John Perry Barlow, rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist and cyber-philosopher is also notorious for his 1996 screed “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”.
But he also has an essay The Pursuit of Emptinesss that I find very compelling. The thrust of the piece is that the pursuit of happiness is an impediment to happiness.
Here’s what I believe. I believe that extolling the pursuit of happiness was a toxic stupidity entirely unworthy of my greatest American hero, Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, it is a poison that sickens our culture more wretchedly every nanosecond. I wish he’d never said it.
It produces a monstrous, insatiable hunger inside our national psyche that encourages us ever more ravenously to devour all the resources of this small planet, crushing liberties, snuffing lives, feeling ourselves ordained by God and Jefferson to do whatever is necessary to make us happy.
And yet the American people are miserable. Or so it would appear.