You misinterpret my statement...I'm suggesting life is sanctioned by something higher than the state...that's the only point being made. Making the purpose of life "being happy" sounds like "self esteem". Please see our good friend (on this list) Dr. Michael Edelstein's website on the subject.
http://www.threeminutetherapy.com/self-esteem.html
And if you say that living life for "posterity or an external good is spiritual slavery", how can you suggest this is unjustified if it makes one happy?
This kind of life makes me happy...and it doesn't feel like "slavery" at all. It's precisely this feeling that drove me to keep my wife and her business partner in my car in an illegal parking spot outside City Hall while I went to the Dept of Elections one hour after closing time to write a check to Starchild so he could get on the ballot because he didn't have enough money to meet the requirement on him at the time. That experience didn't make me happy because it made me happy. It made me happy because of the "posterity" of freedom it represents and the "external good" it represents. The idea I had to do it with a half hour's notice and a major interruption in my family's schedule offered no consolation whatsoever.
Thank goodness there was some sense of "posterity or an external good" in my heart or it wouldn't have happened. Frankly Lady Aster, I feel you have some thinking to do on the subject.
Mike