The Conquest of Happiness

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A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. Bertrand Russell’s book ‘The Conquest of Happiness’ (1930) attempts to analyse the conditions for happiness in our modern world, focusing on the mindsets of the unhappy and the happy person and how they differ.

THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS ACCORDING BERTRAND RUSSELL THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS ACCORDING BERTRAND RUSSELL

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. No great achievement is possible without persistent work, so absorbing and so difficult that little energy is left over for the more strenuous kinds of amusement, except such as serve to recuperate physical energy during holidays, of which Alpine climbing may serve as the best example.Liberation from the tyranny of early beliefs and affections is the first step towards happiness for these victims of maternal ‘virtue’. Very few people can resist saying malicious things about their acquaintances, and even on occasion about their friends; yet when people hear that anything against themselves, they are filled with indignant amazement. For many, just such catastrophic events as the loss of a job have been the catalysts that allowed them to finally step out of their comfort zone and change their lives to be more interesting and meaningful. Stand in a busy street during working hours, or on a main thoroughfare at a week-end, or at a dance of an evening; empty your mind of your own ego, and let the personalities of the strangers about you take possession of you one after another. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell | Perlego [PDF] The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell | Perlego

This man is perpetually incurring his own disapproval, which, if he is religious, he interprets as the the disapproval of God. Not only is it irrational, but it also makes the person feel inferior to others, which then causes symptoms similar to envy: the desire to hurt those he considers morally superior and to see them fall into sin themselves.

Using social media, every young person can connect to any number of others who have exactly the same interests, no matter what these interests are. Through such interests a man comes to feel himself part of the stream of life, not a hard separate entity like a billiard-ball, which can have no relation with other such entities except that of collision. Since no man can be omnipotent, a life dominated wholly by love of power can hardly fail, sooner or later, to meet with obstacles that cannot be overcome. The immense majority of even the noblest persons' actions have self-regarding motives, nor is this to be regretted, since if it were otherwise, the human race could not survive.

The Conquest of Happiness. By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. London The Conquest of Happiness. By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. London

He does not, of course, abstain from any of these pleasures, but they are all poisoned for him by the feeling that they degrade him. When you have looked for some time steadily at the worst possibility and have said to yourself with real conviction, ‘Well, after all, that would not matter so very much’, you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent. Instead of focusing only on what goes wrong in our lives, such interests allow us to get away for a while from the things that bother us and find peace and satisfaction in another activity. Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days. The most intelligent young people in Western countries tend to have that kind of unhappiness that comes of finding no adequate employment for their best talents.The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one.

The Conquest of Happiness | Bertrand Russell | Taylor

In such cases, the bad fit between the individual and the social environment becomes a source of loneliness, isolation and anxiety. After a sufficient amount of drink, men begin to weep, and to lament how unworthy they are, morally, of the devotion of their mothers. Merely to realize the causes of one's own envious feelings is to take a long step towards curing them. If we really try to imagine how bad this would be, in all the detail we can imagine, we will probably see that it is all survivable.All this makes zest more difficult to retain, for the continual restraint tends to produce weariness and boredom. I have frequently experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I have emerged from it not by means of any philosophy, but owing to some imperative necessity of action.