[white-flame]

All these peer responses actually agree with you.

Why would people pursue noble, philosophical causes? Because it makes them happy to see those pursued. Why would somebody want the world around them to be better? Because it makes them happy to see the world be a better place. Why would somebody sacrifice of themselves to see a loved one better off? That's kind of the definition of love, that they're happy that their loved one is better off.

This gets more tautological than philosophical.

[Retra]

You're trivializing people's motivations. People don't do things simply because it makes them happy. They also do them because they feel compelled to, even if it would not make them happy. People are even sometimes forced to do things because they don't have any other option, or because they don't know of anything better to do. Reducing all of this to varying degrees of happiness is sloppy and usually inaccurate.

[white-flame]

Like I said, it gets tautological. What is the difference between a compulsion, a desire, and a want? All could be defined as "that which would make me happy". And as fully acknowledged in some of my descriptions above, it's not that one ends up better off, but that one appreciates something happening for its own sake. All of these seem to be equivalent. None of it is trivialization, it's simply a cloud of motivation in which there aren't easy-to-draw lines of distinction.