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He first defines our ultimate goal—the very purpose of being alive, the thing we’re shooting for—the same way a young swimmer might identify “Olympic gold medal” as a target that would mean “maximum success.” Aristotle says that thing is: happiness. That’s the telos,4 or goal, of being human. His argument for this is pretty solid, I think. There are things we do for some other reason—like, we work in order to earn money, or we exercise in order to get stronger. There are also good things we want, like health, honor, or friendships, because they make us happy. But happiness is the top dog on the list of “things we desire”—it has no aim other than itself. It’s the thing we want to be, just… to be it. Technically, in the original Greek, Aristotle actually uses the nebulous word “eudaimonia,” which sometimes gets translated as “happiness” and sometimes as “flourishing.”5 I prefer “flourishing,” because that feels like a bigger deal than “happiness.” We’re talking about the ultimate objective for humans here, and a flourishing person sounds like she’s more fulfilled, complete, and impressive than a “happy” person.
How to Be Perfect
Michael Schur
Trump was not done. Nor was he satisfied that it sufficed for the United States, the top nuclear power in the world, to issue an unprecedented threat. Within the White House but not publicly, Trump proposed sending a tweet declaring that he was ordering all U.S. military dependents—thousands of the family members of 28,500 troops—out of South Korea. The act of removing the dependents would almost certainly be read in North Korea as a signal that the United States was seriously preparing for war. On December 4, McMaster had received a warning at the White House. Ri Su-yong, the vice chairman of the Politburo, had told intermediaries “that the North would take the evacuation of U.S. civilians as a sign of imminent attack.” Withdrawing dependents was one of the last cards to play. The possible tweets scared the daylights out of the Pentagon leadership—Mattis and Dunford. A declaration of intent to do so from the U.S. commander in chief on Twitter was almost unthinkable. A tweet about ordering all military dependents out of South Korea could provoke Kim. The leader of a country like North Korea that only recently had acquired nuclear weapons and had many fewer nukes than a potential adversary could be trigger-happy. A use-it-or-lose-it mind-set could take hold. The tweet did not go out. But Trump wouldn’t drop the matter, and raised the issue of withdrawing U.S. military dependents with Senator Graham. On December 3, before Trump and Kim’s war of words, and after a North Korean ICBM test, Graham had advocated removing military families from South Korea. “It’s crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. He suggested making South Korea an unaccompanied tour for service members and said, “I think it’s now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.” Now, a month later, when Trump called, Graham seemed to have had a change of heart. “You need to think long and hard before you make that decision,” Graham said. “Because when you make that decision, it is hard to go back. The day you do that is the day you rock the South Korean stock market and the Japanese economy. That is a big frigging deal.” “You think I should wait?” Trump asked. “Mr. President,” Graham said, “I don’t think you should ever start this process unless you’re ready to go to war.”
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