Over the course of human history, what civilization or society produced the greatest amount of happiness?\u00a0 Now this is a hard thing to define.\u00a0 What do I mean by \u201cgreatest amount of happiness?\u201d\u00a0 Do I mean that the highest number or proportion of inhabitants were happy?\u00a0 Or would it qualify if some subset was incredibly happy while the rest of them were miserable?\u00a0 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?\u00a0 Could slave owning societies be happy if they treated their human chattel humanely.\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n
So, let\u2019s start with forms of government.\u00a0 If we follow Aristotle, there are three main forms of government; monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.\u00a0 Of course, every variation on these three classes have occurred over time but I think it\u2019s fair to say that there has never been a form of government that over the very long term produced a stable happy society.\u00a0 Instead, it seems that each type can have a \u201cgolden age\u201d that eventually degenerates into a miserable failed version of itself.\u00a0 So, a good king or emperor is followed by a monstrous tyrant (possibly his son).\u00a0 Aristocracies can decay into greedy oligarchies that suck the wealth out of a society and turn their fellow citizens into serfs.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So, it does not seem that we have discovered a form of government that inevitably leads to happiness.<\/p>\n
But maybe there is a condition in society that does contribute to greater happiness in a people.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I hesitate to give it an old name.\u00a0 It can be called religion, morality, law or even philosophy.\u00a0 What it amounts to is a way to direct the way humans interact with each other and the universe around them.\u00a0 It might even be called science or knowledge nowadays.\u00a0 Because sociology tries to turn human relations into science.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And by the same token if they weren\u2019t, then no constitution would be able to keep them well governed.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 In some sense they would have to be one family (or tribe).\u00a0 But does that mean that any empire or mega-state like the United States cannot expect a happy polity?\u00a0 Well, I think this is actually the truth.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And soon it may be hotting up.\u00a0 So maybe we are seeing an unavoidable consequence of trying to force people who believe in different things to live together.<\/p>\n
It seems to me we will have to figure out a way to give each other space.\u00a0 What occurs to me is some changes to the constitution to give the states more power and the federal government less.\u00a0 This would allow the different states to diverge toward the practices they favor without the constant battle to control the behavior of the \u201cother side.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how do we get there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the course of human history, what civilization or society produced the greatest amount of happiness?\u00a0 Now this is a hard thing to define.\u00a0 What<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263],"tags":[5207,5208],"class_list":["post-36872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-human-happiness","tag-successful-states"],"yoast_head":"\n