Thoughts from philosopher Bertrand Russell on happiness and unhappiness. He was one of the twentieth century's most notable philosophers, mathematicians, and activists and wrote extensively on the human condition. I was doing some research about eighteen months ago for a series of articles on the nature of happiness, and material came my way from mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell ¹. If you have not heard of him before, here’s a very brief introduction;

Bertrand A.W. Russell was a British philosopher born in London to an aristocratic family in 1872. His parents died when he and his brother were young, and their grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, took responsibility for the boys. Bertrand Russell began his academic career at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied under Alfred North Whitehead, becoming a distinguished mathematician and philosopher. Russell was the quintessential polymath, renowned for his work on mathematical logic, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computer science.

Russell was an essayist, activist, and social critic, and it was from this that the public knew him best. His work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy drew applause from academic circles. His famous paradox, theory of types, and work with Alfred North Whitehead in Principia Mathematica re-energised the study of logic in the twentieth century. In the public mind, he was famous for his commentary on religion and God as well as for his activism during both World Wars. He was also outspoken against nuclear armament and in support of the rights of minorities.

Bertrand Russell Unhappiness

Russell believed unhappiness marked the faces of everyone he met. “Human beings”, he said, “ought to be happy, but in the modern world, they are not–at least in a great majority of cases”. It seems to me that this is true, only most people do a decent job of hiding or medicating it. Rather than life being ordinarily good with only spatterings bad, it seems to be the other way around. At best, life seems to be tolerable. Instead of happiness, we pursue pleasure, pleasure in entertainment, alcohol, and various other means of self-medication from the dullness of life. We are completely absorbed in distraction tactics — anything to avoid seeing ourselves for what we really are.

“Though the kinds are different, you will find that unhappiness meets you everywhere. 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 strangers about you take possession of you one after another. You will find that each of these different crowds has its own trouble.”

Russell speaks of the importance we have placed on the creation of wealth. But what use is wealth, he asks, if everyone rich is miserable? The purpose of The Conquest of Happiness1, Russell says, was to propose a cure for the ordinary day-to-day unhappiness. He says that most people in civilised society suffer from this situation regardless of wealth or social status.

“I believe this unhappiness to be very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life, leading to the destruction of that natural zest and appetite for possible things upon which all happiness, whether of men of animals, ultimately depends.”

From his autobiography, we read that Bertrand Russell contemplated suicide regularly in his teenage years. Such was his depression at the prospect of living without purpose. The only thing that prevented him from taking the ultimate step was his obsession with mathematics. Reflecting on this period in his later life, he reported loving life more and more with each passing year. Despite his wealth and social privilege, he appeared to suffer just like you and I do. But the force to live and understand the world was stronger for him than the drive for death. To me, views on happiness from someone who has been on the brink have greater value than those of someone who has not.

He attributes his recovery from this depressive state to the removal of his focus from himself. That is; his focus on his deficiencies. He says;

But very largely, it [love of life] is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself. Like others who had a Puritan education, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and shortcomings. I seemed to myself — no doubt justly — a miserable specimen. Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies.”

Bertrand Russell Happiness

Russell suggests that the only way to recover from a negative preoccupation with oneself is to become occupied in the world. He recognises that external interests can bring discomfort and disappointment. However, these kinds of pains do not disrupt the essential quality of life as those that come from self-deprivation and self-flagellation. He says that it is only through external discipline that we can find happiness. Where we are entirely self-absorbed, myopically obsessed with our own pain and discomfort, we become depressed and unhappy.

Russell cites many and varied sources of unhappiness, but suggests that the most profound is our preoccupation and the pursuit of hedonic pleasure. Alcohol, drugs, sex, social media, TV programs that heighten our sense of isolation and powerlessness, for example. They are a means to make the apparently unbearable bearable. They are methods of self-medication.

As long as we continue to obsess over why we are unhappy, Russell says, we remain self-absorbed and therefore create a vicious circle. If we are to get ourselves outside it, we must find something that commands our curiosity and absorbs our interests.

“…it must be by genuine interests, not by simulated interests adopted merely as a medicine. What those objective interests are to be that will arise in you when you have overcome the disease of self-absorption must be left the spontaneous workings of your nature na of external circumstances.”

It sounds to me like he’s suggesting that we follow our curiosity and go with the flow. Instead of doing what is expected of us, we should pursue inherently motivating interests. These are things into which our curiosity is drawn and that arise in us from simply being alive.

Russell finishes The Conquest of Happiness by suggesting that through engagement in naturally occurring interests, we come to feel ourselves part of the stream of life, and not something hard and separate, such as a billiard ball. All unhappiness, he says, depends upon some form of disintegration or lack of integration. It is the result of a schism within the self, or the self and that of society. Happy people are integrated subjects, Russell says. The objective world is not a threat, and it does not divide the self; it integrates it.

“The secret of happiness is very simply 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.”

My View Hasn’t Changed

There’s nothing profound in this book for me. My views on happiness and unhappiness haven’t changed as a result of reading it. I have found that happiness does not exist at either end of an imaginary spectrum. We can’t find it in any other human being, in books or any material source outside us. Instead, it comes about in the personal experience and engagement in things that stir our curiosity. That doesn’t mean we don’t feel difficulty and challenge in it or in the pursuit of related goals. On the contrary, those experiences are what make it worthwhile.

Russell is accurate, I think, in that preoccupation with what we don’t have perpetuates it. If we feel unhappy, we’ve got to somehow take ourselves out of that circular pattern and into something else. We are sense-making organisms you see, and it is in the patterns of data that we find sense, happiness and unhappiness.

1. Russell, B. (2015). The conquest of happiness. Routledge.