My Readings: The Conquest of Happiness By Bertrand Russell

A simple, easy to read book it was, with a profound journey through the depth of our life. The modern man faces a lot of disappointment and struggles with himself first then with the outside world which makes him continuously. This book helps you look around and spot what you were doing wrong everyday. It makes you re-evaluate your actions and see the true reasons why you do what you do.

To me this final section of the last chapter "The Happy Man" sums a lot up.

"All unhappiness depends upon some kind of disintegration or lack of integration; there is disintegration within the self through lack of co-ordination between the conscious and the unconscious mind; there is lack of integration between the self and society, where the two are not knit together by the force of objective interests and affections. The happy man is the man who does

not suffer from either of these failures of unity, whose personality is neither divided against itself nor pitted against the world. Such a man feels himself 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."

There are so many parts I wanna share, I dunno where to start but something I liked so much and it reminded me of my blog on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf

"If you see a child drowning and save it as the result of a direct impulse to bring help, you will emerge none the worse morally. If, on the other hand, you say to yourself, "It is the part of virtue to succour the helpless, and I wish to be a virtuous man, therefore I must save this child", you will be an even worse man afterwards than you were before."

This paragraph reminds of what I hated most about Mrs. Dalloway as I called her the good atheist. Doing actions just to be called God, while deep inside I don't care whether the boy drowned or the whole of the humanity.

Russell discussed Selfishness too. 

"The traditional moralist, for example, will say that love should be unselfish. In a certain sense he is right, that is to say, it should not be selfish beyond a point, but it should undoubtedly be of such a nature that one's own happiness is bound up in its success. If a man were to invite a lady to marry him on the ground that he ardently desired her happiness and at the same time considered that she would afford him ideal opportunities of self-abnegation, I think it may be doubted whether she would be altogether pleased. Undoubtedly we should desire the happiness of those whom we love, but not as an alternative to our own. In fact the whole antithesis between self and the rest of the world, which is implied in the doctrine of self-denial, disappears as soon as we have any genuine interest in persons or things outside ourselves. "

He discussed too the virtue of boredom and the importance to let children have time and space doing nothing to cultivate skills and talents and interest in the world around them. He doesn't recommend filling up all the time of a child with activities or devices as we do nowadays. It's good for everyone to deal with something of a boredom in life. To have the time to look around and have interest in various subjects is an advice he gives to get away from self-centric problems and be happy.

"We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom"

"A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young, and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony."

"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."

One of the parts that really intrigued me , as I always had questions related to it, is the parent-child relationship and where do sacrifice fit in such a relation.

His argument agreed with my instincts that giving birth to a child does not put on him a burden to satisfy you or make you happy. Any sacrifice you make for him/her is your choice and no burden on him. He discussed how this can be a source of happiness to both and where balance is needed.

There is much more to the book. I hope everyone reads it.

This is what jWoman has to say for today.