Bertrand Russell on flow, selfishness, and death

This will conclude my blogging of Bertrand Russell's 1930 book The Conquest of Happiness (you can see all the posts at this link):

11. "A great deal of work gives the same pleasure that is to be derived from games of skill. . . . All skilled work can be pleasurable, provided the skill required is either variable or capable of indefinite improvement. If these conditions are absent, it will cease to be interesting when a man has acquired his maximum skill. A man who runs three-mile races will cease to find pleasure in this occupation when he passes the age at which he can beat his own previous record. Fortunately there is a very considerable amount of work in which new circumstances call for new skill and a man can go on improving." (165)

Those observations are uncannily reminiscent of Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who supported his theory with psychological experiments conducted around the world over 20 years. Russell understood it instinctively.

12. "The traditional moralist . . . 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 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 . . . disappears as soon as we have any genuine interest in persons or things outside ourselves." (190-91)

It's all too easy to criticize someone's life decisions as "selfish." You have to have children -- it's selfish otherwise. Someone who doesn't want children can just as easily maintain that having children is what's selfish. Russell's paragraph is a good reminder that this word shouldn't have too much power. Everyone is selfish, and we need to live with this fact.

13. The book's final thought: "The happy man . . . feels himself a citizen of the universe, . . . untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him." (191)

Bertrand Russell on the impulses that drive our actions

Continuing the series of insights from Bertrand Russell's book The Conquest of Happiness (see this tag for all the posts)...

In these passages from 1930, he seems to hint at evolutionary psychology, which would have put him ahead of his time:

9. "Loss of zest in civilized society is very largely due to the restrictions upon liberty which are essential to our way of life. The savage hunts when he is hungry, and in so doing is obeying a direct impulse. The man who goes to his work every morning at a certain hour is actuated fundamentally by the same impulse, namely the need to secure a living, but in his case the impulse does not operate directly and at the moment when it is felt; it operates indirectly through abstractions, beliefs and volitions." (133)

That reminds me of something Robert Wright says in The Moral Animal: "We aren't designed to stand on crowded subway platforms, or to live in suburbs next door to people we never talk to, or to get hired or fired, or to watch the evening news. This disjunction between the contexts of our [evolutionary] design and of our lives is probably responsible for much psychopathology, as well as much suffering of a less dramatic sort." (38-9)

10. "Very few men or women will have children from a sense of public duty, even if it were far clearer than it is that any such public duty exists. When men and women have children, they do so either because they believe that children will add to their happiness, or because they do not know how to prevent them. ...

"To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future. As a conscious sentiment, expressed in set terms, this involves no doubt a hypercivilized and intellectual outlook upon the world, but as a vague instinctive emotion it is primitive and natural, and it is its absence that is hypercivilized. A man who is capable of some great and remarkable achievement which sets its stamp upon future ages may gratify this feeling through his work, but for men and women who have no exceptional gifts, the only way to do so is through children." (152-4)

COUNTERPOINT: "Would having children make me happier?"

Bertrand Russell's thoughts on money, extroverts, and helping people

Continuing the list from last week's blogging of Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness (1930):

6. What to spend your money on - "[A]ny man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travel or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like every one else." (108)

7. Why extroverts are better than introverts (?) - "The man ... whose attention is turned within finds nothing worthy of his notice, whereas the man whose attention is turned outward can find within, in those rare moments when he examines his soul, the most varied and interesting assortment of ingredients being dissected and recombined into beautiful or instructive patterns." (126-7)

8. Helping people - "If you feed an infant who is already capable of feeding himself, you are putting love of power before the child's welfare, although it seems to you that you are only being kind in saving him trouble. If you make him too vividly aware of dangers, you are probably actuated by a desire to keep him dependent upon you." (157)

Bertrand Russell's thoughts on professionals, boredom, and breaking convention

I've blogged Bertrand Russell's book The Conquest of Happiness (1930) twice before:

1. Two kinds of careers.

2. The strawberry theory of good taste.

Here's some more:

3. Judging professionals — "[N]o outsider can tell whether a doctor really knows much medicine, or whether a lawyer really knows much law, and it is therefore easier to judge of [sic] their merit by the income to be inferred from their standard of life." (43-44)

4. Modern boredom — "[T]he machine age has enormously diminished the sum of boredom in the world. . . . We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement." (49-50)

5. Where to break convention — "Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves. They will pardon much unconventionality in a man who has enough jollity and friendliness to make it clear . . . that he is not engaged in criticizing them. This method of escaping censure is, however, impossible to many of those whose tastes or opinions cause them to be out of sympathy with the herd. Their lack of sympathy makes them uncomfortable and causes them to have a pugnacious attitude, even if outwardly they conform or manage to avoid any sharp issue. People who are not in harmony with the conventions of their own set tend therefore to be prickly and uncomfortable and lacking in expansive good humor. These same people transported into another set, where their outlook is not thought strange, will seem to change their character entirely. From being serious, shy and retiring they may become gay and self-confident; from being angular they may become smooth and easy; from being self-centered they may become sociable and extrovert [sic]." (104-05)

(Photo by Fred Armitage.)

Can you tell good art from bad?

Achenblog (Joel Achenbach) says:

Just hit the art gallery on M street with all the Obama art. I can't tell good art from bad, but I did discern a heavy "Obama" theme, as these pictures attest.

The honesty of the boldfaced phrase is refreshing. We need more of that.

As for me, I do have some ability to distinguish good art from bad. I certainly agree that this art the New York Times promoted last summer was "incredibly bad." I seriously question the taste of whoever chose to highlight it.

But then, I also know there are plenty of people who are better at judging art than I am. If I go to an art museum, I feel lucky if I get something out of maybe half the works there, while not seeing the point in the other half.

In contrast, I almost always have an opinion about music. I always trust my own opinion and don't worry if it deviates from some supposed consensus. (That doesn't mean I always have a firm opinion on first listen.)

I'm worst with poetry. I can recognize plenty of bad poetry, but I cannot read good/great poetry and honestly say things like, "Hm, that's pretty good but could be better," or simply, "That's great poetry." I've read T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson in classes, and I've tried to convince myself that I perceive their greatness, but I'd be lying if I said I did.

I like Bertrand Russell's theory, even though it might seem to contradict some of this blog post:

Suppose one man likes strawberries and another does not; in what respect is the latter superior? There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good, to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. . . . 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.*

Of course, the same applies to art, music, poetry, and a lot more.

* That's from pp. 125-6 of The Conquest of Happiness.


IN THE COMMENTS: My dad says:

The sickness of contemporary gallery art is that it is no longer about visual content. It is about a) the artist's self-dramatizing gestures, and b) the "ideas" that the work is proclaimed to signify by the artist's statements, symposia, colloquia, grant and commission applications, pitches to dealers, etc., where the artist shares the stage (literally or figuratively) with critics and curators, who are considered the true custodians of the art spirit. The devaluing of the visual goes along with the theory that there is no such thing as quality, i.e., good versus bad, a theory that inevitably comes to parody itself as a prejudice against the beautiful. Work that is visually appalling and emotionally juvenile is considered "interesting" . . . if it makes gestures of tagging along with fashionable ideologies, gestures that are offered and accepted as manifestations of the creative intellect. These offerings are dues paid to the guild of academic artists. The upshot: galleries are no longer where the visual art is.

Two kinds of careers

After getting books on Christmas plus some post-Christmas shopping, I should probably do another update to my reading list I started a few months ago. But first, something from one of the new books got my attention.

The book is The Conquest of Happiness by the great philosopher Bertrand Russell, and the passage jumped out at me because it elaborated on something I'd jotted down in a Moleskine notebook a little while ago.

So, here's my Moleskine entry, dated 10/30/08:

As I've observed myself and other young people trying to find their direction in life, one of the themes I've abstracted from people's individual situations is: there's a spectrum of work that expresses your own individuality vs. work that contributes to society. Some people have asked me why I went into law instead of a creative field -- "that seems to be what you're passionate about." Well, when you're an artist, you're struggling to have your voice stand out amid millions of other voices on the market. When you do a more society-oriented job, your voice still matters, but it's not the focus or the goal. The goal that's driving you is achieving the best results for the outside world. Adding your own personal touch is a detail at most. Also, there isn't an ongoing struggle to break through; once you're doing the job, what you're doing automatically matters.

Now here's Bertrand Russell,* published in 1930:

Pleasures of achievement demand difficulties such that beforehand success seems doubtful although in the end it is usually achieved. This is perhaps the chief reason why a modest estimate of one's own powers is a source of happiness. The man who underestimates himself is perpetually being surprised by success, whereas the man who overestimates himself is just as often surprised by failure. ...

Of the more highly educated sections of the community, the happiest in the present day are the men of science. Many of the most eminent of them are emotionally simple, and obtain from their work a satisfaction so profound that they can derive pleasure from eating, and even marrying. Artists and literary men consider it de rigueur to be unhappy in their marriages, but men of science quite frequently remain capable of old-fashioned domestic bliss.

The reason of this is that the higher parts of their intelligence are wholly absorbed by their work and are not allowed to intrude into regions where they have no functions to perform. In their work they are happy because in the modern world science is progressive and powerful, and because its importance is not doubted either by themselves or by laymen. They have therefore no necessity for complex emotions, since the simpler emotions meet with no obstacles. ...

[T]he man of science ... has an activity which utilizes his abilities to the full, and he achieves results which appear important not only to himself but to the general public, even when it cannot in the smallest degree understand them. In this he is more fortunate than the artist. When the public cannot understand a picture or a poem, they conclude that it is a bad picture or a bad poem. When they cannot understand the theory of relativity they conclude (rightly) that their education has been insufficient. Consequently Einstein is honored while the best painters are (or at least were) left to starve in garrets, and Einstein is happy while the painters are unhappy.

Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world.

The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable. If his powers are of the first order, he must incur one or the other of these misfortunes -- the former if he uses his powers, the latter if he does not. ...

[T]he 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. ... Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women ... results from the combination of comfort with powerlessness. Powerlessness makes people feel that nothing is worth doing, and comfort makes the painfulness of this feeling just endurable.

* This is from pp. 114-117 of the book. I've fiddled with the paragraph breaks for readability.