God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

In his article "The Pursuit of Happiness in Perspective," Darrin McMahon warns against the pursuit of happiness (HT: Daily Dish). He points out that even the fact that we can have this discussion is a luxury--"the privilege of peoples whose more pressing needs have been satisfied already." True, the discussion is a luxury, but is the actual pursuit? For him, the answer is yes, because his view of pursuing happiness is that of Huxley's masses in Brave New World:

... consuming in abundance, indulging their desires without guilt or inhibition, distracting themselves with the virtual reality of films with simple plots and the cult of youth.

If this is all it means to pursue happiness, then I agree with the heavyweights, J. S. Mill and George Orwell, that it is indeed counter-productive to try to find happiness by pursuing it. McMahon writes,

As Tocqueville’s contemporary and friend, John Stuart Mill, realized, “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.”[22] ... It is noteworthy that Mill’s tough-minded successor as a defender of liberty and democracy, George Orwell, essentially agreed. “Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness,” he cautioned in 1944.[23]

Barry Schwarz wrote a follow-up essay in which he agrees with McMahon that there is a problem, but says it is not pursuing happiness that causes it, but pursuing pleasure. He says,

I think McMahon is right that the unbridled pursuit of pleasure is cause for alarm. I think he’s wrong that the pursuit of happiness is equivalent to the pursuit of pleasure.

He adds that "for many of us, the pursuit of happiness has become equivalent to the pursuit of pleasure." Of course it has. This seems obvious. Happiness and pleasure can only be separated in rhetoric. In discussions like these, definitions can be narrowed and nuanced until it is logically possible to be happy without having pleasure. But it doesn't work in real life. When we are happy, we are taking pleasure in something.

Marriage, work, children, reading, sex, eating, conversation, Jesus--these are all sources of pleasure (and there are, of course, hundreds more). They vary in their value and in the kind of pleasure they bring, but none of them is trivial and all of them can be a part of true, meaningful happiness.

Schwarz and McMahon are right that if pleasure is only the banal sedatives of Brave New World, then it is not the source of happiness and is certainly not worth pursuing. But why would we define it that way? If happiness and pleasure are worthless and vain, then what is left to describe the emotions of deep joy?

Schwarz concludes his essay by saying,

Our task then, is not so much to criticize efforts to increase happiness. It is instead to make sure that we are trying to increase happiness, “rightly understood.”

Yes, absolutely, we want to strive for real happiness. But wouldn't the same reasoning he uses to defend happiness lead us to say that it is also our task to make sure we are trying to increase pleasure--as long as it is pleasure "rightly understood"?