The Conquest of Happiness — Bertrand Russell
“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”
Start — 7/18/16 Finish — 7/23/16
Directives:
· Don’t let your happiness be bound up entirely in your personal circumstances, causing you to demand of life more than it has to give. Demanding too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible.
· Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
· Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work or has no consistent purpose can hardly achieve self-respect.
· A man who has once seen what makes a great person can no longer be happy if he allows himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, or dreading what fate has in stores for him. For he sees both the brevity of his own life and his connection to the lives that come after his own.
· The man who does nothing to distract his mind and allows his troubles to acquire complete control over him is acting unwisely and making himself less fit to cope with his troubles when the moment for action arrives.
Notes:
Causes of Unhappiness
o Obsessive self-absorption or focus on oneself
§ The sinner — clings to some ethical code which he fails to live in accordance with, keeping him constantly in a state of disapproval of himself
§ The narcissist — vanity in excess prevents him from being genuinely interested in others or external disciplines, which leads to failure and disappointment
§ The megalomaniac — love of power in excess prevents anything satisfying from being achieved, as he always moves his desires onto grander things
o A typical unhappy man has been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction and has come to value it more than any other; he thus gives his life a one-sided direction, sacrificing other parts of his nature for this one thing
o When we easily acquire things for which we feel only a very moderate desire, we immediately conclude that fulfilling this desire does not bring happiness, and that we live in a perpetual cycle of purposelessly fulfilling these wants
o Much unhappiness is caused by trying to treat our sorrows with methods from an older time OR when we cling to the standards of an older time when our environments and stimuli around us have drastically changed
o The struggle for success
§ The real fear is not that you won’t be able to feed yourself if you fail, but rather that you won’t outshine your neighbors
§ So long as a man both desires success and whole-heartedly believes it is his job to pursue it (and those who don’t are lesser creatures), his life will remain too concentrated and anxious to be happy
§ While success and money can increase happiness to a point, they are only two ingredients to the mix, ones we usually pay too high a price for
§ We’ve infused competition into both work and leisure, leading us to a constant nervous fatigue and an inability to enjoy quiet times
Emotions as Obstacles to Happiness
o Boredom and excitement
§ We are certainly less bored than our ancestors were, but now we fear it more; we believe it to be unnatural, and thus try to avoid it by pursuing some type of excitement at every moment
§ A life too full of excitement is exhausting, and will need continually stronger stimuli to give the thrill that has come to be thought an essential part of pleasure
§ No great achievement is possible without persistent work, so demanding that little energy is left over for more draining kinds of amusement; boredom or monotony, in a sense, thus becomes a required ingredient in a fruitful life
o Fatigue
§ Nervous fatigue in the modern world is often caused by: noise (and the subconscious effort to stop hearing it), the constant presence of strangers, fear of being late, fear of getting fired
§ Most of the fatigue of strenuous work comes from worrying about the work when you should be resting; a lot of this could be avoided by only thinking about troubles when there is some purpose (or degree of control) in doing so
§ The things we do are not as important as we naturally suppose, and our successes and failures don’t really matter that much — we have to remember these ideas when confronting ordinary troubles
§ When some misfortune threatens, deliberately consider what is the very worst that could possibly happen, then give yourself sound reasons that it wouldn’t be that terrible after all; confronting the nervous worry head on with rational thinking can extinguish it altogether
o Envy
§ The envious person, instead of deriving pleasure from what he has, derives pain from what others have; if he can, he tries to deprive others of their advantages
§ The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is poisonous — when anything pleasant happens it should be enjoyed in itself, without stopping to think that it isn’t as good as something else that may be happening to someone else
§ You can’t escape from envy by means of success alone, for there will always be in history or legend some person even more successful than you
o Paranoia and Persecution Mania
§ When we are forced to admit that we have faults (like when we hear gossip about ourselves), we take this fact far too seriously
§ We have an amplified conception of our own merits which hurts to question
§ Four maxims for prevention:
· Remember your motives aren’t always as altruistic as they seem to yourself
· Don’t overestimate your own merits
· Don’t expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself
· Don’t imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any desire to persecute you
Causes of Happiness
o Work that involves a specialized skill — provided that we can enjoy exercising that skill without demanding applause from everyone
o Belief in a cause
o Absorption in a hobby
o A friendly interest in people and things — finding amusement in other people’s idiosyncrasies, and to like people without a sense of duty or effort
o Impersonal interests — the conscious mind needs a rest from the constant worry, which can be achieved by interests that are not connected with one’s responsibilities, practicality, or emotional fatigue
o Zest
§ While life is too short to be interested in everything, it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days and avoid self-absorption
§ We have to turn our attention outward so that we can later find within us the most varied and interesting combinations of our experiences
§ Our interests and tastes have to fit into the general framework of life — our health, the people we love, and the society we live in
o Affection
§ Reciprocal affection and admiration give way to self-confidence, fearlessness, and zest in general
§ In the best kind of affection, a man hopes for a new happiness rather than for escape from an old unhappiness
§ Our interest in another person should be a means to a common good, not to each other’s good
o Family
§ To the person who has children and grandchildren and loves them with a natural affection, the future becomes inherently important — saving him from a sense of futility
§ In times of failure or disgrace, parents provide a consolation and a security not to be found anywhere else
o Work
§ The boredom felt while doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that is felt when you have nothing to do at all
§ Functions as an outlet for ambition and a continuity of purpose
§ All skilled work can be pleasurable, so long as the skill required is either variable or capable of indefinite improvement….and has a constructive element
§ Remember that work that is worth doing can be done even by those who do not deceive themselves either to its importance or as to the ease with which it can be done
Phrases/Quotes:
· Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a laborer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.
· Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
· Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.
· For all these reasons a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase.
· The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.
· When you find yourself inclined to brood on anything, no matter what, the best plan always is to think about it even more than you naturally would until at last its morbid fascination is worn off.
· The essentials of human happiness are simple, so simple that sophisticated people cannot bring themselves to admit what it is they really lack.
· Nothing is so dull as to be encased in self, nothing so exhilarating as to have attention and energy directed outward.
· The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties, and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.
· The man to whom the desire for applause is the primary motive, has no force within himself urging him to a particular kind of expression, and could therefore just as well do work of some wholly different kind. Such a man, if he fails to win applause by his art, had better give it up.
· One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
· We are all prone to the malady of the introvert, who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.
· For those who make themselves the slaves of unvarying routine are generally actuated by fear of a cold outer world, and by the feeling that they will not bump into it if they walk along the same paths that they have along on previous days.
· Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps most fatal to true happiness.
· For important as parenthood is as an element of life, it is not satisfying if it is treated as the whole of life, and the unsatisfied parent is likely to be an emotionally grasping parent.
· All our affections are at the mercy of death, which may strike down those whom we love at any moment. It is therefore necessary that our lives should not have that narrow intensity which puts the whole meaning and purpose of our life at the mercy of accident.
· In a thousand ways the failure of purely personal hopes may be unavoidable, but if personal aims have been part of larger hopes for humanity, there is not the same utter defeat when failure comes.
· The energy that such people waste on trivial troubles would be sufficient, if more wisely directed, to make and unmake empires.
· Every civilized man or woman has, I suppose, some pictures of himself or herself, and is annoyed when anything happens that seems to spoil this picture. The best cure is to have not only one picture, but a whole gallery, and to select the one appropriate to the incident in question.
Thoughts:
Bertrand Russell suggests this piece of work as a cure for the “ordinary day-to-day unhappiness from which most people in civilized countries suffer.” And it certainly is a multi-faceted approach to changing the way we think about most aspects of life that trouble us. Russell’s prose is clear and easy to jump right into. In many ways it felt like an even more accessible piece of philosophy than Meditations, and definitely much less redundant at that. I found myself nodding in amused agreement much of the time as I read — some of what Russell advises seems so logical and sensible that you look at your current way of thinking and feel somewhat a fool.
Russell first takes the reader through what he sees to be the main causes of unhappiness. I think the running theme throughout the book was that excessive self-absorption is at the root of most of our problems. Whenever we believe ourselves to be too important, whenever we take ourselves or our work so seriously that failure becomes terrifying, or whenever we focus on acquiring money and success for our sole benefit, we throw ourselves into a cycle of temporary fulfillment and inevitable disappointment. Poisonous feelings like envy are largely caused by a flawed framework of thinking — to think constantly in terms of comparisons (i.e. I have something good, but someone else has something better) is to completely remove the joy and pleasure out of the things in front of us that we do have. And ironically a fear of boredom leads us to seek out ever more thrilling excitements, sort of like a drug addict who needs heavier and heavier doses to satisfy his urges. Most of the fatigue and unhappiness generated by modern life largely comes from this over-emphasis on the self, on how other people view us, and a refusal to stop thinking about things that are out of our control.
Similarly, the things that drive most of our happiness are rooted in things external to ourselves. I think Russell suggests that a lot of joy merely comes from distractions or impersonal interests that aren’t necessarily productive. In this sense, he echoes much of what Tim Kreider talked about when he believed that “laziness” or unproductive play is an essential part of doing our productive work well. But besides this, we should have wide and varied interests, and be genuinely intrigued by the people the universe has chosen to place us with. When we show interest and affection to those around us for no necessary benefit to ourselves, we will find that we will naturally receive it in kind. When we combined these wide interests and affection with purposeful work and loving relations between family and friends, we have much of what comprises true happiness.
This book is filled with such simple, timeless advice, I’d readily recommend it to anyone. It really makes you want to start taking yourself and your trivial troubles less seriously, and actually try to make more effort in being interested in the people and things outside yourself. If we can somehow get out of our own heads, stop looking at the world as something meant to solely benefit us, and actually see ourselves connected to those who came before us as much as those who come after us… then happiness will seem much more within our reach.
