I first heard about it from a passing mention on a podcast, so I sought out the audiobook for my commute. This is the 1939 translation by Fu Lei, with a faint, old-fashioned vernacular style. It’s a short book; I finished it in a few days. I like listening to things while walking—what enters my ears and what meets my eyes, the philosopher’s concise aphorisms and the myriad scenes of the street, always produce a curious chemical reaction in my mind, occasionally sending a jolt through me even in the height of summer.
Lately my emotions have been rather turbulent, and listening to this book during my daily commute has brought me comfort and calm on several occasions. The causes of happiness and unhappiness the book points out all hit upon certain flaws and traits of mine, so after finishing it I felt I should write something down.
Bertrand Russell’s “The Conquest of Happiness”
After humanity transitioned from the hunting era to the agricultural era, although we gained relative stability in life, we lost the outward exploration and adventure. In the industrial era, with accelerated urbanization, the “blue-collar and white-collar” workers further detached from nature are no different. Only a small number of entrepreneurs still maintain a jungle-like way of life.
Choosing stability means having a great deal of “boredom” to dispel. But most people excessively concentrate their attention on themselves—for example, the persecution maniac (obsessing over behavior that doesn’t conform to childhood prejudices or social conditioning), the narcissist (excessive vanity seeking external praise), and the megalomaniac (excessive desire for power)—which causes this boredom to grow wildly in fantasy until it fills people’s hearts.
Author: Muniao’s Notes https://www.qtmuniao.com/2024/07/28/listening-conquest-of-happiness/ Please indicate the source when reposting
Russell believed one should not focus excessively inward on oneself, but rather cultivate various interests outwardly, letting go of rigid preconceptions (ego) to savor life, to discover the beauty of nature and science, in hopes of achieving a colorful, sincere, and natural life. Russell himself, as a philosopher and mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, held this philosophy, which can be considered as unity of knowledge and action.
Viewing life from an investment perspective, we should not pour all our “capital” (time) into a single asset class, but should diversify the viewpoints and hobbies we hold as much as possible. Otherwise, once old beliefs collapse and new beliefs have no way to emerge, one is easily completely defeated and falls into irrecoverable depression. Therefore, it is best to have an interest completely unrelated to work, as a hedge against the impermanence of life. Because of this we know for certain that although the general trend of humanity is always traceable, when it comes to individual lives, they are always filled with impermanent accidents—perhaps this is the projection of the “wave-particle duality” principle into the social domain.
For myself, unconsciously focusing on my position and evaluation within various “systems” has always brought me much distress and internal friction. When we define a concept, there are always two choices—deducing from intrinsic properties, or approaching from external observation. Excessive focus on the external world causes the definition of our lives to tilt toward the latter—you are merely an onion “enclosed” by the social relationships around you, and after peeling layer by layer, there is nothing inside.
Holding this state of mind makes it difficult for me to treat myself naturally and sincerely, and also difficult to immerse myself in doing things; I always divert a thread or even most of my attention to thinking: what do others think of what I’m doing? Drowning in this, it becomes hard to truly explore where my interests lie. While this is partly due to the bloodline conditioning left over from agricultural society of “the ruler rules, the minister serves, the father guides, the son obeys,” it is more due to my own nature and the delusions reinforced by various accidental opportunities after birth. To remove them requires courageous retrospection, peeling back layer by layer, and reshaping oneself—how difficult that is.
This book offers another path: shift your energy and seek out various interests in the world. Fortunately, this happens to align with one of my few strengths—I still have curiosity about the world, and still have perception of beautiful things. Why is this anime scene designed this way, what is the name of this little flower, what is the story behind this commemorative silver coin, why do Western classical buildings all look like this, why can this place inspire ancient people to ascend and compose poetry, what is the essence of matrix operations and how to remember it, and so on. When doing these things, I’m not thinking about what others think of me, but only want to share my joy with friends. At this moment, I change from someone who needs to be fed by others’ energy into someone who radiates energy outward. Speaking of which, this probably also relates to growing up in the countryside during elementary school; the wild outdoors always held various attractions for me, and whenever I had the chance I would go explore and “perform”—playing around and, on that basis, letting my imagination run wild.
Life is indeed a wilderness; you are far freer than you imagine.
Cover Image Story
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What I saw while strolling through the streets of Guomao on a summer evening
