and I have yet to find a passage in Aristotle suggesting we should try to maximize or optimize our happiness, which is what this project seems all about. There is the highest form of happiness, intellectual virtue, and a secondary kind of happiness, moral virtue. But The Philosopher never gives advice about how to get more and more happiness, as if it's a commodity. It is caused or constituted by reasoning well in a serious life, not necessarily involving others at each moment, but friendship is important for some portion of it.

Avoiding unhappiness is important, getting a bunch of happiness is not, and it's unseemly.