberto Ecois
a semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary
critic, and novelist best known for his 1980 historical mystery novel Il nomedellarosa
(The Name of the Rose), an mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical
analysis, medieval studies and literary theory.
