Meg Mott is a professor emerita and former town moderator. She will be speaking on the Pursuit of Happiness at 6:30 on Thursday, March 19 at the Putney Public Library. Information: putneylibrary.org/events/.
PUTNEY-When Americans consider the famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence we rarely get past first base.
“We hold these truths” guides us through equality and unalienable rights, and then we land on “the pursuit of Happiness” as if we’d scored the necessary points.
But the sentence keeps going.
To secure these rights, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers” through our consent. We are willing to be governed because we see that the government is good.
But even that is not the end of the sentence. The entire thing takes us through a restorative process: from order to disorder and from disorder to reorder. It’s important to know that entire progression. If we can recite the sentence in its entirety, we may not fear the current disorder.
Disorder appears as a fundamental right. Should the people determine that the government has become destructive of our liberties, it is “the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”
This is an old story, one that goes back thousands of years. Just as the original tablets were destroyed, just as a god was crucified, just as the King was challenged at the Battle of Lexington, old forms can’t always contain the energy of the times.
Disorder is the necessary consequence of superfluous moments. When rage and indignation spill over, the government loses its legitimacy, and orderly politics gives way to violence.
* * *
This stage is truly spooky. Destroyed tablets and crucifixions are not for the faint of heart. To find ourselves in a disordered world tends to bring out the worst in us.
Without the comfort of the established order, we tend to forgo concerns about our neighbors or even following our inner compass. Instead of maintaining our composure and staying curious, we want control at any cost.
Under the conditions of chaos, we may even give up on our principles, such as equality and liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Fear has a way of making us crazy.
Luckily, the sentence does not end with the right to rebellion. There is one more section to cram into the cranium.
Having abolished one government, we must now start anew, building a new government. Unlike the first government that was described in the passive voice (“Governments are instituted”), this re-created government is a most active affair.
The People must lay “its foundation on such principles and organiz[e] its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
In other words, we have to work together to put together a new government. We have to work with our neighbors.
* * *
Luckily, we have some sense of the principles: liberty, equality, and the Pursuit of Happiness (more on that later). And we’ve got some political theory to help us with the forms: mixed government, checks and balances, federalism, and the rule of law.
But the key element is our ability to design this new government through a deliberative process that leads to a most likely outcome, not a sure thing. The process of re-ordering is curious, open to different perspectives. It’s as loud as a pine tree in November seeded with starlings.
At the time of the founding, to pursue happiness was to work on one’s character through daily self-examination. “Without Virtue,” wrote Benjamin Franklin, “Man can have no Happiness in this World.” A happy man, wrote Thomas Jefferson, is someone “who is at peace with himself.”
These founders were avid fans of Cicero and other thinkers who promoted virtue as the condition of freedom. Only an aggregate of self-governing persons could become a self-governing nation.
State constitutions specify certain virtues. Vermont promotes a frequent recurrence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality. New Hampshire promotes the principles of industry, economy, honesty, sincerity, sobriety, and other “generous sentiments.”
To know civics was much more than knowing the mechanics of government. The central lesson of civics was to know yourself through a set of virtues.
This self-awareness is crucial for the re-ordering of our nation. It is much easier to be curious about your political opponents when you know that at the end of the day, you’ll need to account for your sincerity.
It’s much easier to think about public spending when you meditated on frugality that morning. And it’s much easier to consider the needs of your neighbors when generosity is a constant companion.
When citizens pursue their happiness through daily self-reflection, they are more likely to build a better government from the ruins of the old one.
* * *
Like all things natural, the United States is going through one of its cycles where the old is being destroyed by the new energies of the moment. We won’t stumble upon a perfectly ordered kingdom; we have to build this new government together.
Virtue and self-examination were the keystones of the first phase, and they will be necessary for this third phase. Luckily, we have the capacities, those unalienable rights, to re-order our nation in such a way that seems more likely to bring us all a more spiritual happiness.
But for us to take this on, we need to know more than the first segment of this famous sentence. The disorder of the second segment will be less disruptive when we know where we’re headed next.
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