Desiring a Lesser Country

Progress & the Pursuit of Unhappiness
by J. Douglas Johnson

In his new book, The Mighty Continent: A Candid History of Modern Europe, William McDougall points to Moses’ farewell address in Deuteronomy as one of the great passages of world literature. Moses tells Israel that fidelity to the covenant will lead to prosperity in a land given by God, a claim that rests on the conviction that history has direction and meaning. God’s law is not arbitrary. It is ordered toward human flourishing. Obedience is commanded because the law is meant to make people happy.

Happiness takes its measure from reality itself—from the way we were created and from our participation in the divine life. In a 2012 issue of First Things, R. R. Reno likened God’s precepts to demanding of his son, “Do your homework!”:

Even if he grumbles and inwardly resents my commandment, insofar as he obeys, he conforms his will and life . . . to my command. Should he consider and accept my reasons . . . his conformity becomes internal. He begins to think as I think. And should he see and assent to the ultimate end of my commandment—his development and flourishing—his desire becomes my own.

Reno continues, “the all-encompassing array of divine imperatives—are as countless arrows of love shot downward and into human life. The more expansive and detailed the law, the more deeply and completely . . . man’s life is penetrated by the divine.”

The politics of our day asks us to set reality aside in favor of a counterfeit account of happiness that identifies it with the unconstrained pursuit of desire. That account not only stands at odds with Christian faith; it contradicts nearly every philosophical tradition that has taken the question of human happiness seriously. Desire untethered from reality does not yield happiness but frustration, because happiness answers not to what we wish for, but to what we are and the ends for which we were made.

God Terms

Literary theorist Kenneth Burke defined a “god term” as a word or phrase that carries such strong positive value that it organizes and justifies other arguments beneath it. A god term functions as a supreme, unquestioned good within a given discourse. Once invoked, it tends to end debate rather than invite it, because opposing it appears irrational or immoral. A politician can commit himself to “progress” and thus commit himself to nothing and everything. For this reason, political discourse relies on god terms to evade precision while conveying moral urgency.

Closer to home, when a friend of mine bemoaned her son’s wish to attend a particularly left-wing college, I suggested she tell him she wouldn’t pay for it. “I’d lose him forever,” she said. I heard the same objection when a doctor warned a roomful of parents against letting their children explore transgenderism. In both cases, the parents weren’t considering their children’s happiness; rather, they capitulated to what they regarded as self-destructive paths for their children out of fear of how their children might react to having their desires thwarted.

Happiness vs. Progress

“Progress” is among the most potent god terms of the last century. The magic of “progress” in the political arena is that those who invoke it never talk of the destination.

Progress promises redress against oppressors and insists that the present, for all its defects, must be superior to the past. It must insist on that claim, because the logic of progress allows no return.

Progressivism has roots in Enlightenment thinkers such as Francis Bacon and Condorcet, who believed in a progress grounded in an ever-expanding mastery of nature and the overcoming of material limits. Conservatism, by comparison, claims to restrain the damage caused by the progressive vision, especially its more recent attempts at social engineering. Yet, in practice, conservatism accepts the same end, “progress,” merely redefining it as economic growth, consumer choice, and the freedom to satisfy individual desires, and presenting these things as the proper aim of government.

For those concerned with tradition, civilization, and faith, conservatism appears to be the only viable political option. Yet despite periodic electoral success, conservatives have never rebuilt the culture whose decline they lament. At best, conservatism slows the pace of progressivism, but it can neither reverse nor alter its trajectory.

In a 2006 essay that first appeared in The New Criterion, columnist Mark Steyn made this point starkly, arguing that much of what is called the Western world faces demographic collapse within this century. His essay brought home to many readers, perhaps for the first time, the reality that Western societies were reproducing at a suicidally low rate.

Since then, no government has done more than Hungary to encourage childbearing, yet after two decades of effort, its fertility rate remains well below replacement. The reason is straightforward: in Hungary, as in every other country, most people equate happiness with having enough money to do what they want, and they have been lured into the lie that happiness and large families stand at cross purposes.

Progress vs. Gratitude

What both progressivism and conservatism lack is a serious account of what human beings are for. Progressivism measures power and motion; conservatism measures relative advantage. Neither measures happiness, because neither is willing to say what makes men happy or what elements of their constituents’ behavior must be refused rather than indulged.

As Moses made clear, God gave the Israelites the law because the order that flows from following that law makes men happy. Happiness comes from living in accord with reality, and reality is not self-created. Technology and the things we make are not bad in themselves, but we live by lies if we pursue them for the sake of happiness.

A culture of happiness does not arise from abundance (though a happy people will likely prosper). It depends on the deliberate cultivation of gratitude for the gifts of God—a gratitude that sees life, order, inheritance, and limits as blessings rather than burdens. Gratitude fixes a people’s attention on what has been received rather than fabricated, and on what cannot be sustained by willpower alone.

A people that no longer remembers what happiness is—that mistakes it for the unconstrained satisfaction of desire—will inevitably pursue policies that corrode the very goods on which happiness depends. The task before us, therefore, is not to make America rich, or fair, or even great, but to pursue true happiness, which is rooted in gratitude for the divine order. Gratitude is the enemy of progress.

J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.

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