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The Pursuit of Happiness

The US Declaration of Independence famously incorporates the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” cribbed by Jefferson from the English philosopher John Locke’s Treatise on Two Governments. An idea with which the Colonials were so taken, it became a fundamental of their new state, and when they were landed with the task of rebuilding Japan after the Second World War, they even got MacArthur to slip it in to the new Japanese Constitution. A neat and tidy claim on a government as to its core duty, to create the conditions wherein these unarguable principles can thrive, from a Somerset-born thinker living in Oxford. Which makes it all the more strange that the pursuit of happiness is not something that the British could be generally accused of.

Let’s start with pursuit. The British love of cynicism immediately draws out the question – if the Yanks actually catch happiness, what would they do with it? The British reserve and national paranoia of any situation elucidating embarrassment steers them well clear of anything with such overtones of frantic movement and desperation. Since the ban on fox-hunting was introduced, it has become clear that even this bastion of the English country gentry was less a pursuit of a small predator and more a general hack about the fields in the hope of blundering into one. No, pursuit is just not the done thing here. The only time you’ll find the word in general use is when it comes to those brief battles between police cars and drugged teenagers in tarted-up micro-hatchbacks, to describe the brief blatt between parked cars before the teenagers park themselves in a tree.

Then there is happiness itself. Unbridled joy, ostentatious exuberance and general showing off about how good your life is – that will never do. In Britain, asking someone if they are happy is a direct challenge for them to argue with you over some decision you’ve already made;

“So, we’re going to sell the house and furniture, and go to live on a canal boat in Norfolk. Happy?”

Stop any Brit in the street and ask how they are, and you’ll get one of two categories of answer. The rarest, thankfully, is a full recent medical history, for which the only appropriate response is to dish out a quick slap. But by far the most common is the general muddling through, can’t complain, mustn’t grumble kind of non-committal comment. The apogee of existence for your average Brit seems to be some kind of universal harmony only dreamt of by Taoist masters; neither up nor down, ahead nor behind. Happiness is some kind of unbalanced state, suggestive of inner mental turmoil. Trust me, walk down Regents St in London with a big happy smile on your face and the expressions coming the other way will suggest that once again Care in the Community has dumped some poor nut-job in a public place.

So where does this leave us? The Americans regard their right to the Pursuit of Happiness so important, they gave themselves the right to Bear Arms to protect it. Here in the land of drizzle and queuing, it seems we are more inclined to wait in ambush for quiet contentment.