The Pursuit of Happiness

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

Yudi Latif

With the fasting month of Ramadhan intersecting with the month of Pancasila, a reflective question is due: What are we truly chasing in our statehood and religiosity? Psychologist William James once said  “How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do”.

A number of thinkers have placed happiness as the noblest of virtues. From Ancient Greece, we have Epicurus who said happiness was the only goal in life. In the late 18^th century, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham defined the noblest of virtues as the greatest happiness of the greatest number. He also concluded that the only valuable goal of establishing states, markets and scientific communities was to improve global happiness.

Surely, there are people who reject these ideas. Some even said these were merely hedonistic and worldly views. However, in recent years, many more have believed them. They became more relevant at a time when the whole world is seemingly filled with hate and conflict. Millions of people suffocate in numbing hollowness and soullessness. The number of people dying by suicide is higher than those dying in wars. The number of people dying in satiety is higher than those drying from hunger. In a dried-up world such as this, “happiness” becomes the ultimate goal of statehood and religiosity in the future.

The perspectives on happiness are not rigid. Thinkers used to think happiness was a personal pursuit. Nowadays, thinkers tend to view happiness as a collective pursuit. Traces of the old paradigm can still be found in the United States’ Declaration of Independence. In 1776, American founding fathers named the pursuit of happiness as one of three inalienable rights along with life and liberty.

However, the Declaration of Independence merely guarantees the right to pursue happiness, not the right of happiness itself. In this sense, the declaration does not mandate the state to ensure citizens’ happiness. The right to pursue happiness is aimed to limit state power, by reserving a private space for personal choices deemed to boost one’s happiness (Harari, 2016).

The more modern paradigm is represented in the Preamble of Indonesia’s 1945 Constitution. The vision and mission statements of the Republic of Indonesia as stipulated in the second and fourth paragraphs clearly positions happiness as a collective undertaking. The vision is to establish a state of Indonesia that is “independent, united, sovereign, just and prosperous”. Meanwhile, the mission is to protect all the people of Indonesia and all the independence and the land that has been struggled for, to improve public welfare, to educate the life of the people and to participate toward the establishment of a world order based on freedom, perpetual peace and social justice.

The vision and mission of achieving collective happiness can be used to measure success in development. In the 20^th century, gross domestic product (GDP) was often used to measure success. In recent developments, many have proposed to replace GDP with GDH, or gross domestic happiness, as measurement of successful development. Moreover, if we observe what has been dubbed the Happiness Index, its variables are in line with the mission to achieve collective happiness as stipulated in the fourth paragraph of the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution.

The main key to achieve happiness is not in the fulfillment of desires to hold power but instead in the ability to provide and achieve meaning in life. The greatest happiness can be achieved when we can extend beyond ourselves and be connected to the reality of our diversity in order to share our prosperity with others and help one another in fostering noble values of public civility that provide meaning to our life as a community.

A life larger than our own is a life interconnected in a triadic relation. In the cosmology of North Sumatra’s Batak Toba people and the Bugis-Makassar ancient epic “I La Galigo”, the triadic relation seeks to build harmony between the Upper World (of the Creator), the Mid-World (of humans) and the Lower World (of the nature). In the Sundanese “Tritangtu” (three certainties) worldview, this triadic relation is developed in the framework of Aji Luhung (the might of God), Aji Komara (the interconnectedness of humans) and Aji Wiwaha (caring for the universe).

In the cosmology of Balinese Hindu, the triadic relation is called Tri Hita Karana (three causes of happiness), namely harmony between men and God (Sanghyang Jagatkarana), between men and nature (buana) and between men themselves. In Islamic cosmology, the triadic relation is represented by the relations between men and God (hablum minallah), between men themselves (hablum minannas) and between men and nature (hablum minal alam).

Any trouble in this triadic relation is the cause of all troubles (hollowness and chaos) in life. In order to restore order, fresh air and the light of the soul must be enter the core of the nation’s soul. This is achieved through spirituality; a term derived from the Latin word spiritus, meaning “breathing” or “luminous”. Consequently, collective happiness will be achieved when we can refresh and ignite the lights of our souls by building connectivity full of love with God, with our fellow men and with the universe.

Yudi Latif, Lecturer at Yogyakarta State University