Happiness and political philosophy

About 30 years ago Charles Lindblom wrote a book that described two world views. The first was expansive about human capacity. Essentially, it assumed that if you got the right bunch of smart people together they could out think the rest of us and solve all our problems. He called these people's views unconstrained. The second were more pessimistic about the capabilities of humans. None of us could understand the entirety of human behavior and so we should be very cautious about trying to devise systems which would try to do that. These people's views were called constrained. There were leaps of faith in both world views - in the unconstrained view there was the assumption that the smart folks would a) be able to find each other and b) would be able to convince the rest of us that they should lead. In the constrained view, although there was an assumption about the lack of capability - the assumption was that the sum total of human decisions would mostly be right to satisfy the needs and desires of the vast majority of the people.

Now George Will makes a similar comment. In an article in the Washington Post he commented -

"Begin with a paradox: Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the Book of Job got it right ("Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward"), as did Adam Smith ("There is a great deal of ruin in a nation"). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile -- touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.

Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong, they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness."

Economists also talk about the law of unintended consequences as epephenomenality. Conservatives believe that being allowed to fend for oneself allows the greatest number of people to achieve what is important to them. Happiness is not a smiley face but the ability to have greater control over your own destiny. Paint me a very constrained view (but happy) person.