> Happiness isn't a quality you can optimize for on a national or global scale as it's a purely individual affair.
This right here is exactly what's wrong. People are put into impossible conditions and then blamed when they can't magically make themselves happy with the arrangement.
Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?
Happiness isn't self-induced solipsism. I don't claim that external conditions have no effect on individual happiness, but rather that external conditions do not uniformly or systematically determine an individual's happiness nor can one reliably use such conditions to extrapolate the happiness of others. A policy that addresses a so-called collective need often comes at the cost of individual agency and thus individual happiness. It is therefore, necessary to recognize that the domain of happiness and its relevant parameters does not belong to an abstract blob, but solely to the individual.
> Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?
Not every animal views a zoo (or for that matter, a farm or a pet-owner's house) as a prison. For a significant population of zoo animals, life in captivity is the only life they know. For the most part, they are as happy and content as they are well-fed.
>Not every animal views a zoo (or for that matter, a farm or a pet-owners house) as a prison. For a significant population of zoo animals, life in captivity is the only life they know. For the most part, they are as happy and content, as they are well-fed.
Not if they are given a space which is too small and not stimulating enough for them, then they just pace around for their whole lives.
This right here is exactly what's wrong. People are put into impossible conditions and then blamed when they can't magically make themselves happy with the arrangement.
Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?