Over the course of human history, what civilization or society produced the greatest amount of happiness? Now this is a hard thing to define. What do I mean by “greatest amount of happiness?” Do I mean that the highest number or proportion of inhabitants were happy? Or would it qualify if some subset was incredibly happy while the rest of them were miserable? And even if all of a people were happy but they achieved their happiness by immiserating some external human population such as marauding Vikings or rampaging Vandals did, would it qualify? Could slave owning societies be happy if they treated their human chattel humanely. And can we attribute the happiness of a people to their form of government or do we think it has more to do with the innate traits of a particular people?
So, let’s start with forms of government. If we follow Aristotle, there are three main forms of government; monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Of course, every variation on these three classes have occurred over time but I think it’s fair to say that there has never been a form of government that over the very long term produced a stable happy society. Instead, it seems that each type can have a “golden age” that eventually degenerates into a miserable failed version of itself. So, a good king or emperor is followed by a monstrous tyrant (possibly his son). Aristocracies can decay into greedy oligarchies that suck the wealth out of a society and turn their fellow citizens into serfs. And of course, when democracy becomes mob rule, we have plenty of examples of mass murder from ancient Corcyra to the Terror of the French Revolution. So, it does not seem that we have discovered a form of government that inevitably leads to happiness.
But maybe there is a condition in society that does contribute to greater happiness in a people. Now I say this with great trepidation because this principle can be twisted into a weapon that has also caused untold human misery throughout history. I hesitate to give it an old name. It can be called religion, morality, law or even philosophy. What it amounts to is a way to direct the way humans interact with each other and the universe around them. It might even be called science or knowledge nowadays. Because sociology tries to turn human relations into science. It is interesting that the American Founding Fathers thought that in order for their republic to flourish the citizens would have to be religious and therefore virtuous. And by the same token if they weren’t, then no constitution would be able to keep them well governed.
So, maybe the only way to ensure the happiness of a people is for them to believe in the same god or philosophy or code of behavior. In some sense they would have to be one family (or tribe). But does that mean that any empire or mega-state like the United States cannot expect a happy polity? Well, I think this is actually the truth. Over the course of the last hundred years the people of the United States have more and more divided along ideological lines until at this point it is more or less at the point of a cold civil war. And soon it may be hotting up. So maybe we are seeing an unavoidable consequence of trying to force people who believe in different things to live together.
It seems to me we will have to figure out a way to give each other space. What occurs to me is some changes to the constitution to give the states more power and the federal government less. This would allow the different states to diverge toward the practices they favor without the constant battle to control the behavior of the “other side.”
But how do we get there?