The United States Declaration of Independence mentions three inalienable rights. "Life" and "liberty" seem fairly intuitive, but “the pursuit of happiness” seems a bit more vague and subjective.
In reality, it refers to a specific way of being described by Aristotle around 350 BC and painstakingly developed by many others over the 2,000 years that followed. It gives rise to a particular meaning of “life” and “liberty” and is the end goal behind both the Declaration and the Constitution. It insists on a particular view of morality, government, economics, and society unfamiliar to many Americans. Our departure from that view explains much of the turmoil facing our nation today. Increasingly we are a people with a morality (software) incompatible with the structures (hardware) our nation was founded on.
In this essay, I explore the lost meaning of “the pursuit of happiness.”
Text version available at https://www.culturestack.online/post/pursuit-of-happiness

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