We think of virtue to be the behaviors that are constructive to the things we value. For instance, if we value information that is complete and truthful, we find that honesty is a virtue to be upheld by all the people we interact with. If we value the security to confide in someone, we desire that they be trustworthy. Virtues support and help us build the things that we value. Conversely, vice are then the behaviors that are destructive to our values.
To understand what virtue or good behavior is, we must start by asking ourselves “what is it that we should value?” We can derive some logical and necessary values through reason, especially when we start at a very fundamental level.
THE FIRST VALUE: LIFE
To live well, or simply to live at all, you must first value your life. We humans are perishable goods. Life is a condition that we must maintain. It takes care and diligent effort to provide food, adequate heat, avoid danger and establish healthy habits to play the long game. This value is antecedent to all others. If we don’t value our lives, we won’t last long and preserve our ability to go on to value other things.
We haven’t necessary said that your life is or is not the most important thing that you value, but rather, logically, it is the first thing you value. In other words, a failure to secure your life ends your human experience and you can’t advance to enjoying subsequent values.
At this point, we’re really talking about you valuing your life, but for all the people who have friends and loved ones out there, don’t worry, we’re leading up to the value of other peoples lives also.
THE SECOND VALUE: LIBERTY
Since life takes productive work and care to sustain, we must posses the freedom to complete the tasks needed to maintain our lives. If we don’t have the ability to obtain food, shelter, items needed to provide heat and other essentials, life is hard to preserve.
This can be broken down into two elements. Freedom, meaning the ability to execute the actions that you need to take; and, property ownership which is the ability to own the things needed to complete those actions.
Freedom is best described as individual liberty, referring to the premise that liberty must be held at an individual level or else it becomes some form of dependency. You as an individual person must have the freedom to complete the tasks necessary to provide for and sustain your life. If you are denied this, you cannot ensure your ability to maintain your life.
Property ownership refers to the supplies you gather or make to provide for your survival, perhaps even territory in which to source food and other critical supplies. You own the products of your own creation or effort. If you can’t claim ownership of private property, it becomes very difficult for you to ensure the means by which to sustain your life. This becomes increasingly important as civilized life progresses and our occupations become more specialized requiring more complex property to carve out our way in society.
Right about now, you may be thinking “what about sharing?” “What if we just all shared everything?” Great question. A lot more on this subject is coming, and don’t worry, we won’t be challenging everything you learned as a kid and hold dear, especially those of you who have friends with cool stuff. For now though, sharing implies that you have some guaranteed right to an equal or at least sufficient share of the essential items. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be sharing, it would be begging which may well lead to compromising circumstances, potentially hostile to your life and certainly not how we want to define liberty. Sharing then in this sense can be thought of as fair trade with un-coerced consent or that the shared item is still held as private property between each member who owns shares in it and holds agreed upon rights to its use.
THE THIRD VALUE: THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
When you value life and liberty as we have laid out so far, you value the minimum needed to sustain your life. There is more that life can offer than just getting by. It is human nature to desire pleasure. In a fundamental way, this desire for pleasure guides us away from harm offering some protection of life and limb, but it goes beyond that.
The pursuit of happiness is driven from making improvements to your life. A life lived near its most base functioning is hard as it tends to leave you in a position near the edges of survival. Greater provisions and comfort create a margin between you and the edge of staying alive.
As an example, there was a point before power tools that lumber had to be cut by hand at a job sight. Then someone, likely a few people, came along and began inventing power tools. Now we have electric circular saws and compound miter saws that quickly trim boards to length. This resulted in work being completed faster allowing builders to complete projects in less time and to then take on more projects to increase their profits. In addition, their work became less physically strenuous.
These improvements extended throughout work and home life, as people made one improvement after the other to reduce the time and effort needed to complete tasks. Washing machines took over hand wringing, dishwasher now washed the dishes, air conditioning cooled our homes, offices and cars, all of which made life easier. The efficiencies gained through the pursuit of happiness freed up time to increase profits or simply enjoy more life and spend time in recreation or additional hobbies. Many hobbies in turn become hugely successful industries that further improved our lives.
As an individual, the creation and deployment of tools reduces the burden of needed tasks. It also offers protection from risks that you were otherwise unguarded against and can directly increase your lifespan. Improvements free up time to achieve additional endeavors.
Thinking creatively and finding easier and simpler methods is a mental tool that can have the same effect. Making observations of the world around you and learning the nature of things provides a benefit in knowing what resources are available and for discovering better materials or simpler methods.
Tools transform into equipment like more capable vehicles and devices or technology such as computers, software, smart phones and the like to give you the ability to access additional resources and experience an ease of life that you cannot acquire without their use. Each improvement you make, creates a better life.
This value of improving life is what advances both the individual and society.
There is also an aspect to the pursuit of happiness that is not directly utilitarian. Humans are social creatures who enjoy company and appreciate beauty and magnificence in others and in nature. It is this enjoyment that motivates us and fills us with a vigor that fuels the want of a happier and more content life. Awe and the appreciation of splendor energizes us to explore which yields the fruit of discovery from which we gain knowledge that produces innovation. For this reason, it is good to take time once and while to enjoy life without the direct thought of it being immediately productive in a strict sense.
APPLYING THE VALUES OF LIFE, LIBERTY & THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS TO OTHERS
Understanding that you must value your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is fairly straight forward when viewing the world in relation to yourself. Protecting your life from harm is good. Making improvements to your life creates obvious benefits. We move on now to examine how our valuing of these fundamental ideas correlates to other people valuing them in themselves as well. Further, when we choose to extend these values equally to all others, what benefits do we see?
As an individual, you value your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It’s expected then that all other individuals also value their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Inevitably, each individual protecting and pursuing only his own interest will lead to conflicts between people as competition for resources, territory and any desired object comes in to play. What then of situations that arise in which someone’s pursuit of happiness would be compromising to another person’s life, liberty or even just their happiness? These competing interests turn into actions that although perceived as good for the one person, is an act of wrong doing on the other.
If we transgress someone’s primary values, they must act in their own defense and work to stop or counter our offending action. We would each need to be defensive and on guard around others at all times even though not every encounter would necessarily require a defense. This would cause us to be less collaborative. It also exposes us to potential harm from the retributive or indifferent actions of others. The conflict that arises from this must cause us to recognize the significance of these values in other people.
Since fairness is a requisite for establishing and maintaining adherence to any law or code of conduct, it then becomes evident that we must treat all individuals as equal in the eyes of the law. If we are all to be respected by one another as equal, then it becomes needed that each of us respect the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in every other individual. This mandates a guiding principle that we do not conduct our affairs and establish our wellbeing at the expense of some one else’s security. A higher objective in our dealings with one another is to seek mutually beneficial interactions.
The basis of cooperation is mutual benefit. There is a dramatic increase in efficiency and capability when multiple people cooperate and work together to achieve common aims. Recall the review on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
Since we cannot eliminate all variation (or freewill) within mankind, we must accept there always remains at least the risk that someone(s) will transgress this guiding principle. For this reason, each individual retaining the right to defend himself, his family, his friends and his possessions, provides a balance of power among the people that helps them to self govern and ensure adherence to the rules.
If someone conducts themselves very virtuously, they will be regarded as admirable among the people who know this person. This is because business and other interactions must occur and this individual is good to deal with. Being admired, people will be more quick in coming to his aid when he is infringed. Within a virtuous group, all people will more readily receive this benefit as it is to everyone’s benefit to quickly correct a person who becomes wayward and defend those who are good to work and live with.
In order to have peace and prosperity, a social compact must be established in which the essential values are yourself and are also respected equally among all men. We must respect the foundational values of each individual. Each of us must necessarily retain the right to defend our own primary values, however, we also agree to a compact with one another that protects these values for each of us. This is essential not only to secure our own values but also to aid in cooperation with one another.
These foundational values and recognition that we all claim an equal natural right to them, are what form the basis of all morality. It is this basis of morality that forms a functioning political system that protects and enables individual liberty for every one of us.
This nation was the first to fully recognize the necessity of universally respecting the rights of each individual in order to establish a moral structure for self government and openly declared this great truth in its declaration of independence.
“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 the pursuit of Happiness.—that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
—from The Declaration of Independence
For a free nation to exist, life, liberty and the ability to pursue your own happiness must be secured and protected for each individual. When these things are not natural rights but rather inaccessible or contingent on certain conditions administered by the rulers, then freedom does not exist.