What is the most important goal every person should have? Read Aristotle’s Ethics: happiness. He argues that this is attained ultimately through attaining the right habits of action—and thinking. These are called virtues. But wealth and honor or fame are the usual alternative contenders people assume will make them happy. To some extent both are justly desired, and to the extent honor or just recognition seems unobtainable, men revert to wealth as both standard and goal. Short of these, we pretend that distracted leisure (beach vacations and hobbies and consuming entertainment) make us happy. And to some extent they do too.