The only legitimate object of good government according to Thomas Jefferson

Warrigal

Warrigal

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Sydney, Australia
This is not intended to be a political discussion. It is about the enhancement of happiness in the population.

A new index of happiness has just been published

The top 25 countries on the scale are
1. Denmark (7.526)
2. Switzerland (7.509)
3. Iceland (7.501)
4. Norway (7.498)
5. Finland (7.413)
6. Canada (7.404)
7. Netherlands (7.339)
8. New Zealand (7.334)
9. Australia (7.313)
10. Sweden (7.291)
11. Israel (7.267)
12. Austria (7.119)
13. United States (7.104)
14. Costa Rica (7.087)
15. Puerto Rico (7.039)
16. Germany (6.994)
17. Brazil (6.952)
18. Belgium (6.929)
19. Ireland (6.907)
20. Luxembourg (6.871)
21. Mexico (6.778)
22. Singapore (6.739)
23. United Kingdom (6.725)
24. Chile (6.705)
25. Panama (6.701)
​

The full report, including how the index is compiled can be found here http://worldhappiness.report/

and the rankings are here Chapter 2: http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/HR-V1Ch2_web.pdf

Chapter 3 of the report deals with Promoting Secular Ethics and I found this chapter very interesting.

Here is a sample

The greatest happiness principle

So, first, what ethical idea based on human need can best fill the moral vacuum left by the decline of religious belief? The answer must surely be the great central idea of the 18th century Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment on which much of modern Western civilisation is based.5 This can be expressed in three propositions.

We should assess human progress by the extent to which people are enjoying their
lives—by the prevalence of happiness and, conversely, the absence of misery.


  1. Therefore, the objective of governments should be to create conditions for the greatest possible happiness and the least possible misery. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “The care of human life and happiness … is the only legitimate object of good government”.6
  2. Likewise the obligation of each of us is to create the greatest amount of human happiness that we can in the world and the least misery. (Overall happiness of course includes our own.)
  3. And in all of this it is more important to reduce unhappiness (or misery) than to increase the happiness of those who are already higher up the scale.7

These three propositions are what may be called the “greatest happiness principle”. It was Proposition 1 which inspired many organisations, like the OECD, the EU and many governments, to reassess their answer to the question: what is progress? And it was Propositions 1 and 2 which have mainly inspired the production of successive World Happiness Reports - our hope has been to display enough of the new science of
happiness to enable policy-makers to make happiness a practical goal of policy.8 But it is
Proposition 3 that we wish to promote in this chapter, because we believe it should be the central principle which inspires those billions worldwide for whom religion no longer provides the answer to how we should live.9

The principle is frequently misunderstood.10 For example, it does not assume that people are only concerned about their own happiness. On the contrary, if people only pursued their own happiness, this would not produce a very happy society. Instead the greatest happiness principle exhorts us to care passionately about the happiness of others. It is only if we do so that true progress (as we have defined it) can occur.
But what is so special about happiness? Why not judge our progress by our wealth or our freedom or our health or education, and not just our happiness? Clearly many things are good. But different goods are often in competition. My spending more on health may mean spending less on education. Or wealth-creation may require some limitations on freedom. So we have to ask why different things are good? And in most cases we can give sensible answers. For example ‘Wealth makes people feel good’ or ‘Ill health makes people feel bad.’ But if we ask why it matters how people feel—why happiness is good—we can give no answer. It is just self-evident. So happiness is revealed as the verarching
good, and other goods obtain their goodness from the fact that they contribute to happiness.

And that is why an “impartial spectator” would judge a state of human affairs by the happiness of the people.11

The greatest happiness principle has a universal appeal. It has the capacity to inspire, by mobilising the benevolent part of every human being.

In the language of Jews, Christians and Muslims, it embodies the commandment to Do as you would be done by, and to Love your neighbour as yourself. In the language of Hinduism and Buddhism, it embodies the principle of compassion—that we should in all our dealings truly wish for the happiness of all of those we can affect, and we should cultivate in ourselves an attitude of unconditional benevolence.12

Is there any prospect that we can achieve such a caring way of life? Many people are skeptical. They believe that human nature is inherently selfish and we should just accept that fact. After all, it is the fittest who survive, and those must be the people who put No 1 first. But this crude form of Darwinism is quite contrary to the modern understanding of human nature and of human evolution, since it is the human instinct
to cooperate which has given humans their extraordinary power over most other vertebrate species.13 The fact is that we have two natures, one selfish and one altruistic, and it is the function of our ethical culture to promote the altruist within us over the egotist.

In this context, an ethical system that favours not only others’ happiness but also our own has a much better chance of being implemented than one that is pure hair-shirt. It is therefore a huge advantage of the greatest happiness principle that it requires self-compassion as well as compassion towards others.
Click to expand...

It raises interesting questions - should ethical codes be concerned with happiness as well as principles of fairness and justice? Can religious morals and ethical principles overlap? Is Jefferson onto something when he says that The care of human life and happiness … is the only legitimate object of good government" ?

What do you think?

PS Ralphy - this serious topic is in the general section rather than Speakers' Corner. Please wait awhile before sending it off the rails.

 

Regarding #2 in the propositions -- that is how I was raised, more or less. Basically the idea that you were to try to be nice and pleasant to everyone, and they would be nice and pleasant to you. I think it worked better years ago; now, more and more I seem to meet people who either don't believe in being nice to anyone at all or else believe that if someone is nice to them it is only an attempt at manipulation. It's like they think that if you are nice to them you are only putting on an act to get something out of them.

It interests me that the writer mentions "the moral vacuum left by the decline of religious belief." I am not aware of any decline in religious belief in the world. In fact I think half the troubles of the world today are the fanatical religious beliefs of some people. I see no decline there, and I almost wish there was one!

I was going to respond by saying, How can anyone be happy without faith (what some call "religious belief.") But it depends on which religion. If one's religious belief drives them to destroy other people, want to wipe out entire cultures, there is no happiness in that. (Understatement of the year!)

So, back to the list of happy countries, if I move to Canada will I be happy? I speak the language! (Well, one fluently, I speak a bit of the other as well.)
 
I am a Canuck, Guitarist. Canada is far from perfect, but we are by and large, an easygoing, courteous people. I think you might be happy here. Given what you have written about your approach to life, we would be happy to have you.
 

I'm perfectly happy in Scotland. Ok, I do escape the dark, cold, rainy, windy winters.... They should rate all the countries in the UK separately.
 
The top seven are known to be colder countries.......I wonder what the correlation is between being happy and living in a colder climate ?
 
If you dig into these ratings, you usually end up wondering where on earth do they get their priorities. They never agree with mine.
 
Warrigal said:
This is not intended to be a political discussion. It is about the enhancement of happiness in the population.

A new index of happiness has just been published

The top 25 countries on the scale are
1. Denmark (7.526)
2. Switzerland (7.509)
3. Iceland (7.501)
4. Norway (7.498)
5. Finland (7.413)
6. Canada (7.404)
7. Netherlands (7.339)
8. New Zealand (7.334)
9. Australia (7.313)
10. Sweden (7.291)
11. Israel (7.267)
12. Austria (7.119)
13. United States (7.104)
14. Costa Rica (7.087)
15. Puerto Rico (7.039)
16. Germany (6.994)
17. Brazil (6.952)
18. Belgium (6.929)
19. Ireland (6.907)
20. Luxembourg (6.871)
21. Mexico (6.778)
22. Singapore (6.739)
23. United Kingdom (6.725)
24. Chile (6.705)
25. Panama (6.701)
​

The full report, including how the index is compiled can be found here http://worldhappiness.report/

and the rankings are here Chapter 2: http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/HR-V1Ch2_web.pdf

Chapter 3 of the report deals with Promoting Secular Ethics and I found this chapter very interesting.

Here is a sample



It raises interesting questions - should ethical codes be concerned with happiness as well as principles of fairness and justice? Can religious morals and ethical principles overlap? Is Jefferson onto something when he says that The care of human life and happiness … is the only legitimate object of good government" ?

What do you think?

PS Ralphy - this serious topic is in the general section rather than Speakers' Corner. Please wait awhile before sending it off the rails.

Click to expand...

I think there are so many factors behind 'happy'.

Economy
Health
Employment

When people are taken care of ,there is less stress.

I have to look into it but I think some of the top countries ,their economy is so much better than the rest.that's a major factor.

Health,when there is a security blanket and everyone has equal oportunity to health care,another less thing to stress about.

Like Shali said,Canada is not perfect but its a good place to live.

Religion,I think is the root of a lot of evil because everyone interprets it their way.

I will read this article again,its worth taking the time to analyze.
 
Warrigal said:
This is not intended to be a political discussion. It is about the enhancement of happiness in the population.

A new index of happiness has just been published

The top 25 countries on the scale are
1. Denmark (7.526)
2. Switzerland (7.509)
3. Iceland (7.501)
4. Norway (7.498)
5. Finland (7.413)
6. Canada (7.404)
7. Netherlands (7.339)
8. New Zealand (7.334)
9. Australia (7.313)
10. Sweden (7.291)
11. Israel (7.267)
12. Austria (7.119)
13. United States (7.104)
14. Costa Rica (7.087)
15. Puerto Rico (7.039)
16. Germany (6.994)
17. Brazil (6.952)
18. Belgium (6.929)
19. Ireland (6.907)
20. Luxembourg (6.871)
21. Mexico (6.778)
22. Singapore (6.739)
23. United Kingdom (6.725)
24. Chile (6.705)
25. Panama (6.701)
​

The full report, including how the index is compiled can be found here http://worldhappiness.report/

and the rankings are here Chapter 2: http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/HR-V1Ch2_web.pdf

Chapter 3 of the report deals with Promoting Secular Ethics and I found this chapter very interesting.

Here is a sample



It raises interesting questions - should ethical codes be concerned with happiness as well as principles of fairness and justice? Can religious morals and ethical principles overlap? Is Jefferson onto something when he says that The care of human life and happiness … is the only legitimate object of good government" ?

What do you think?

PS Ralphy - this serious topic is in the general section rather than Speakers' Corner. Please wait awhile before sending it off the rails.

Click to expand...

I found the article very interesting and it reminded me of my 1st year in college. I took a course that was titled "Simulated Society". I took a couple of days to read the rules and decided I could end up running the whole show. We were divided into groups. All of the groups except one could provide goods and/or services in order to make a living. And we had to form a government in order to make decisions that would have an effect on the society as a whole. Every group but one was a functional whole except the one, who only received just enough money to survive.

I convinced my group to pool its money and purchase what were called "Luxury Living Endowments". Once an individual had one of these they no longer needed to work in order to have all they needed. As the game progressed I convinced all the other groups to buy luxury living endowments and eventually we purchased luxury living for the group who had nothing except bare subsistence. I thought we had pretty much solved the game. But the group who did not ever have a say in the process of the game was always complaining about things even after we provided them all a luxury living endowment. They simply wanted more say in the society.

Our instructor stopped the game at this point. He explained that the game was really about the isolated group. He pointed out the prediction of the game, that he kept from us, that the isolated group would always be unhappy until their ideas and complaints were considered by the group. Isn't this a reflection of the society we live in?

What groups are the most unhappy? They are minorities, women, blacks, hispanics, Native Americans, Muslims, gays, etc. Aren't republicans attempting to block minorities from voting? Aren't these groups the ones who have to fight the most just to get their voices heard. Wasn't it Trump's constituents, the unheard minority of whites who felt they were being left out of the conversation however biased their opinions were? Our population has become more and more fractionalized. It seems that none of our population feels satisfied that they are, at least, being heard. People can understand the conditions we are living in. What they cannot understand is that they are not receiving equal treatment, that their complaints fall on deaf ears.

Make us happy? Perhaps we should just concentrate on what makes us unhappy and fix that first. If they would just hear us.
 

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