Meaning, Happiness, and Peace

Michael Cortrite Ph.D.

PUBLISHED:

September 16, 2024

There seems to be a general misconception about the famous phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence; “Life. Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Jeffrey Rosen (2024),  in his book The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America emphasizes that the founding fathers of America were deeply  influenced by classical writers who advocated for a life of virtue as the pathway to true happiness. Rosen argues that the pursuit of happiness was not meant to be about accumulating 

wealth or achieving fame, but about living a life of purpose, guided by the intrinsic rewards of  virtue and service to others. These classical ideals, which shaped the very foundation of American society continues to resonate today, particularly in the context of grassroots movements that seek to promote peace, justice, and the common good.


According to Moss (2017), the biggest misconception of the happiness industry is that happiness is an end, not a means. We think that if we get what we want, then we’ll be happy. We tend to see “being happy” as the end goal. But it turns out that what’s really important is the journey. Another misconception about happiness is that happiness is being cheerful, joyous, and content all the time—always having a smile on your face. It is not. Being happy and leading a rich life is about taking the good with the bad and learning how to reframe the bad.


One of the paradoxes of being human is that while it may make sense for us to pamper and pleasure ourselves because we tend to think that this will make us happy, the reality is that the key to living a meaningful and fulfilled/happy life is caring for and helping other people. Some would say that caring more about other people’s needs than our own is the key to a more peaceful world.


According to Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, no society can properly function unless it gives the individual member social status, function, meaning, and dignity and unless the decisive social power is legitimate power. If the individual is not given these things there can be no society but only a mass of social atoms flying through space without aim or purpose (Drucker Institute).


Toubiana and Yair (2012) state, “It is frustratingly difficult to cite a significant modern management concept that was not first articulated, if not invented by Peter Drucker.” Drucker was born in Austria and was in his early 20s when he witnessed Adolph Hitler and the Nazis taking control of Germany. This event, along with publishing his first of 39 books in 1939, The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism, set his lifelong goal of a peaceful world. Drucker was determined that fascism, totalitarianism, and autocracy could be eliminated by making sure that societies’ function is to give all people’s lives meaning and status. Without status and function, people could allow autocracy and totalitarianism (Drucker Institute).


Drucker (1995 p.29-30) thinks that all people need to have meaning. He said:


For the individual without function and status, society is irrational, incalculable, and shapeless. The “rootless” individual, the outcast—for the absence of social function and status casts a man from the society of his fellows—sees no society. He sees only demonic forces, half sensible, half meaningless, half in light, and half in darkness, but never predictable. They decide about his livelihood without the possibility of his understanding them. He is like a blindfolded man in a strange room, playing a game of which he does not know the rules; and the prize at stake is his own happiness, his own livelihood, and even his own life.

           

A man in such a state probably has little chance of being fulfilled, rational, or peaceful. There are many reasons for a loss of meaning, status, or function, but one of the most obvious and easiest to understand is unemployment. Not only is unemployment a potential economic catastrophe, but it also entails social disenfranchisement. Prolonged unemployment can lead to the loss of self-respect, which has nothing to do with the person's actions (Maciariello and Linkletter 2011). 


In her book The Power of Meaning (2017), Emily Esfahani Smith says that many people spend their lives pursuing happiness and eventually end up asking, “Is this all there is?” Smith says that to have a fulfilling life, one needs meaning in their life. Meaning comes from belonging to and serving something beyond yourself and developing the best within yourself. Creating meaning in your life requires some degree of selflessness (Seligman 2002). Smith cites studies that show people who have meaning in their lives are more resilient, do better in school and work, and live longer. She refers to the four pillars of a meaningful life. They are belonging, purpose, transcendence, and story-telling. 


Belonging (bonds to family and friends) means being in relationships where you are intrinsically valued for who you are. Some groups, such as gangs or cults, value people for what they believe or who they hate, not for who they are. 


Purpose is less about what you want than about what you give. It gives you something worthwhile to live for. A classic example would be raising children. For some people, their work gives them purpose. The important thing is to contribute and feel needed. What John Bunyan said about meaning and purpose should be kept in mind; “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” (Bunyan 2020).


Transcendence is stepping beyond yourself; you get lost in a meaningful task, your sense of self fades away, and you are less self-centered. Transcendence can result in a person being more generous when helping people.


Storytelling is the story you tell yourself about yourself. It gives people clarity about themselves and helps them understand how they became themselves. A person’s story can change because their lives evolve however they are still constrained by the facts.


Too many people today have made the mistake of anointing a job as their main source of meaning. Seventy percent of employees say their jobs define them. Meanwhile, Gallup data shows that only 12.5 percent of us are “totally and utterly engaged” at work. (Wellman 2024)


Victor Frankel had much to say about meaning in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. He was a psychiatrist, born in Austria, and was a prisoner in some of the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. He used his psychiatrist training to observe what was happening to himself and the other prisoners. One of his observations was that paradoxically, prisoners who shared their last scrap of bread with a prisoner who looked like they needed it tended to live longer than those who stole and ate other prisoners' last scrap of bread. One would think the prisoner who got more to eat because of stealing others’ bread would live longer. But Frankl realized that the prisoners who help others by sharing their food had a reason to live—to help others. They had higher self-esteem than the prisoners who stole from others. They had meaning in their lives. They had a purpose to live. Frankl often used the Nietzsche quote, “He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how.” Frankl saw what he termed the last of human freedoms, the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any circumstances.


Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning after the Holocaust and created a new psychiatrist discipline, Logotherapy, which is still widely used today. He contends, "The more one aims for success and makes it a target, the more you will miss it. For happiness, like success, it cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as a by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.” In other words, Frankel emphasizes selflessness, which is a prerequisite to having meaning in your life, such as giving time and (or) valuables to help others.


In a TED Talk titled “It’s Time to Reclaim Religion,” Rabbi Sharon Brous tells us that “Our World is on Fire.” The world is divided because of extremism. Religions and other institutions can continue to increase divisiveness, or they can oppose extremism in all its forms to stop wars, oppression, radical individualism, and discrimination. If people, instead of being apathetic, told themselves, I can do something, we could live in a more peaceful, loving, and just world that values peace and dignity for all.


The Warren Berger (2018) book, The Book of Beautiful Questions, has a great quote to get people communicating, “What if I replace judgment with curiosity?” P.124. He posits that if people would only understand that just because someone knows that he or she is right, they may or may not be. If there is a disagreement about who is “right,” both sides could avoid an altercation if they ask the “other” person to explain their reasoning for their position because they are genuinely curious. And, of course, the person expressing their curiosity needs to be willing to listen and be willing to change their position if need be. (Berger 2018)


Joshua Becker (2022) says that one of the reasons for living a meaningful life is so that when you get to the end of your life, you are at peace with more satisfaction and less regret and guilt over how you spent your life. Also, a person living a meaningful life is peace-loving and promotes peace in others.


Joshua Becker (p. 157), posits that. fame, wealth, and power are not things to strive for in lieu of living a meaningful life. There are some things worth becoming famous for that can make a life more meaningful: kindness, perseverance, faithfulness, empathy, joy, encouragement, peacemaking, and loving. 

 

REFERENCES:


Becker, J. (2022) Things that matter: Overcoming distraction to pursue a more meaningful life. Penguin Random House WaterBrook.


Berger, W. (2018 The book of beautiful questions. Bloomsbury Publishing. (2018).


Brous, S. (2017). It’s time to reclaim religion. TED talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/sharon_brous_it_s_time_to_reclaim_religion


Bunyan, J. Updated by Vermilye, A. (2020) Pilgrim’s Progress. Brown Chair Books.


Drucker Institute 1999. Claremont Graduate Institute.  https://drucker.institute/about/drucker-archives/


Drucker, P. (1995) The future of industrial man. Routledge.


Frankl, V. (1959) Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to Logotherapy. Beacon Press.


Maciariello, J. Linkletter, K. (2011) Drucker’s lost art of management: Peter Drucker’s timeless vision for building effective organizations. McGraw-Hill.

 

Moss, J. (2017). Happiness Isn’t the absence of negative feelings. In Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (Ed). Emotional Intelligence: Happiness.


Rosen, J. 2024. The pursuit of happiness: How classical writers on virtue inspired the lives of the founders and defined America. Simon & Schuster.


Seligman, M. (2002) Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. Simon & Schuster.


Toubiana, M. Yair, G. (2101) The salvation of meaning in Peter Drucker’s oeuvre. Journal of Management History. Vol. 18. Iss. 2. 178-199.


Wellman, J. (2024) You only die once: How to make it to the end with no regrets. Voracious.

Alexis de Tocqueville and The Future of Democracy: Part II

By Karen Linkletter Ph.D. • June 21, 2025
In Part I of this series, I gave a brief overview of Alexis de Tocqueville’s background and project of evaluating American Democracy in the early 19 th century. In this new installment, I’d like to share de Tocqueville’s observations about the nature of equality in America and how what he saw might help us understand some of the challenges democracies face today. When de Tocqueville visited America in 1830-1831, the young nation was in the process of redefining equality both in social and political terms. As I noted earlier, the election of Andrew Jackson as president coincided with the expansion of suffrage to not just propertied white males, but to virtually all free white men. This was because as time passed from the founding of the nation in 1789, large property holdings were broken up and passed onto heirs (something de Tocqueville himself noted). In the younger frontier states, and even in the original colonies, governance required broader participation of the electorate. When the founders crafted the United States’ Constitution, they did not envision a democracy that involved a citizenry of the majority (and certainly not women or people of color). While de Tocqueville has much to say about the political conditions in America, it is his commentary on the social ramifications of this changing nature of equality that is most fascinating (and, perhaps, particularly instructive for us today). As wealth was distributed from the few to the many, the concept of a wealthy propertied class began to fade away. This development was exacerbated by the growth in early industry in the East (notably textile manufacturing) which fueled a rising middle class in the cities. As de Tocqueville notes, the early landed gentry families had all but disappeared as their children became doctors, merchants, and lawyers, “commingled with the general mass.” As a result, he comments, Americans embraced a “middling standard” with respect to education and social station. We continue to see echoes of this as most Americans today would claim to be “middle class” even though it is statistically impossible for everyone to be in the “middle.” Throughout his Democracy in America, de Tocqueville argues that the democratic obsession with equality has dramatic social and cultural consequences. What de Tocqueville refers to as “equality of condition” is not actual equality, but the belief in its primacy as an organizing principle for society. The concept of a meritocracy, where one rises or falls by one’s own efforts rather than by virtue of birth status or family heritage, was increasingly part of American culture by the 1830s; the concept of the “self-made man” was enshrined in popular culture from Benjamin Franklin’s work through the Horatio Alger stories of the 19 th century. De Tocqueville observed that this insistence on self-making, on individual achievement, rips at the social fabric of relationships and interconnectedness. Individualism leads a person to “sever himself from the mass of his fellows” and leave “society at large to itself” (98). As one can no longer distinguish oneself in society by position or family status, one must now achieve individual success or power in order to ‘be someone’. This is a byproduct of equality of condition, because as de Tocqueville argues, no person really wants to be the same as everyone else. Deep down, no one truly desires absolute equality on a social level. The question is: how does someone achieve, in Drucker’s terms, status and function if the old order of aristocracy and class structure is swept away? That was one of the primary questions that De Tocqueville pondered as he studied the emerging American Democracy of the early 1800s. One of the manifestations of the desire for status and function in a society obsessed with equality of conditions is an increasing focus on material success. De Tocqueville was fascinated by the “restlessness” with which Americans lived in such prosperity. This is one of my favorite passages from Democracy in America: In the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on; he plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops; he embraces a profession and gives it up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days’ vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness. Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which forever escapes him. De Tocqueville describes what we have, in various periods of time, called “keeping up with the Joneses” or “keeping pace” – the desire to match or supersede others’ social status and lifestyles. When the old systems of class stratification disappear, economic success often becomes a marker of achievement in democratic societies. This leads to not just consumerism, but also the “disquietude” that De Tocqueville noticed. Nothing is ever good enough, because one is always measuring oneself against the prosperity of neighbors, co-workers, and associates. Time is short, and “anxiety, fear, and regret” occupy the mind as we worry about what we are missing out on and what we haven’t achieved. As we think about current modern democratic societies, we can see how this obsession with equality of condition and its associated pressures on the need for status and function have only become more exaggerated. De Tocqueville’s work paved the way for Drucker’s argument against an “Economic Man”: a promise of equality based on either a capitalist or socialist system. Socioeconomic equality is not only impossible; it runs against human nature. Furthermore, Drucker’s theory of a knowledge society, a society based on education and knowledge as capital, makes this even more complicated. The more educated people not only make more money, but they also wield more influence politically and socially. Drucker saw this as early as the 1950s, but it is more obvious today. Now, democratic societies face the perception of an elite ruling class in government, academia, business, and other institutions. The “us” vs. “them” mentality pits this elite class against “the middle” – the average person who feels neglected and missing out, “weary of his bootless chase.” Because we have embraced equality as a passion, democracies are perceived as failures in their ability to uphold the promise of economic and social equality for all. The result is a global rise in populism, a rage against the elite establishment, and a desire to tear down institutions. We have seen this play out in political developments in Poland, Italy, Germany, and the United States. What is the solution to this predicament? Should we not pursue equality? Drucker made the case that free societies needed to provide avenues for status and function for all of its members, which meant that economic success and educational achievement could not be the only avenues for being part of society. If a portion of society sees itself as outcasts, as unable to ‘be someone’ or contribute meaningfully, they will perceive that democratic institutions have failed them. The only way for democratic societies to function is to uphold some faith in equality of condition for all. Once the belief in fundamental principles is lost, there is little glue to hold societies together. The key is how we define “equality”; as Drucker and de Tocqueville showed us, promises of economic equality are destined for failure. But democratic societies can afford all of its members human dignity and a sense of purpose. In the next installment, I’ll provide some of de Tocqueville’s suggestions for strengthening democratic institutions. Sources Tocqueville, A.D. and Reeve, H. (1835). Democracy in America. London: Saunders and Otley, to 1840.

El Emprendedor, El Emprendimiento, y La Innovación

By Byron Ramirez Ph.D. • June 11, 2025
Cada mañana, Isabel abría su pequeño taller antes del amanecer, aunque nadie aseguraba que llegaría un cliente. No heredó fortuna, solo poseía una idea: reinventar la forma de vestir a su comunidad. Mientras otros dormían, ella soñaba despierta, hilando futuro entre telas. Así comenzó su historia como emprendedora. El emprendedor está motivado por la posibilidad de que sus productos y servicios puedan agregar valor a la sociedad. Pero también está consciente de que, para operar de manera sostenible, necesita generar ganancias. Los emprendedores tienden a reevaluar constantemente sus productos o servicios, mientras examinan el mercado en el que compiten y la forma en que producen y distribuyen sus ofertas. Ellos entienden que, para sobrevivir la intensa rivalidad y competencia que enfrentan, deben encontrar formas de innovar continuamente. La necesidad de competir de manera efectiva conduce a que los emprendedores apuesten por la innovación, ya que esta también facilita la creación de valor. Este es el proceso denominado "destrucción creativa". Joseph Schumpeter acuñó este término para describir el proceso de cambio desordenado, donde las ideas, productos, empresas e industrias enteras son desplazadas por nuevas innovaciones. Schumpeter sostuvo que la principal contribución de los emprendedores a la sociedad es abogar por el cambio y la disrupción, y al hacerlo, ayudan a avanzar a la sociedad. Schumpeter estableció conceptualmente al "emprendedor como innovador", siendo el emprendedor una figura clave en el impulso del desarrollo económico. Schumpeter argumentó que la innovación es un factor crítico del cambio económico. Indicó que el cambio económico gira en torno a la innovación, las actividades emprendedoras y el poder del mercado. Schumpeter afirmó que el poder del mercado originado en la innovación podría proporcionar mejores resultados que la competencia de precios y la ‘mano invisible’. Además, sugirió que la innovación a menudo crea monopolios temporales, permitiendo ganancias anómalas que pronto serían disputadas por imitadores y rivales. Explicó que estos monopolios temporales eran necesarios para proporcionar el incentivo requerido para que otras empresas desarrollaran nuevos productos y procesos. Por consiguiente, el emprendedor introduce cosas nuevas, procesos y perspicacia empresarial con el propósito de transformar innovaciones en bienes económicos. Y el emprendedor está dispuesto a asumir el riesgo asociado con introducir el cambio. Las actividades innovadoras de los emprendedores alimentan un proceso de ‘destrucción creativa’ al causar disturbios constantes en un sistema económico en equilibrio, creando así oportunidades para generar ingresos y beneficios. Por lo tanto, el emprendimiento interrumpe el flujo estacionario del sistema económico y de esta manera inicia y sostiene el proceso de desarrollo económico. Al ajustarse a un nuevo equilibrio, se generan otras innovaciones y más emprendedores entran al sistema económico, introduciendo nuevos productos y servicios, fomentando así el progreso. De manera similar, las empresas emprendedoras participan en la destrucción creativa y así logran captar una parte del mercado al reemplazar empresas que han fracasado en producir productos y servicios valiosos. El proceso de destrucción creativa incentiva a las empresas a desarrollar nuevos productos, servicios y procesos; de lo contrario, no sobrevivirán a largo plazo. El emprendimiento abarca la entrada al mercado de nuevas empresas, pero también respalda el desarrollo de actividades innovadoras en empresas existentes que les permiten crear valor continuo. En este sentido, la innovación puede caracterizarse como el desarrollo de un nuevo producto, servicio o proceso a medida que la empresa emprende nuevas combinaciones de los factores de producción. La innovación es un proceso complejo y dinámico que requiere compromiso, recursos e inversión. Muchas veces, las empresas modifican su modelo de negocio existente, reorganizando la forma en que desarrollan un producto o la manera en que entregan nuevas funcionalidades o servicios a sus clientes. Las modificaciones a un proceso organizacional existente, a un modelo de negocio existente, o incluso a un método de prestación de servicios, son todos ejemplos de cómo se aprovecha la innovación para buscar una mayor efectividad. La innovación puede caracterizarse como el desarrollo de un nuevo proceso o producto (o servicio) que satisface nuevos requerimientos y/o necesidades del mercado existentes. Drucker nos dice: “La innovación debe centrarse en una necesidad específica que satisface, en un resultado final específico que produce.” (Drucker, 1985). La innovación permite que productos, procesos, servicios, tecnologías e ideas más eficaces estén disponibles para los mercados y la sociedad. Como resultado, la innovación es utilizada por la empresa como un medio para satisfacer las necesidades de los consumidores; como una herramienta para competir con otras empresas en un mercado existente; y como un instrumento para ingresar a un nuevo mercado. Por lo tanto, la innovación incrementa conceptualmente la probabilidad de que la empresa logre eficiencia económica a corto plazo, y puede permitirle establecer una posición más competitiva a largo plazo. No obstante, la empresa se enfrenta a limitaciones internas (por ejemplo, el costo de insumos) y limitaciones externas (por ejemplo, la competencia en el mercado) que hacen que sea difícil subsistir. Además, los rendimientos marginales decrecientes influyen en la capacidad de producción de la empresa. La innovación puede considerarse esencial para el éxito de las empresas y para la supervivencia económica a largo plazo. Según algunos académicos, la innovación puede ayudar a mejorar la supervivencia a largo plazo de una empresa, ya que puede mejorar su oferta de línea de productos/servicios al tiempo que le permite establecer una ventaja competitiva sobre otras empresas (Antonelli, 2003; Lundvall, 2007; Porter, 1990; Schumpeter, 1936; Teece y Pisano, 1994). Vale la pena señalar que la empresa que elige innovar lo hace basándose principalmente en la información que tiene sobre las preferencias, deseos y necesidades de los consumidores en su mercado. En otras palabras, la empresa innova porque reconoce la oportunidad y el valor de satisfacer las necesidades y deseos de los consumidores a corto plazo y ve la inversión en innovación como un medio para también posicionarse eficazmente a largo plazo. Drucker nos recuerda: “La innovación sistemática y con propósito comienza con el análisis de las oportunidades” (Drucker, 1985). Y dado que la empresa enfrenta competencia, la innovación se convierte en una vía a través de la cual la empresa puede diferenciar sus productos o servicios. La innovación es la materialización exitosa de una idea útil, donde la idea es comercializada. La innovación también permite a la empresa reconfigurar sus recursos de manera más eficiente, y por lo tanto le permite aumentar su productividad, con la implicación de que esto puede ayudar a aumentar sus ganancias. La innovación ha ayudado a construir empresas y a hacer crecer y desarrollar industrias. Por ejemplo, hace apenas dos décadas, las empresas tenían dificultades para gestionar la gran cantidad de información y datos relacionados con sus interacciones continuas con los clientes. Desde 1999, Salesforce ha revolucionado la forma en que las organizaciones hacen seguimiento de las interacciones con los clientes y gestionan sus datos de ventas. Desde su fundación, Salesforce ha desarrollado múltiples versiones de sus productos, dando lugar a un sofisticado software empresarial basado en la nube que respalda la gestión de relaciones con los clientes (CRM). Las soluciones innovadoras de Salesforce incluyen la automatización de fuerza de ventas, servicio y soporte al cliente, automatización de marketing y comercio digital. Salesforce ha permitido a grandes organizaciones automatizar sus procesos de ventas y marketing y volverse cada vez más eficientes, al tiempo que se convierten en gestores eficaces de los datos e información de los clientes. La innovación no es un proceso lineal. Por el contrario, es un proceso altamente iterativo de reconsiderar muchos factores internos técnicos y operativos, y factores externos, con una interpretación en constante flujo de cómo la empresa podría continuar desarrollando y ofreciendo productos y servicios. La empresa en la que se fomenta la innovación debe apoyar las diversas iteraciones, interacciones y transacciones necesarias para respaldar los esfuerzos de innovación. El emprendedor, que no le teme a la incertidumbre ni al riesgo, es capaz de gestionar este proceso dinámico.  La innovación que aborda una necesidad o deseo del mercado aporta valor a la sociedad. Sin embargo, la innovación requiere que las empresas analicen sistemáticamente las oportunidades que se presentan. Por lo tanto, el emprendedor y la empresa emprendedora deben desarrollar la capacidad de observar y percibir las necesidades cambiantes de las personas. El emprendedor debe entonces centrarse en ofrecer una solución que satisfaga un conjunto específico de necesidades o deseos. Esto implica que la innovación debe ser manejada con propósito. Y también requiere que el emprendedor no solo sea disciplinado, sino que esté dispuesto a invertir en la adquisición de conocimiento que pueda aplicarse productivamente. Tanto el emprendedor como la empresa emprendedora deben reevaluar continuamente sus productos y servicios, analizar el mercado en el que compiten y reconsiderar la forma en que producen y distribuyen sus productos y servicios. Al adoptar la innovación, abogarán por el cambio y la disrupción, y ayudarán a avanzar a la sociedad. Referencias Antonelli, C. (2003). The economics of innovation, new technologies and structural change: studies in global competition series. New York, NY: Routledge. Drucker, P. (1985). Innovation and entrepreneurship: practice and principles. New York, NY: Harper Business. Lundvall, B. Å. (2007). National innovation systems—analytical concept and development tool. Industry and innovation, 14(1), 95-119. Porter, M. E. (1990). The Competitive advantage of nations: creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Simon and Schuster Inc. Schumpeter, J.A. (1936). The Theory of Economic Development, Second Edition. Cambridge: Harvard University press. Teece, D., & Pisano, G. (1994). The dynamic capabilities of firms: an introduction. Industrial and corporate change, 3(3), 537-556.

Alexis de Tocqueville and The Future of Democracy: Part I

By Karen Linkletter Ph.D. • May 13, 2025
In today’s political environment, particularly in the United States, there is much discussion about the future of democracy. Globally, traditional democratic forms of government are being called into question. Is democracy no longer effective in its ability to represent “the people”? Have democratic governments been hijacked by elite, moneyed interests? Are our institutions no longer effective and in need of some kind of reset or reinvention? The increasing appeal of authoritarian regimes, driven by populist anger, has been the subject of the work of many political scientists and observers (Silver and Fetterolf, 2024, Praet, 2024, Rhodes, 2022). Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) sought to understand the essence of democracy. His motivations and observations can perhaps be instructive to us today as we wrestle with the nature of democracy in the modern era. Alexis de Tocqueville was a member of the French aristocracy in the era immediately following the French Revolution. The revolution, which began in 1789, featured the rejection of the monarchy through violent spectacle, including public beheadings via the newly developed guillotine. Alexis’s father was part of the French government and was briefly imprisoned during the Reign of Terror. Nevertheless, he was sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. In fact, many members of the aristocracy in de Tocqueville’s France understood the motivations behind the revolution and sought to ensure that subsequent governments addressed the extreme economic disparities that were exposed by the violent events of the Reign of Terror. Alexis was educated in the aristocratic tradition, studying political philosophy and theory, history, and law. He was well-versed in the Enlightenment philosophy that influenced the framers of the American Constitution, particularly Montesquieu. Montesquieu argued for separation of powers in governance, which derived from his belief in the human capacity not only for greatness, but also for corruption. This tension between virtue and vice, which Montesquieu saw as a universal condition of humankind throughout time, required guardrails to slow down or inhibit abuse of power. Following the establishment of the French Consulate in 1799, Napoleon rose to lead the French Empire in 1804. After his defeat in the Battle of Waterloo, France restored the monarchy to Charles X. However, this was a constitutional monarchy rather than one based on the rights of heredity. In 1830, France overthrew King Charles X of the House of Bourbon, growing critical of his broken promises for economic relief from taxation to pay off the debt of the Napoleonic Wars. Charles was replaced by his cousin, Louis Philippe, of the House of Orleans. Louis Philippe sought to reform the monarchy, recognizing freedoms such as voting rights. Referred to as the “Citizen King”, he would be one of the last kings to represent France. In essence, France was beginning to understand the inevitable: the past world of a hereditary monarch claiming absolute authority was over, and the constitutional monarchy seemingly could not deliver on the promises of egalitarianism made in 1789. But what would the new form of governance look like? This was not clear. Even though the country had a reformist government, constitutional monarchy still retained elite status/class distinctions to maintain social order.  Alexis de Tocqueville was 25 when Louis Philippe was installed as the Citizen King in the July Revolution of 1830. Believing that democracy would inevitably come to France, de Tocqueville wanted to study that form of government. What did it look like? How could it be a stable form of government? Because the United States of America was the earliest experiment in democracy, de Tocqueville petitioned the king to travel to America to study that country. In particular, de Tocqueville convinced the king to let him study the American penitentiary movement. One of the areas of reform pursued in France was prison reform (prisons in France were notoriously horrible). At the time, America was in the middle of its own reform movement, including the penitentiary system of prison reform. The concept of a penitentiary was brand new. The idea behind it was that, instead of rotting in prison forever, you would be reformed and released back into society if you were truly sorry, or penitent for, your crimes. De Tocqueville visited America in 1831-1832. In addition to prison reform, he witnessed many remarkable developments in American democracy. It was President Andrew Jackson’s first term, which involved substantial political upheaval in America. Jackson was the first President elected “of the people.” He was not a Virginian or New England “blue blood,” like all the presidents before him had been. Jackson was from the frontier, and had built his name on a military career, most notably in the War of 1812 at the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson’s election coincided with the expansion of suffrage to most white males regardless of their property ownership. Jackson was understandably a controversial President; his election gave birth to the Whig party as a political alternative. His fight against the Bank of the U.S. placed him at odds with a rapidly developing commercial middle class. During de Tocqueville’s visit, Americans were participating in a growing reform culture. Abolition, or anti-slavery, was building steam in the nation. William Lloyd Garrison published his first issue of The Liberator, an important abolitionist newspaper that de Tocqueville read. There were religious revivals, known as the Second Great Awakening, and urban reform movements targeting prostitution, temperance, and of course, prison reform, the purported reason for de Tocqueville’s visit. The discovery of gold on Cherokee land in Georgia in 1828 snowballed into the event eventually known as the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act made such events legal, and de Tocqueville personally witnessed the removal of the Chocktaw tribe. On a lighter note, this was also a time of incredible technological development. Railroad development and land speculation was beginning, McCormick had just patented his reaper, and de Tocqueville saw the newly opened Erie Canal. While de Tocqueville studied the nature of America’s young democracy nearly 200 years ago, we can leverage his observations with our own experience of facing a changing world where the nature of democracy is being questioned globally. The move towards increasing authoritarianism and populist movements calls into question whether democracy is government by the people or by the elite. Can de Tocqueville’s observations help us assess how we might keep democracies intact or make them more effective? In our next installment, I’ll look at de Tocqueville’s specific observations regarding democracy – particularly those related to the nature of equality. Sources Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de (1949). The spirit of the laws. New York: Hafner Pub. Co. Praet, J. (2024). Bringing authoritarianism into the limelight: the implications for populist radical right ideology. Journal of Political Ideologies, 1-23. Rhodes, B. (2022). After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made. Random House. Silver, L. and Fetterolf, J. (2024). Who likes authoritarianism, and how do they want to change their government? Pew Research Center, February 28. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes-authoritarianism-and-how-do-they-want-to-change-their-government/ Tocqueville, A.D. and Reeve, H. (1835). Democracy in America. London: Saunders and Otley, to 1840.
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