“The Happy Man”, an excerpt from “The Conquest of Happiness” in which the author Bertrand Russel explains the abstract notion of happiness. He expounds on the fact of what makes a person happy and the true meaning of happiness. Though the essay justifies Russel’s perspective pretty well, its necessary to exploit how it’s visible to a reader as well.
The essay starts with the idea of personal and external circumstances as the two reasons for happiness in Russel’s view. “Happiness is impossible without a creed of more or less religious kind” in Russel’s words. He considered food, shelter, successful work and respect as some indispensable things to once happiness. If a man is unhappy in spite of having all these things then he can seek psychiatrist’s help or in most cases can cure himself on his own if he sets about the matter in the right way. He stated self-centred passions like fear, envy, the sense of sin, self-pity and self-admiration as some of the shackles we are stuck in which eventually leads to unhappiness. According to him those who manage to get out of this warm garment of myth are far happier than the latter.
Russel extends the idea of who a happy man is and describes ways of staying happy. At points, the essay seems overstretched at certain ideas which would have been clear with a smaller explanation. This is actually making the essay boring, and long.
He beautifully explains how to get over a fear. He advised readers to accept any two bitter truths they know which they have been lying to themselves about. This sort of practice will enable them to accept facts without flinching and eventually make them much more confident and fearless.
The whole text by Russel looks well structured and the thoughts are coming in a quite organised way. There are no overlapping or contradictions in ideas but they are over explained at places as I stated before. Though he is imposing his thoughts over readers at some places and sort of trying to manipulate them.
In Russel’s words:
“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.”
By this Russel tried to precipitate his thoughts over who a happy man actually is and how one can become “The Happy Man”. Overall, Russel successfully presented his thoughts on paper but this essay might prove out to be hard to understand sort of a thing for a reader who is not interested in philosophy.