Purpose, Meaning, Happieness

“What makes a good life, filled with purpose, meaning, and happiness? And what does government need to do, and not do so that more people have access to this life?” - Senator Murphy 2023

The performativity of the terms purpose, meaning, and happiness may not be exactly the same for every constituent but I believe the core of the emotion has to be confined to a valid commonality due to a viable foundation of the human condition. The literary description of purpose is the freedom to obtain an objective, and for me, more clearly; to have opportunities to living that extend beyond a financial return on investment. Purpose is not obtained by filling your hours each day with a schedule that provides the means to financially provide for yourself. If this is your sole performativity in life it is not out of bounds to think that when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror you may feel a sense of loathing at being a part of this world.

We are all the unique star in the ocean of individuality searching for meaning, purpose, and happiness to life. True purpose may manifest in many different forms, to earn money, have kids, help others, recognition, fame; it can be the elemental chart of purposes. My purpose, I believe, is about having experiences. By what ever means your soul is enriched with the meaning of life answers, the point of the government is to accommodate such a life through policy and administration. As a representation of the people governments should be working to make individual purpose a key element to your livelihood, not corporate purpose. Reality should be that each person has the daily right to purpose, meaning and an innate sense of happiness for the situation

Tax cuts have led to an explosion of billionaires that now have free-reign to bribe political officials at will. We are experiencing cuts to thousands of Medicare and Medicaid recipients, military deployment to our cities, and judicial executions of unnamed civilians in international waters. The people’s house is in disarray not just executively, but structurally. How do any of the current government’s policies and objectives create a better life for every day Americans? How do any of the points mentioned create a sense of purpose for every day Americans, or give meaning to the lives we spend day in and day out to create? Where is the happiness to in an individualism that forces people to become their own doctor, pharmacist, and medical technician?.

Thus far in life, I have followed a similar path to many of my peers. It began with the molding of minds under the tutelage from mediocre employees across junior educational institutions. Teachers in these public school spaces are often underpaid and overworked, and getting a good one is farther than few between. We were fed, through the educational system on a fixed criteria that limited critical cognitive displays of intellectual interaction, and on Scantron formats that is antithetical to long-term memory integration. For the most part standardized education lead the blossoming constituents on a journey of group think, affiliated with societal norms of OEL economic politics.

The next stage, believing the only way to discover my purpose, was to take the next step post-high school, spending thousands to attend a top rate US university. When I was finally finished, I was thrilllllled to find that the only jobs readily available to me were the same hospitality jobs I had used to put myself through college in the first place. I graduated super hopeful and excited, while feeling a sense of not knowing what I would be good at, how I could find that job, or how to navigate getting hired. Basically, I knew what I wanted to do but that didn’t help with the actualization of a career.

It was not till I experienced my study abroad program that I was open to the possibility and experience of true purpose. It became clear to me on my various trips, and abundant new experiences that my purpose would become one that is full of life stories. I experienced the life offered through the success of a government the promotes a value economy. Built on a healthy balance of contributing to society with wealth and the rest with purpose. I ran to Berlin because I knew I was running to something. What happens to the soul of a country when they no longer have a purpose that inspires them to run toward it?

In contrast stories that came from my homeland were of a building misery. Stories of intellectual overachievers harvested by corporate machines to be drained of their resources. I was amputated from that life story; risk and personal purpose led me down a happier path of singular experiences. By removing our individualism, ‘Corporate Modernity’ steals so much of an individuals future purpose. This theft of self-defined purpose leads many people feeling a well of emptiness. This sense of emptiness leads many to a state of ponderance. Where is the ‘purpose’, ‘meaning’ and ‘happiness’ to anything, and life in general? I was able to escape the false narrative around owing companies your life but many other Americans haven’t and won’t.

A. Wes Mitchell recently submitted an article in ‘Foreign Affairs’ promoting the groupthink ideology of the MAGA forebears of the neocon variety. Preaching with a fervor often associated with those that have nothing of value to contribute. This ideology maintains a government’s goal is to “increase energy production, reduce the deficit and deregulate to strengthen the economy”. When was the last time any one of these three principles literally gave the majority a sense of purpose, meaning, or happiness? Year over year, from the 1980s to today anti-regulatory numbnuts hitched to the dog collar of Milton Friedman and William Buckley’s OEL economic liberalism models.

Claiming that to achieve a reduced deficit we must cut taxes for the rich, increase military spending, and cut entitlements. Since the term entitlement is flagrantly thrown about as a pejorative, I want to reiterate that entitlements are items to which one is justly entitled. When the government wants to revoke tax payers entitlements it would be like if your neighbor walks into your home grabs your keys off the hook and takes your car to give to his boss. Entitlement programs are those which you have already paid into and have an entitled right to receive. Investing the largest sum of our federal budget into military innovation had reduced investment in agriculture, education and healthcare. How happy are you walking into a grocery store to find poison being sold as food? Then there are the tax breaks for the wealthy that lead to stock buy backs and investment in personal luxuries that have nothing to do with the job production and innovation so much of their fictional tale relies upon.

As Government’s kowtow to billionaires as a means to protect the obscenely rich also known as their largest donors the more every-day Americans loose their purpose, meaning and happiness. During most my 20s and 30s I was living a lovely life, more so because I wasn’t in the US. But even in the ideal landscape the drudge of stuck at a level of corporate purpose I was slowly loosing my personal purpose. Searching for meaning in that impulse to keep striving for the next promotion. I had great health care, I was eating healthy foods, I had 28 paid vacation days, reliable public transportation and a police force that focused on criminals not crimes of vice! I never even thought about a public mass shooting or the prospect of it; imagine! The non-fiction story is that cutting regulation is a siren song towards the destruction of public safety.

Regulations are vital to a free market economy. Whether that is to have safer streets by keeping guns out of the hands of the unfit. Or making sure banks can’t steal from their retail customers to make market bets. OEL’s would have you believe regulation hinders innovation, individuality, and freedom but in reality they promote innovation because they protect not just the innovators but the consumers of a service or good. They provide a sense of freedom because people can live knowing their gov’t actually has their best interests at heart not corporations. And the freedom of prosperity, happiness and meaning comes with less government intrusion on social freedoms. OEL;s led to NAFTA and other trade deals that killed the American factory jobs and opened the gates to narcotic sagas. Other big landmarks of deregulation led to the financial crisis of 2008, the explosion of fentanyl into our cities, and the Flynt Michigan water travesty. Where do all these victims think their purpose, meaning and happiness went? They were sacrificed at the alter of corporate greed and corrupt political machines.

Look where the drive to coding led us. Tech companies poured money into high school programs to promote coding just so kids could spend generational debt levels on university, graduate with honors then be told their jobs belong to AI. We have laws about monopolies to promote innovation but no matter what tech company is hiring these grads, one of the Big Five tech bosses with be their corporate overlord. Altman, Gates, Zuckerberg or whoever is at Alphabet. These giants control so much of the industry there’s almost no room for true innovation that promotes competition, because one of them already owns the competition. Yet the government is why so much of this corporate landscape exists. It doesn’t matter whether you are blue or red cause these guys will give to anyone that helps them control more power. Thank you, ‘Citizens United’!

How are increasing cost of goods and services, so The Rich can bathe in their tax credits and corporate tax breaks, benefiting you? For those Midland farmers that demonize Socialism while at the same time crying for government subsidy bailouts and fixed commodity pricing; spoiler that is an economic principle of democratic socialism. The public schools and state universities you or your kids attended; democratic socialism. The very public roads your goods are transported on; democratic socialism. Where exactly do you think the government has really failed you? By all measurements the agriculture industry has been one of the top beneficiaries of the socialist American programs. Where as the hostile takeover by Agro-conglomerates at behest of shareholder profits is what destroyed our food value chain. Do you make food to feed your neighbors or to feed the corporate machine? How many neighbor’s farms have been bought out by corporate argro-congolmerates like JBS? Do you eat the food you grow any more? You found purpose in farming, as you should but how do you feel about it now?

Tax cuts make the wealthy happy, subsidies gives farmers purpose and being part of a group gives people meaning. But being defined by the purpose, or happiness found through one's work is not how to truly experience acts of happiness and purpose. Purpose can begin with a job but is built around community. Meaning is derived from personal identity not societal identity. Happiness starts in our psyche and expands to our surroundings. People aren't looking for life to be easy, they just want the opportunity to feel purpose, to experience happiness, and find meaning in life. Where do you find your purpose? How do you define happiness? What gives your days meaning? And what role does the government play in providing the right freedoms so you can follow your purpose, find your meaning and live your happiness?