The happy “citizen of the universe”

We finish Russell’s Conquest today, even though he already told us the secret of happiness* back in chapter 10 and we talked about it last time.

But there’s more. “Even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness.” Not that Lord Russell ever had to turn himself to the dullest work. He flipped no burgers, for sure, and had no electronic diversions to fill idle hours. And there are times when “thinking of nothing and doing nothing” are deeply gratifying. But in general, idleness and soul-crushing boredom go hand-in-glove.

Impersonal Interests are those “lying outside the main activities” of your life and work. I’m still taking a very intense impersonal interest in the MLB postseason, for instance. (Cards win!)

The world is full of things that are tragic or comic, heroic or bizarre or surprising, and those who fail to be interested in the spectacle that it offers are forgoing one of the privileges that life has to offer.

Those who do cultivate a wide and varied interest in life’s rich pagaent, though, experience “deep happiness.” Life becomes communion with the ages, personal death pales to insignificance (“a negligible incident”).

That’s a little sketchy, but (speaking for myself) Russell’s cosmic pedagogical perspective– he calls it Spinoza’s, which would also make it Einstein’s– again inspires.

I should seek to make young people vividly aware of the past, vividly realising that the future of man will in all likelihood be immeasurably longer than his past, profoundly conscious of the minuteness of the planet upon which we live and of the fact that life on this planet is only a temporary incident…

Makes you feel sort of small and insignificant, eh Mrs. Brown? But Russell has the antidote to feelings of personal smallness engendered by reflections on the vastness of the cosmos. Just remember

the greatness of which the individual is capable, and the knowledge that throughout all the depths of stellar space nothing of equal value is known to us. 

In other words, just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving and…

Effort and Resignation. This chapter  begins with grudging praise for Aristotelian moderation, the key to balancing personal ambition with fate. The race is not always to the swift etc., so we’d best be prepared not to realize all our dreams… and still be happy. The “golden mean” is key, opening us to insights like:

Health is a blessing which no one can be sure of preserving; marriage is not invariably a source of bliss. [So] happiness must for most be an achievement rather than a gift of the gods.

In a thousand ways the failure of purely personal hopes may by unavoidable, but if personal aims have been part of larger hopes for humanity, there is not the same utter defeat when failure comes.

The man who is working for some much-needed reform may find all his efforts sidetracked by a war, and may be forced to realise that what he has worked for will not come about in his lifetime. But he need not on that account sink into complete despair, provided that he is interested in the future of mankind apart from his own participation in it.

Worry and fret and irritation are emotions which serve no purpose… in the history of the cosmos the event in question has no very great importance.

It’s all about shucking the false skin of isolated selfhood, tribal exclusion, and narrow nationalism. The Happy Man or woman is

a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found.

So there you have it. Go find, and enjoy. And enjoy your Fall Break.

Then begin enjoying Jennifer Hecht’s Myth of Happiness for next time.

*The secret of happiness is this: 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.

Well, maybe. But maybe those other Brits were onto something too:

Well, it’s nothing special. Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

But that’s fundamentally all the same advice, isn’t it?

Tags: Bertrand Russell, meaning of life, Monty Python, secret of happiness