Positive psychology has highlighted the crucial role of positive institutions, including when they function at their best families, workplaces and communities of faith. This would mean that "the pursuit of happiness" has to do with "seeking it" or "going after it" somehow. We openly debate these issues, call out injustice, and seek to understand our differences, and we do so in the public arena for all the world to see. Since this article first appeared, I admit that I am even more struck now, in 2018, by the need for the government to help people attain pursue and actually reach key elements of human flourishing: food, safety, medicine and the like. If the founders' understanding of the "pursuit of happiness" does, indeed, have "profound public policy ramifications, and thus real connections to social justice," what are some specific examples of actions the government does or should take to secure that right today? They were aware of what constituted happiness and what constituted misery. Size. WebLife, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are defined as the three unalienable rights the colonists eagerly fought for. "[26], The 17th-century cleric and philosopher Richard Cumberland wrote that promoting the well-being of our fellow humans is essential to the "pursuit of our own happiness". This term is often used in legal and political contexts to describe rights that are inherent to human beings, such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nikole Hannah-Jones writes in The New York Times that "the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst.". "[citation needed], The second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence starts: "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."[16]. As we celebrate Independence Day, Strawn discusses what "pursuit of happiness" is commonly thought to mean today, what our founders meant, and how a "thick" understanding of happiness can be a better guide for both individuals and nations.