Happiness can be alcohol, dice, and drugs. Happiness can also be food, family, and accomplishments. They are both regarded as sources of joy, while people’s attitudes towards them vary. Some, while focusing on the former one, assert that happiness destroys one’s life. However, when happiness is sought as a goal, it does not bring detrimental effects to people’s lives but benefits instead. 
 
The pursuit of happiness promotes inner peace. As opposed to what critics may think, that seeking happiness is an act of a maniac chase for fame and wealth, it is, as proposed by Epicurus, really a state of no pain. Hedonism, the philosophic school resulting from Epicurus’ ideas, placed happiness and pain in a binary existence and stated that they are mutually exclusive. Thus, the will to be happy equals the reluctance to feel hurt. In this case, the status of being happy is what every creature is aiming for. Even lower forms of life exhibit behaviors of pursuing happiness: while microorganisms discover that the nutrition supply in one location depletes, they move toward a new location where foods are abundant and competitors are less; while worms in like of damp environments become exposed to light, they wiggle themselves to places with shades. What they are doing is to avoid pain, which is not being able to get enough food or being exposed to undesired surroundings. What humans seek to do is the same but in a more complicated sense. The most fundamental logic of gaining pleasure is explained in Robert Frost Wallace’s speech, This is Water. In his talk, he proposes that throughout the annoying and repetitive routine of humans, we should focus less on the troubling aspects, and seek the beauties of our lives, such as understanding each other’s situations and being compassionate. This is a fit to the definition and idea of hedonism, that people should avoid feeling pain while they live. Wallace is not trying to avoid pain by indulging himself in other activities to entirely change his life. He is just aiming to alter his mindset so everything he sees now contains beauty. On the contrary, not making efforts to make us feel happy is what will bring detrimental effects, because we would at last be overwhelmed with all the negative aspects of life and get depressed. Hence, the act of consciously making us feel happier makes us more optimistic, therefore boosting our life experience.
 
When happiness becomes a goal of a group of people, huge progress can be made in society. As an extension of hedonism, utilitarianism aims to produce the most extent of joy not only for a single being but also for society. While efforts are made to achieve this goal, society will develop as propelled by people’s motivation to seek a better life. This goal is written in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Before such words were written, the Americans were oppressed by the British Government, forced to pay high taxes but deprived of any rights to speak in the British Parliament. After that, the thirteen colonies united, won the war with Britain, and established their own state constitutions and thus the republic. Before the war, the residents were not satisfied with their current status: they wanted rights as citizens or even merely as humans, but their requests were denied. They felt the agony of being oppressed, the agony of not being heard, and the agony of wanting to change. Thus, propelled by the need to seek happiness, they started the war with Britain and won in the end. This event is only an example of numerous similar events, starting from the Glorious Revolution in the UK, to the French Revolution, and even to the modern 1911 Revolution in China. All were propelled by the will of people to change their status and to be happy. Without these movements, the world could still be stuck in the vortex of autarchy and monarchy. People’s voices would never be heard. Thus, throughout the attempt to ensure most people in society happiness, changes to society will be made, and it will finally result in a huge boost in human history instead of having detrimental effects on the world. 
 
People on the other side, though, would still argue that the pursuit of happiness through means such as taking drugs, gambling, and excessive drinking destroys one's life. It is true that those actions would destroy one’s health and family and even take their life. However, those acts should not be regarded as happiness. People feel the pain while conducting such activities. Smokers are aware of how the fumes intrude their lungs while they light up their cigarettes. Gamblers feel hurt as they witness all of their money being taken by the person on the opposing side of the table. Drug users do not take drugs because they want to. They do so because the aches in their bone caused by the addiction effects dominate their brains. Thus, their actions do not satisfy the definition of being without pain. They are in fact, trading valuable aspects of their life, in pain, to satiate their physical yen. That, by definition, violates the nature of being happy.