Why the Pursuit of Happiness Is Always Political

“Let me just say: Peace to you, if you’re willing to fight for it.” - Fred Hampton

I want you to imagine a scenario to keep in mind for the rest of this piece. Imagine you are satisfied with your life as a whole, whether this is a scenario about your hopes for the future or your life in the past or present. 

I want you to now become more conscious of this vision. Where do you imagine yourself? Do you see yourself with a sustainable dream job, or in a stable home? Having a great car? Having children? Do you imagine yourself having mental wellness or access to mental health resources? Where do you see yourself living? Are you in a good neighborhood or possibly far away from the city and owning a lot of land?

We’ve all heard the saying “money cannot buy happiness,” but does that really apply within a capitalist context, where our access to money directly affects our survival? For example, nationwide our housing crisis is rapidly worsening; no state has an adequate supply of rental housing that is affordable and available for extremely low income households. In our community there are nearly 16,000 very-low income households who are paying more than half their income towards their housing.

The reality is that our happiness and desires, whether as individuals or as a collective in the US, do not exist outside of a capitalistic context.

Let’s go back to the scenario I asked you to imagine earlier. I want you to now take note of how many of those things you were imagining are things that would be considered privileges in this country. For example, the things I mentioned earlier: stable housing, access to living-wage jobs, access to transportation, having children, and access to mental health resources, are all treated as privileges.

The point of this exercise is to show that our happiness is greatly influenced by our context and our ability to participate in societal systems. We are conditioned to believe that our lack of happiness and fulfillment in life is a personal problem and the fault of the individual, but that’s more often than not untrue. Our happiness and long-term fulfillment is directly related to our personal needs being met, like through a stable living environment and a community of folk who will show up for us.

Reflecting on our quality of life can be very telling about our needs. It is very difficult to be satisfied with your life when you are struggling to survive and sustain yourself, and that’s not always a reflection of something being faulty within an individual. The lack of satisfaction in our lives is almost exclusively a response to our circumstances and unmet needs.

When you are forced to assimilate to a system that makes human necessities inaccessible you begin to internalize that you need to earn or deserve them. You work harder and harder to assimilate to these harmful systems to meet your needs instead of fighting back, and you do so because sometimes it’s just easier that way when your options are incredibly limited.

The pursuit of happiness will always be political in this context, and our true fulfillment within life will come with the abolition of these unjust systems. We cannot treat individuals without targeting the actual problem — the systems that are harming us in the first place. In fact, there are no individual problems underneath oppressive hierarchies, and knowing this fact can be one of the first steps in liberating ourselves from the shackles of toxic individualism and bootstrap mentality. 

So before you ask yourself “why aren’t I happy?” maybe it’d be more supportive to ask “what needs am I asking to be fulfilled? Is this really a result of a personal failure within myself, or am I being personally failed?”