Which is more important?

For me, the two go together.

You are fortunate, so. Or perhaps wise. Lets say wise and fortunate.

It's perfectly possible freely to make choices which make you miserable, and most of us can point to examples within our own families or friends of people who do just that. Thus freedom doesn't inherently make you happy, or contribute to happiness.

I think some degree of freedom is a prerequisite to some kinds of happiness - it's hard to see a slave being happy in every way - but we should be cautious in linking the two too closely together. The kind of political freedom that we enjoy in western democracies probably isn't particularly connected with happiness; most of the world, for most of history, has not enjoyed it, but there is no evidence that we are happier than they were.

Freedom in what context? Deep and miserable poverty. seeing your children dying of hunger ? Or Happiness in the context of what ? Slavery ? Tricky.. more information requested .

Good points. We need to think a bit both about what we mean by “freedom” and also about what we mean by “happiness”.

Famously, the US Declaration of Independence asserts that “all Men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

I don’t think, in 1776, “happiness” referred to any mental state of elation, satisfaction, contentment, etc. It meant good fortune, success, prosperity, the achievement of good things. In political terms, it meant the right to acquire, use and dispose of property freely, not to be subject to excessive taxes or the seizure of your land or possessions. The right to the “pursuit of happiness” meant the right to take advantage of such economic opportunities as might come your way, not the right to feel satisfied or contented.

“Liberty” mean the right not to be locked up – the right to travel where you want, associate with whom you want, read and say what you want.

It’s notable that the signers of the Declaration valued both liberty and happiness. They didn’t see them as alternatives, one of which had to be prioritised over the other. They’d almost see them as two kinds of freedom – “liberty” being personal freedom, and “the pursuit of happiness” being economic freedom.

But in both cases they have quite limited notions of “liberty” and “happiness”. I think we would say that a certain degree of education is necessary to be truly free – the ignorant are comparatively easy to oppress, because they either don’t know that they have rights, or they don’t know how to assert and exercise them. Thus people aren’t guaranteed true freedom simply by not being locked up. Likewise, there isn’t real freedom of speech if the media are controlled by sectional interests, and dissenting views are marginalised. Thus we don’t define liberty purely as the absence of constraints.

Likewise the absence of constraints doesn’t guarantee the “pursuit of happiness” either. If powerful interests can stitch up the market and establish monopolies and cartels, they will. Unregulated labour markets tend not to produce the best working conditions for employees – employers use their superior bargaining position to drive conditions downwards. And so forth.

Thus, we do see a certain trade-off between liberty and “happiness”, in the sense of economic status and security. We need to tax people in order to educate their children, if their children are to be free. We need to regulate markets, if economic opportunity is to be afforded to the greatest number, and so forth.

Peregrinus: "Thus, we do see a certain trade-off between liberty and “happiness”, in the sense of economic status and security. We need to tax people in order to educate their children, if their children are to be free. We need to regulate markets, if economic opportunity is to be afforded to the greatest number, and so forth."

It's like Dr. Maslow's hierarchy, once a need has been met at some minimal level it falls off the chart. That minimal level varies from one individual to another. I know many people who are quite happy to live in a neighborhood where others tell you what color to paint your house, require approval from the committee for new curtains, have strict regulations for plants and their care in your garden. I would personally not be happy with that. I don't say those people are in any way wrong. It's just not my way.

A friend of mine was miserable and he was telling me what he was going to do to be happy. I was quickly obvious that he had decided that since I was happy, if he got a home like mine and a motorycle like mine and a dog like mine then he'd be happy, too. I went and got a pair of my underwear and asked my friend if he wanted to wear them. He laughed and said they wouldn't fit. "Neither will my life."

Another man who worked for me stopped by my home and said, "Why do you live in this dump?" I didn't actually consider it a dump but that was really beside the point. I said, "It suits me."

To be happy, some need to maximize their economic status. For others, they need to maximize their freedom. The first, will likely have a huge debt burden, which limits freedom, and the second will have less impressive stuff. It's their choice.

The blend that works for me is most likely quite different than the blend that works for you.

Thoughts on happiness. It's an elusive, indefinable quality. I've been in situations where I was uncomfortable, tired, at risk, and happy. I have fond memories of snowshowing in the mountains in bitterly cold weather and not really knowing where I was. I have fond memories of riding my motorcycle through the desert in incredibily hot weather. I was happy.

I've known other people who chose to be unhappy. I asked someone once why they preferred being unhappy. After a moment of thought she said, "If you let yourself be happy, something will happen to ruin it so why be happy in the first place?" I told another friend that it was like we were in a wonderful garden with 10,000 rose bushes and she finds the one pile of dog poop, sits down and obsesses over the dog poop. Shge retorted with, "You ignore the dog poop. It really is there, you know?" Yes, it is but for me it isn't worth an obsession.

Last comment, When you are being asked to relinquish freedom for a promised benefit, keep in mind there are no guarantees. Yes, we vote to fund bond issues to pay for public edication but then we don't get educated children in far to many cases.

I think that Jefferson, who was the main writer of the US Constitution, meant what he wrote and that he meant happiness as we understand it. He was an educated man who well knew the meaning of the word and had, in fact, considered that 'property' was not primarily the responsibility of Government.

For some comments on this see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness

He did mean what he wrote, but he didn’t mean “happiness” as we understand it, in the sense of a feeling of pleasure or contentedness. That’s a fairly modern sense of the word.

“Happy” is related to the word “happen”, and in its original sense it referred to something which occurred by chance or by fortune – not necessarily a good thing. A “happy event” originally did not mean an event that caused rejoicing, but rather an event that need not have occurred at all.

From there the meaning shifted slightly. First, it began to refer to events which happened not simply by fortune, but by good fortune. Secondly, the word was used to refer not only to fortunate or promising events, but to the person to whom fortunate or promising events happen, or are going to happen. It’s used in this sense in the King James Bible; “happy are the poor in spirit” and “happy are those who mourn” doesn’t mean that they have a feeling of pleasure and contentment; they quite clearly don’t. It means that good things are going to happen for them.

From there we get the third shift of meaning, to refer to the pleased or contented state of mind that we experience when good things happen to us. This meaning had developed by Jefferson’s time, but it hadn’t then become the dominant meaning of the word.

I don’t think Jefferson would have understood the Declaration of Independence to mean that we have a natural right to feel pleased and contented, in parallel with our natural right not to be locked up, and our natural right not to be shot. Whatever his views on the role of the state in relation to property, he certainly didn’t think it was the role of the state to induce a feeling of mental well-being. Apart from anything else, in the Age of Enlightentment and Rationality which gave rise to the American revolution, feelings, moods and states of mind were simply not that important; it was important that men should do good, not that they should feel good. It’s in the later Romantic era that attention is paid to sentiments.

We also have to think about what it was the American revolutionaries were rebelling against. The British government of the colonies was not attempting to control anybody’s state of mind or to try to dictate to anyone what the good things in life were or to stop anybody from acting virtuously. But they were attempting to control trade and economic activities through taxation, through the grant of monopolies, through preventing colonial businesses from competing with home businesses, etc. The colonists resented this because they felt that it stopped them from pursuing their own well-being, in order to protect the entrenched advantages of others.

So I’m still of the opinion that the right to “the pursuit of happiness” was essentially the right to take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves, and these were mostly conceived of in terms of economic opportunities.