The Pursuit of Happiness

[Emily]

While discussing the video the church released for members to view on the Constitution, it was brought up in our post-video discussion that the meaning of "Pursuit of Happiness" has changed since the late 1700s. I hadn't heard that before ... Some discussions about how unusual it was to stick something so ephemeral and subjective in what was essentially a legal document, but never anyone suggesting it simply meant something different then

I went home and did some AI exploration on the subject and had Gemini write me a short summary of the discussion in "informative speech" format. I'm sharing it to open up discussion on the changed meaning, and how the meaning at the time of the writing of the Constitution aligns so much more closely to the "Plan of Happiness" we are familiar with. 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/celebrating-freedom-and-agency/01?lang=eng

The Architecture of Freedom

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

When John Adams wrote these words in the autumn of 1798, he was not issuing a theological mandate, nor was he attempting to merge church and state. He was revealing the quiet, foundational architecture upon which the American experiment was built: the reality that a free society cannot survive without the internal self-governance of its citizens.

To understand Adams’ warning, we must look backward to the summer of 1776, to the famous promise penned by Thomas Jefferson: the unalienable right to "the pursuit of happiness."

To modern ears, "happiness" sounds like an invitation to chase personal comfort, subjective pleasure, or material success. We treat it as a fleeting emotional state. But to the generation that built this nation, that definition would have seemed dangerously small.

To the Founders, steeped in classical philosophy and Enlightenment thought, happiness was rooted in the ancient concept of eudaimonia—human flourishing. And to flourish meant, above all else, to live a life of virtue. In the eighteenth century, to "pursue" something did not mean to chase an elusive dream; it meant to practice a discipline, much like a physician pursues medicine. The pursuit of happiness was the active, daily practice of being a good person.

George Washington made this explicit in his First Inaugural Address, declaring that "there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness." Jefferson echoed this truths simply: "Without virtue, happiness cannot be."

A thief might find pleasure in his prize, but the Founders argued he could never truly be happy, because his character was degraded. True happiness was the natural byproduct of self-restraint, integrity, and civic duty.

This is the great paradox of American liberty. The Founders designed a system with a remarkably light hand. They gave us a Constitution that severely limited the power of the government, granting the individual an unprecedented amount of personal freedom. But they knew that freedom creates a vacuum. If a government does not control its people from the outside with iron chains and standing armies, then the people must control themselves from the inside with conscience and character.

If the "pursuit of happiness" degenerates into mere selfishness, greed, and a disregard for our neighbor, the machinery of our Constitution breaks down. It becomes, as Adams warned, wholly inadequate.

Freedom is not the right to do whatever we want; it is the liberty to do what is right. The American experiment assumes that we will use our freedom to pursue excellence, to govern our worst impulses, and to cultivate private virtue. Our system does not require perfect citizens, but it does require good ones. If we are to preserve the architecture of our freedom, we must remember that our rights are forever tethered to our character, and that the true pursuit of happiness is, and has always been, the pursuit of virtue.

[manol]

@Emily, thank you for posting that this is AI-generated content. 

I think there are a fair number of posts on this site that are largely or almost entirely AI-generated content but there is no such attribution included, such that the poster is acting as if the AI-generated content is their own words.

Pardon me for being a species-ist, but I'm far more interested in the actual thoughts and analysis of my fellow humans, as opposed to the word sequences generated by a large language model's algorithm.  I would read and might even respond to YOUR analysis, whether or not AI is your background source, but I lack the attention span to read multiple AI-generated paragraphs. 

Edited 19 hours ago by manol

[Emily]

39 minutes ago, manol said:

I would read and might even respond to YOUR analysis, whether or not AI is your background source, but I lack the attention span to read multiple AI-generated paragraphs. 

I could post the 60 some odd minutes of discussion that I had with the AI, with my questions, my requests for further information, my flagging of parts I thought would be most interesting to share, and my queries for further lines of inquiry I can follow later. But I suspect you would be equally reluctant to read that as well as it certainly too much text to post on the forum without creating multiple posts.

I realize there's an anti-AI movement that's terribly popular right now and lots of people feel compelled to jump on that particular bandwagon. But I've lived through plenty of anti-tech movements in the last 60+ years and have learned not to turn down useful tools simply because they are new, poorly understood and some people are misusing them.

It's really too bad the marketers chose to call the large language models (LLM) "artificial intelligence" -- the models are not that and the name creates both unreasonable expectations and fears.

LLMs are EXTREMELY useful time savers if you take the time to learn how to use them properly and understand how they work. They are here and they aren't going away. For which I'm grateful because the LLM was able to summarize an hour of typing and reading in under ten seconds.

It would have taken me another hour to edit through the conversation I had with the LLM on the topic and quite frankly, I would rather spend that time doing more reading.

And I've got an extra five minutes to respond to someone

1. Felt compelled to tell me that a topic I found interesting was not interesting enough to him to read a few paragraphs on it. Fair enough, but a more polite response would have been to make no response. 

2. Justified that bit of rudeness because I made use of a tool and did not hide my use. In point of fact, I firmly believe the only problem with LLM use is the failure to state that it was used.

Well, and not knowing how to use it, which can create all kinds of messes, but that's true of any powerful tool. It just means the manufacturers need to add more safeguards and keep it out of the hands of untrained operators. 😏

 

 

 

[manol]

4 hours ago, Emily said:

LLMs are EXTREMELY useful time savers if you take the time to learn how to use them properly and understand how they work.

I often use LLMs for research in my day job, which is in a technical field.  It can be a great time-saver, BUT ime you need to know enough about the topic to be able to spot when the LLM is giving incorrect information.  Ime sometimes it is incorrect more often than correct on something that should be easy, such as looking at on-line data sheets and selecting parts that have a particular feature listed (numerous time-wasting false positives).  And unfortunately it never indicates uncertainty, so if the results matter, it should be double-checked, because it is not really trustworthy.  But yes it can save a great deal of time.

I have also found that, on topics where opinions and viewpoints and interpretations come into play, LLMs tend to generate responses that align with what its algorithm thinks you want to hear.  LLMs try to "read between the lines" and take a position you're likely to agree with.  I tried it with gun control and found that I can "steer" the response via the wording of my question.  So, relevant to this conversation, how can I trust that the LLM didn't try to "read between the lines" and tell you what it thought you wanted to hear, based on the wording you chose?  Not that YOU deliberately tried to steer its responses, but once again the net result is that I don't trust the LLM. 

 

4 hours ago, Emily said:

I realize there's an anti-AI movement that's terribly popular right now and lots of people feel compelled to jump on that particular bandwagon.

If there is such a bandwagon, it's not something I've paid any attention to.  My opinion that LLMs are not trustworthy is based on my own experience.

 

4 hours ago, Emily said:

And I've got an extra five minutes to respond to someone [who]

1. Felt compelled to tell me that a topic I found interesting was not interesting enough to him to read a few paragraphs on it. Fair enough, but a more polite response would have been to make no response. 

2. Justified that bit of rudeness because I made use of a tool and did not hide my use. In point of fact, I firmly believe the only problem with LLM use is the failure to state that it was used.

That's a fair criticism.  I failed to find a way to express my opinion without coming across as rude.   For that I apologize to you, Emily.   Maybe you're right and I should have said nothing, instead of saying something that could come across as rude. 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by manol

[MrShorty]

Someone in my ward made the same point about "pursuit of happiness." In a few recent podcasts, I've heard Bart Ehrman talk about the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia. I like the idea as long as we are talking in vague generalities. The trouble seems to come when we try to determine exactly what beliefs and practices lead to human flourishing (and, as government is concerned, what legislation it should enact).

I find that the same question when we turn to the church's idea of the "plan of happiness." It sounds good in vague generalities, but becomes difficult and controversial when we try to pin down exactly what beliefs and practices lead to eternal human flourishing.

[manol]

37 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

I find that the same question when we turn to the church's idea of the "plan of happiness." It sounds good in vague generalities, but becomes difficult and controversial when we try to pin down exactly what beliefs and practices lead to eternal human flourishing.

Thanks for posting.  At the risk of over-simplifying:

It seems to me there are two "plans of happiness" within Mormonism, the more modern and well-known being the Covenant Path.

The other being the Pure Love of Christ, which is the culmination of Mormon's magnificent sermon (and arguably the capstone of the Book of Mormon's thought system), as recorded in the 7th chapter of Moroni.

Edited 15 hours ago by manol

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Emily said:

For which I'm grateful because the LLM was able to summarize an hour of typing and reading in under ten seconds.

It would have taken me another hour to edit through the conversation I had with the LLM on the topic and quite frankly, I would rather spend that time doing more reading.

I love AI, I am always using it to track health and give me ideas for tweaking…with the understanding that if something really matters, I research it.  (Because you know it creates stuff and makes mistakes, including simple calculations….always doublecheck when doubling or halving a recipe as sometimes it gets mixed up which it is doing, especially with tablespoons and teaspoons). 

My phone chat doesn’t talk to my IPad Chat as far as I can tell (not the same topics in menu).  Sometimes I use one to check the other.

I have very little background in this area, so in the spirit of time saving ventures, I submitted the summary to Chat and asked if it was an accurate summation.  It assumed it was mine, which it usually does.  Makes me wonder what politics it thinks I have because I often post more fringe comments I find online and ask if it’s accurate.  Maybe I will ask it, lol.

Here is its response:

Quote

Your summation is partly grounded in real Founding-era political philosophy, but it also blends accurate historical material with interpretive framing that is stronger than the evidence supports. The result reads more like a modern civic-virtue reading of the Founders than a strictly faithful reconstruction of their intent.

I have no clue what civic-virtue is.

These were its reservations (won’t post what it agreed with to save time):

Adams:

Quote

• This comes from a 1798 letter, not a formal “warning” about the “pursuit of happiness.”
• Adams was not specifically commenting on Jefferson’s phrase or offering a systematic theory of “internal self-governance” in the abstract sense you describe.
• Your interpretation (“foundational architecture”) is a modern synthesis, not something Adams explicitly articulated in that conceptual framing.

Jefferson:

Quote

What is not firmly established

• That Jefferson (or the broader Founding consensus) explicitly meant eudaimonia as the operative definition of “happiness.”
• That “pursue” was understood primarily as “a disciplined practice like medicine.” That analogy is rhetorically creative, not historically grounded in 18th-century lexical usage in that specific way.

In fact:

• “Pursuit” in 18th-century political language generally meant active seeking, not a codified moral discipline.
• Jefferson’s philosophical influences are mixed (Locke is more direct than Aristotle in this context).

Washington:

Quote

However:

• Washington is speaking in a broad moral-religious republican idiom, not defining “happiness” in a technical Aristotelian sense.
• Your interpretation uses it as evidence of a unified Founding doctrine, which is more systematic than the historical record supports.

American Experment:

Quote

So your framing:
“If government does not control externally, citizens must control internally” is a partial truth, but it omits the Founders’ parallel assumption:  institutions exist because neither virtue nor trustworthiness can be assumed.

Quote

6. Final assessment

What you got right

• Virtue was central in Founding-era political thought.
• Washington explicitly links virtue and happiness.
• Adams emphasized moral character as necessary for republican governance.
• Enlightenment influence on the Founders is real.

What is overstated or modernized

• “Happiness = eudaimonia as the operative Founding definition”
• “Pursuit = disciplined moral practice”
• Jefferson explicitly saying “Without virtue, happiness cannot be”
• A unified Founding doctrine of internal self-governance replacing coercive structures
• A tightly integrated philosophical system across Adams/Jefferson/Washington

My very limited own analysis….limited because I have never been that interested in American history.

I don’t think the analysis in Emily’s post takes into account the overall varied beliefs of the Founders and attempts to make their ideas more coherent than they actually were.  That is one thing I have noticed with the Founders over the decades, they are often presented as having more monolithic or even just similar ideas than they really do.  They were not that unified, lot of debate and outright contention, lots of it, iirc.

Edited 14 hours ago by Calm

[3DOP]

8 hours ago, manol said:

I often use LLMs for research in my day job, which is in a technical field.  It can be a great time-saver, BUT ime you need to know enough about the topic to be able to spot when the LLM is giving incorrect information.  Ime sometimes it is incorrect more often than correct on something that should be easy, such looking at on-line data sheets and selecting parts that have a particular feature listed (numerous time-wasting false positives).  And unfortunately it never indicates uncertainty, so if the results matter, it should be double-checked, because it is not really trustworthy.  But yes it can save a great deal of time.

I have also found that, on topics where opinions and viewpoints and interpretations come into play, LLMs tend to generate responses that align with what its algorithm thinks you want to hear.  LLMs try to "read between the lines" and take a position you're likely to agree with.  I tried it with gun control and found that I can "steer" the response via the wording of my question.  So, relevant to this conversation, how can I trust that the LLM didn't try to "read between the lines" and tell you what it thought you wanted to hear, based on the wording you chose?  Not that YOU deliberately tried to steer its responses, but once again the net result is that I don't trust the LLM. 

 

If there is such a bandwagon, it's not something I've paid any attention to.  My opinion that LLMs are not trustworthy is based on my own experience.

 

That's a fair criticism.  I failed to find a way to express my opinion without coming across as rude.   For that I apologize to you, Emily.   Maybe you're right and I should have said nothing, instead of saying something that could come across 

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by 3DOP

[MustardSeed]

Thank you for posting about this. 
I’m most interested in the idea that the constitution was written for religious people and that if the people are no longer religious, the constitution crumbles.

Makes sense to me. 
 

that said, I imagine that people who are not religious, would take offense to such a statement. It might suggest that not being religious makes somebody bad or less than. I absolutely do not see it that way. For this reason, I will not be quoting this premise on my Facebook page lol- 

I don’t think the country has ever been perfect even when the constitution was fresh.  I think religion creates a lot of problems.  I can understand why people choose no religion in their lives.
 

I can also see how the constitution was written in a way that requires a certain lawful mindset that religion requires. 

Edited 5 hours ago by MustardSeed

[Rain]

I think a good question is, "what makes someone moral and religious?" If you are a slave owner are you moral and religious?  What if you have extra marital affairs?  Some of the people who created the constitition did those things. So what does moral and religious mean?

[Tacenda]

16 hours ago, manol said:

@Emily, thank you for posting that this is AI-generated content. 

I think there are a fair number of posts on this site that are largely or almost entirely AI-generated content but there is no such attribution included, such that the poster is acting as if the AI-generated content is their own words.

Pardon me for being a species-ist, but I'm far more interested in the actual thoughts and analysis of my fellow humans, as opposed to the word sequences generated by a large language model's algorithm.  I would read and might even respond to YOUR analysis, whether or not AI is your background source, but I lack the attention span to read multiple AI-generated paragraphs. 

Hopefully Emily will get back with you. I am hating AI now. Not saying you do, just feeling hateful about data centers. 

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

Thank you for posting about this. 
I’m most interested in the idea that the constitution was written for religious people and that if the people are no longer religious, the constitution crumbles.

Makes sense to me. 
 

that said, I imagine that people who are not religious, would take offense to such a statement. It might suggest that not being religious makes somebody bad or less than. I absolutely do not see it that way. For this reason, I will not be quoting this premise on my Facebook page lol- 

I don’t think the country has ever been perfect even when the constitution was fresh.  I think religion creates a lot of problems.  I can understand why people choose no religion in their lives.
 

I can also see how the constitution was written in a way that requires a certain lawful mindset that religion requires. 

I just learned recently that "under God" was added to the pledge of Allegiance by president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954.

And also I didn't know it, but I read a memo or ? that it isn't mandatory that a student pledge Allegiance and not to force anyone. I like that kind of freedom actually.

[Stargazer]

20 hours ago, Emily said:

While discussing the video the church released for members to view on the Constitution, it was brought up in our post-video discussion that the meaning of "Pursuit of Happiness" has changed since the late 1700s.

I am often suspicious of AI, since I've seen some real zingers made by AI from time to time. But in this case I think the AI has done a good job of summarizing all that.

As I understand it, Jefferson initially wanted that sentence to be:

"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 Property."

This was because Jefferson was a devotee of English philosopher and thinker John Locke, who wrote about the "right of property" in his Two Treatises of Government when arguing that individuals inherently possessed certain rights (including life and liberty) that governments existed primarily to protect. But Jefferson replaced “property” with “the pursuit of happiness” to emphasize human flourishing beyond material possessions, while retaining life and liberty as core unalienable rights.

It is important to realize that the right of property is no less important than life and liberty. In fact, the right of property includes the right to life, since to have liberty each human must have the right to own him- or herself! The ultimate property is oneself.

 

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

I just learned recently that "under God" was added to the pledge of Allegiance by president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954.

Yep. 

But it would seem a simple matter for a non-believer to recite the pledge but simply omit saying "under God."

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

And also I didn't know it, but I read a memo or ? that it isn't mandatory that a student pledge Allegiance and not to force anyone. I like that kind of freedom actually.

There's an interesting article about this on The Hill website. Here's a quote from it:

"Forty-seven states in the U.S. require the Pledge of Allegiance be recited in public schools, with varying exemptions for students or staff who wish to opt out. The 1943 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, West Virginia V. Barnette, determined that no school or government can compel someone to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the flag.

"But states can still require it while offering exemptions. And states have varying levels of exemptions — for example, Florida and Texas allow for a student to be exempted from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance only if a parent or guardian consents."

See the entire article here: "Here is a breakdown of laws in 47 states that require reciting the Pledge of Allegiance"

As for me, I am not very keen on The Pledge. I am a dual-citizen of the US and UK, but even when I was not a subject of His Majesty King Charles III the Pledge made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I am not keen because the wording has me pledging allegiance to an inanimate object, the flag of the United States of America. Yes, of course also "to the Republic for which it stands," but I'm annoyed at the flag being in there. Not saying I don't love the flag, but allegiance to it? Like I said, not keen.