Do Science and Philosophy Lead To Unhappiness?

[image error]
In the waiting room at the doctor’s office this morning I was reading Bertrand Russell’s 1930 classic, The Conquest of Happiness, a book I first read almost 50 years ago. (I’m still old school, I take a book to the doctor’s since I don’t have a smart phone!)

At the beginning of chapter 2 I came across the following,

It is common in our day, as it has been in many other periods of the world’s history, to suppose that those among us who are wise have seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become aware that there is nothing left to live for. The men who hold this view are generally unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider to be the only rational attitude of the enlightened man…. I do not myself think there is any superior rationality in being unhappy.  The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead…. I am persuaded that those who quite sincerely attribute their sorrows to their view of the universe are putting the cart before the horse: the truth is that they are unhappy for some reason of which they are not aware, and this unhappiness leads them to dwell upon the less agreeable characteristics of the world in which they live.

The quote struck me as uncommonly wise. How easy it is for someone passionate about life’s meaning to think that happy people must be simpletons and that a sober view of reality entail absurdism or nihilism. It does not. Rather it leads to skepticism and the key in my view is not to accept that life is meaningless but to learn to live not being sure if it all makes sense or not. In the meantime we can try to find the happiness and fulfillment that life offers.