16. Effort and Resignation

What Russell calls resignation is more popularly referred to these days as acceptance. The question discussed in this chapter is basically: Should we try to change the world or accept it the way it is? Russell takes a middle position, roughly equivalent to the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." The Serenity Prayer itself was not well known in 1930. The prayer was popularized by the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W. Bill W got it from the theologian Reinhold Neibhur, probably sometime in the 1940s. Neibhur attributed it to 18th century theologian Friedrich Oetinger, and some have claimed it for the 6th century philosopher Boethius. In short, Russell conceivably could have known the prayer in 1930, but probably didn't.

"Happiness is not, except in very rare cases, something that drops into the mouth, like a ripe fruit, by the mere operation of fortunate circumstances. ... Happiness must be, for most men and women, an achievement rather than a gift of the gods, and in this achievement effort, both inward and outward, must play a great part." [pages 178-179] Russell draws attention to the following kinds of effort as playing a role in achieving happiness: making a living (plus enough extra to have a few luxuries and consider yourself successful), attracting a desirable mate,  and raising children. "Speaking more generally, one may say that some kind of power forms the normal and legitimate aim of every person whose natural desires are not atrophied. ... The man who is actuated by purely altruistic suffering caused by the spectacle of human misery will, if his suffering is genuine, desire power to alleviate misery. The only man totally indifferent to power is the man totally indifferent to his fellow men. ... And every form of desire for power involves, so long as it is not thwarted, a correlative form of effort." [page 181]

"The wise man, though he will not sit down under preventable misfortunes, will not waste time and emotion upon such as are unavoidable, and even such as are in themselves avoidable he will submit to if the time and labor required to avoid them would interfere with the pursuit of some more important object." [pages 181-182] "Christianity taught submission to the will of God, and even for those who cannot accept this phraseology, there should be something of the same kind pervading their activities. ... The attitude required is that of doing one's best while leaving the issue to fate." [page 182]

Russell then describes two kinds of resignation, one motivated by despair and the other by "unconquerable hope". "The first is bad, the second good." [page 182] Despair is the result of defeat, and the defeated man "may camouflage his despair by religious phrases, or by the doctrine that contemplation is the true end of man. But whatever disguise he may adopt to conceal his inward defeat, he will remain essentially useless and fundamentally unhappy." [page 182] Unconquerable hope, on the other hand, is one of the most interesting concepts in Conquest. I discuss it further in the Transcending Personal Hopes and Interests theme.

"A certain kind of resignation is involved in willingness to face the truth about ourselves; this kind, though it may involve pain in the first moments, affords ultimately a protection -- indeed the only possible protection -- against the disappointments and disillusionments to which the self-deceiver is liable. Nothing is more fatiguing nor, in the long run, more exasperating, than the daily effort to believe things which daily become more incredible. To be done with this effort is an indispensable condition of secure and lasting happiness." [page 185]