The "Best" Choice

My attention was drawn to the Mills’ idea of there being a distinction between happiness and content.  He argues that a “superior being,” who makes decisions that would seem to make him less happy, is not sacrificing happiness, because the superior being always chooses to be aware of the imperfections of the world, and that though he may be less content than an inferior being, his choice must be better because he knows both perspectives, making it better to be “a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

 I disagree with his use of the word happiness here because I think that cases often arise where someone sacrifices their happiness in order to do what they feel is their ethical obligation.  Mills would counter by saying that these people are not really sacrificing their happiness, but choosing to be less content so that they can be happier, effectively redefining happiness, which is fair enough.

Where his argument falls apart is when he continues describe this happiness as we would commonly think of the word, saying that the imperfections someone is conscious of “will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections.”  This, however, is not always true.  Before making this point, Mills makes an argument about how people act, and uses peoples’ decisions to support his idea that this higher consciousness is “better.”  Now that he gives this statement that has numerous counterexamples (I will give one shortly), he ceases to rely on the actions of individuals as support, and his claim that this way of living is “better” is now just a representation of his opinion.

The first counterexample that springs to mind is when, in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins despairingly says to Gandalf, “I wish the ring had never come to me.  I wish none of this had happened.”  He does indeed envy all those who were able to remain in Hobbiton, and while he stays with his quest with a little convincing from Gandalf, a lesser hobbit might easily have abandoned it.