Aristotle argued that we achieve both an ethical and fulfilled happy life not through any specific actions but through habits practiced in everyday life over a long period of time. Anyone who has ever taken anti-depressants would know that they are always waiting for that moment for them to ‘kick in,’ and just end the nightmare. The more I’ve come to reflect on Aristotle and my own experiences I see the truth in what he is saying. Happiness is not a state of being, its about action and living life with the most uttermost vitality and meaning one can. This means that you cannot pin down a point when you are happy, but one day if you have developed good habits which you find amenable to your sense of purpose you will awake one day knowing you are happy, and that you have been for a long time.
Society functions on the basis of the collective exchanges between individuals. Many political theories, notably Marxist and Communitarian theories, argue that because social interaction is conceived as occurring through collective forms of action that collective ideals must influence the way in which governmental policy is produced.
Is it valid to assume that because we conceive of society in collectivist terms that this should influence the way in which we formulate laws and policy? To an extent, yes. All governmental policies should aspire to redress detrimental problems that are societal wide, and in doing this policy is necessarily formulated to meet the need of the collective, i.e. on issues of class and race. But there is a limit.
Whilst collectives exist, it must always be remembered that the collective is only an aggregate of individuals. Any policy addressed to meet the needs of a collective must have the well-being of the individual in mind. If this objective is lost than the inherent value of any collective objective is lost, as it devalues the subject whose lot it intends to improve. Thus, collective policies must and should always be founded on the inherent value of the individual.
