In an earlier post I described the background to the great philosopher Bertrand Russell's self-help classic The Conquest of Happiness and outlined his tips for avoiding misery. In this article we will find out how he thought we could actually conquer happiness, as promised by his title.
Bertrand Russell on How
to Conquer Happiness
Having told us
how to avoid the thorns of unhappiness, Russell moves on to the question of how
to enjoy the flowers of happiness. His
personal garden contains six such roses: zest, affection, the family, work,
impersonal interests and the right balance between effort and resignation.
1)
Take a lively and friendly interest in a lot of things
“Zest is the
most universal and distinctive mark of happy men”.
‘Zest’ is Russell’s word for the first way to conquer
happiness, by taking a friendly interest in things and people, and having the
capacity to enjoy things for their own sake. Sherlock Holmes is the example
Russell gives of someone with zest, presumably for his enthusiasm and level of
interest in things; Tigger might be also be chosen as a contrasting example,
for his energy and sense of fun.
Zest is a very
great good. “The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of
happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses
one thing he can fall back upon another.”
But you need wisdom to be appropriately zestful. If you are wise, your
activities will complement each other, and be neither too similar nor too
contradictory. The way you exercise zest will also depend on your
circumstances. “Some passions can be indulged to almost any extent … others
cannot. The man, let us say, who loves chess, if he happens to be a bachelor
with independent means, need not restrict his passion in any degree, whereas if
he has a wife and children and no independent means, he will have to restrict
it severely”
2) Be
affectionate
“Affection in
the sense of a genuine reciprocal interest for two persons in each other, not
solely as means to each other's good, is one of the most important elements of
real happiness”
Being
affectionate and receiving affection can bring great happiness. Russell doesn’t
think this needs much argument (and you may well agree). But it is also true
that many people are no good at giving or receiving affection. Perhaps you are
one of them. How could you have more affection in your life? Russell suggests
four strategies:-
a) Appear to
demand as little affection as possible – that way you will receive more of it.
“Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those
who seem least to demand it.”
b) Give
affection as part of the expression of your zest for life.
c) Aim for
reciprocal affection
“The man whose
ego is so enclosed within steel walls that ... enlargement of it is impossible
misses the best that life has to offer, however successful he may be in his
career… It reaches its acme with romantic love and with parental love”
d) Do not be
cautious in love. “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most
fatal to true happiness.”
3) Be a parent, and a good one.
“I have found
the happiness of parenthood greater than any other that I have experienced”.
When talking
of the family, Russell is thinking mainly of parenthood. Parenthood can be
wonderful, says Russell, because it provides extension of yourself, in a sense
prolonging your life beyond death. Parenthood
also gives you a unique and
“intimate blend of power and tenderness”. Yet, he asserts, in nine cases
out of ten, parent/child relationships can be
a source of unhappiness to at least one party. This tragic paradox is
best tackled in two ways. Firstly, give sufficient time to your children
(recall that one of the things Russell has against so-called ‘success’ is that
it too often fails to allow this). Secondly, balance your love of parental
power with your desire for the child's good, “The child should as soon as
possible learn to be independent in as many ways as possible, which is
unpleasant to the power impulse of a parent.”
4) Do
interesting, varied and constructive work
“Consistent
purpose is not enough to make life happy, but it is an almost indispensable
condition of a happy life. And
consistent purpose embodies itself mainly in work.”
Any work is
good, in so far is it prevents boredom, which in Russell’s view is the most
underestimated evil. Work is also the most realistic means through which you
can gain success. Work is good, and interesting and constructive work is really good. ‘Nothing can rob a man of the happiness of successful
achievement in an important piece of work, unless it be the proof that after
all his work was bad.”. Not everyone
realises that the Shakespearian sonnet (Sonnet 18) starting with the lines
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is
an elegy on work as well as romantic love. The sonnet concludes with the lines "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can
see, so long lives this." , referring to his verse.
Whilst we
cannot all aspire to be Shakespeare, we all have it within us to carry out
interesting and constructive work. What you find interesting is of course
partly a matter of personal taste. But Russell proposes a universal connection
between interesting work and the exercise of an improvable skill. Find work
that is interesting, varied, creative and skilful and you will find purpose and
stimulation -“an indispensable condition of a happy life”.
5) Cultivate
minor impersonal interests
“[Cultivate]
minor interests which fill [your] leisure and afford relaxation from the
tenseness of [your] more serious preoccupations.”
Cultivating as
many interests as you can is really just common sense. The more interests you
have, the more opportunities you have to be happy. More interestingly, Russell
also connects such ‘minor’ interests as playing football and collecting stamps
with avoiding fatigue and anxiety. You need activities to provide variety from
your main work and take your mind off them. “Watching games, going to the
theatre, playing golf are all irreproachable from this point of view.” When in
prison for his opposition to the first war Russell read a lot of detective
stories, others might play chess or watch football. Russell would advise you to try out a variety
of interests and hobbies, and practice the most satisfying of them as a
contrast from the ‘day job’ and a source of both tranquillity and happiness in
your life.
6) Achieve the
right balance between effort and resignation
“The attitude
required is that of doing one's best while leaving the issue to fate”
Whilst effort
is often essential if you are going to achieve what you want, there sometimes
comes a point where it’s better to resign yourself to let fate take its course.
What is required is an Aristotelian ‘golden mean’, the right balance between
effort and resignation. For “efficiency in a practical task is not proportional
to the emotion that you put into it; indeed, emotion is sometimes an obstacle
to efficiency”. Russell’s advice is very similar to the Serenity Prayer – ‘God
grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change
what can be changed, and the wisdom to tell the difference’ and
predates Neibhur’s formulation of it.
You need to recognise that you often need to put effort
in to achieve what you want, whilst remembering that when you can do no more,
the best attitude is resignation, not
more effort.
So these are Russell's tips about how to conquer happiness. How many of them do you follow? What would it be like to experiment with one that takes your fancy a week, noting how it works out for you? Of course some of them are a bit more of a long-term project (parenhood, interesting varied work) and may be outside our control. In a future blog I will assess Russell's ideas, in the light of both modern psychotherapy and positive psychology. But what do you think?
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