Our 1776 unalienable rights

Unalienable Right to Liberty

Notice that membership in the Libertarian Party is about 80% male … mostly young men. Kind of pugnaciously: “Don’t Tread on Me.” But, more generally, the old obligations to accede to constraints in order to “hold up the sky” seem to be waning somewhat … at the level of family, at the level of community. Perhaps the malaise in the land in regard to progress fosters a “what’s the use?” attitude.

Liberty, freedom, rights are all good, precious, important. Things may be going too far in the age of: “My Freedom, My Identity, my Rights … are My Main Concern.”

Unalienable Right to Happiness

. . . raises expectations. We might be better off thinking in terms of “satisfaction.”

Even more than that, I think it’s an issue that we live so much nowadays within a mediatized cocoon.

Mass entertainment with happy endings (of all kinds), idealized images on social media, etc. raise expectations. Too high.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/01/why-parents-and-kids-get-estranged/617612/

In the same way that unrealistically high expectations of fulfillment from marriage sometimes increase the risk of divorce, unrealistically high expectations of families as providers of happiness and meaning might increase the risk of estrangement.