1. What Makes People Unhappy?

"My purpose is to suggest a cure for the ordinary day-to-day unhappiness from which most people in civilized countries suffer, and which is all the more unbearable because, having no obvious external cause, it appears inescapable. I believe this unhappiness to be largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life, leading to the destruction of that natural zest and appetite for possible things upon which all happiness, whether of men or of animals, ultimately depends." [page 17] Notice the assumption that the external world is more easily changed than the internal world. I could imagine someone saying exactly the reverse: "Because this unhappiness has no external cause, it ought to be escapable." Which is closer to your own view? Also, do you agree with the assumption that most people in civilized countries are unhappy?

"I was not born happy. ... Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life. ... Very largely [this] is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself. ... Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly on external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is true, bring each its own possibility of pain. ... But pains of this kind do not destroy the essential quality of life, as do those that spring from disgust with self. And every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui. Interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind." [page 18] Much of Conquest is devoted to the superiority of external interests to introverted interests. I discuss this in Theme B.

Russell goes on to describe common types of self-absorption: the sinner, the narcissist, and the megalomaniac. He finds a common factor in them: "The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it." [page 22]