when the answer is the next question

The notion of happiness and its pursuit in American culture is filled with tensions: between personal happiness for me and happiness for the community, between private pleasure and civic virtue, between the satisfaction of achievement and the exhilaration of pursuit, between peaceful contentment and dis-satisfaction that generates progress.  No doubt there are more.  No doubt, as we read in McMahon's chapter these tensions have been noticed and discussed before by the likes of Franklin, Jefferson, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Max Weber.

I agree with Zoe that usually we (Americans today, those of us in the room for this discussion) reject the extremes in these tensions.  We strive for balance that exploits that energy the tension creates rather than collapsing it.

If the answer is that happiness is generated by the proper balance between private pleasure and civic virtue, etc. the next question is this one.  What is the proper balance?  And how is it achieved?  Is there a standard applicable across chronological eras and life stages or must this be re calibrated in new circumstances, such as when I get more money, or less mobility, or am offered more forms of media?  Based on my experience with walking, I assert that balance is not easy to achieve so perhaps the answer is the beginning of the next question about happiness.