A Duty to ACT Happy Even if We Are Unhappy

How did we get to this preposterous point?

It has its origins, supposedly, in the pre-Enlightenment conflict between new scientists such as Galileo and Newton and the Catholic Church. The Church's teachings were deductive. You read the Bible: God created heaven and earth; "Let there be light," and so forth. Top down. If God says it was done that way who are going to believe, God or your lying telescope? (choose carefully). The new method was inferential. We observe. Bottom up. To the charge of heresy the men with the 'scopes defended: "We agree that God made everything; He made us, He made our telescopes. Everything we're seeing God intended us to see." "Hmm". By Church. 

From the stars to imperialism, predatory ("pursuit") capitalism, slavery, and the bed sheets, everything followed:

"God created Man and Woman! He ORDERED us to procreate." (You see where this leads inevitably?)

"He made it PLEASURABLE so that we would OBEY HIS ORDER and want to do it like ALL THE TIME." (Church shifting in its seat.)

"It is a gift from God to humankind." "Arright fine! But you don't have to wear it out!", by Church.

"Use it or lose it!". "We must OBEY God!" 

"It is a (here it comes) GOD-GIVEN RIGHT!"

"Pleasure is a RIGHT and an ORDER from God which we have both RIGHT and DUTY to PURSUE, experience and COMPLY!"

How are you going to argue with that?

So the right and the duty to happiness flow reductio ad absurdum from Galileo to Locke (1689):

Government exists to protect "property: "life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; [A state of repose in which neither pain nor pleasure is experienced.] and the possession of outward things".
 

To slave-owning Jefferson’s Epicureanism,

"the absence of pain and fear constitutes the greatest pleasure"

 

To the Virginia Declaration of Rights (June, 1776):

"That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

 

To the Declaration of Independence (July, 1776):

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men...

(Little backsliding from June to July, 1776.)

 

To the "moral duty" to "pursue happiness" of William Findley (1812). 

 

To the fictional Mr. Turveydrop (1852) who conceived himself possessed of a Right conferred upon him by the godlike Prince Regent, thus a social Duty, "to show himself" about London for the pleasure of on-lookers while living a life of bodily indolence "with the means" of his (worked-to-death wife) and his (worked-to-penury) son (christened "Prince") and daughter-in-law.

 

 

To the (dare we hope) final turn to FAKING happiness of Dennis Prager. Not happy? ACT like you are! (in the interests of others). We have the RIGHT of liberty from bad breath. Ergo, we have the MORAL DUTY (an absence of freedom) to brush our teeth. See?😂