Happiness: A Free Person's Worship - presentation to Sunday Assembly Nashville, December 11, 2016

1. Happiness
A Free Person’s Worship alluding both to Bertrand Russell's 1903 "A
Free Man's Worship" and his 1930
Conquest of Happiness. The former reflects
Russell's early Platonic phase, but both are
concerned with how to achieve godless
happiness in a finite and indifferent cosmos.
Sunday Assembly Nashville
December 11, 2016

2. Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
300 James Union Building
(JUB)

3. This is my first visit with you,
thanks to Pat Sharp’s kind
invitation when we met at
the afterparty following our
philosophy Lyceum in
Murfreesboro last April.
But you come highly
recommended. One of the
students in my Atheism &
Philosophy course reported
on his SA visit in 2014, a
"great experience" with
"incredibly friendly" people.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
My Experience at Sunday
Assembly
I visited the Sunday Assembly this past sunday
and I just wanted to share my experience with
anybody that is interested about it. I had a great
experience and I encourage anybody and
everybody to go. It is a relatively small group
(maybe around 50-60) and the location is perfect.
It is right off of Charlotte Avenue in Nashville and
is held in an older church-looking building. It is
pretty much exactly where you would think the
largest congregation of atheists in the area would
meet on a sunday. They play several secular
songs and the band rocks out pretty hard. It is a
very collaborative effort with multiple people
delivering "sermons" during the assembly. The
"sermons" were not rules
on how to live your life, but simply some
suggestions on how to better increase your
happiness or just suggestions on ways to help you
out day to day.
The people are incredibly friendly and quick to
start a conversation. I highly recommend it to
anybody interested. If anybody is interested in
carpooling from murfreesboro to Nashville for the
next meeting just let me know. Or if anybody has
anymore questions about it just let me know!
Posted by Jamey Howell at 2:26 AM 2 comments:

4. The SA website's events page
slightly mis-credentials me as a
psychologist and "super ace" -
This month, don't worry, be
happy. Or, at least, let's
consider the ups and downs of
"Happiness". The super ace
Phil Oliver, Ph.D., professor
of psychology at Middle
Tennessee State University
will tell us what researchers
have found out about
happiness. Sorry, I’m just a philosopher and of
non-superhero stature. But I’m
happy to be here under any
description.

5. As for what happiness researchers have found lately, that’s not exactly my beat. But I can report a few things.

6. 1. From Wealth to Well-being? | Harvard
Business School, 2009.
While there does appear to be some
correlation between happiness and
income when basic needs are not yet
met, people tend to overestimate the
influence of wealth on happiness by
100%. Money does not lead to nearly
as much happiness as people think it
will.
That’s why Russell said “success
can only be one ingredient in
happiness,
and is too dearly purchased if all
the other ingredients have been
sacrificed to obtain
it.”
And, that’s why William James
wrote to H.G. Wells…

7. 2. Buying Experiences, not
Possessions, Leads to Greater
Happiness | San Francisco State
University, 2009.
The study demonstrates that
experiential purchases, such as a
meal out or theater tickets, result in
increased greater well-being than
material possessions. These
experiences tend to satisfy higher
order needs, specifically the need
for social connectedness and
vitality—a feeling of being alive.

8. 7. Kindness Counts | University of
British Columbia, 2012.
In this study conducted at an
elementary school, students who
performed kind acts experienced
significantly higher increases in peer
acceptance. In other words, people
who are kind to others are more
well-liked. This contributes to their
own personal popularity as they help
other people.
Or as Mr. Vonnegut said,
“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth.
It's hot in the summer and cold in
the winter. It's round and wet and
crowded. On the outside, babies,
you've got a hundred years here.
There's only one rule that I know of,
babies-"God damn it, you've got to
be kind.”

9. 8. People who Exercise on Work
Days are Happier | University of
Bristol, 2008.
People’s moods significantly improve
after exercising. They are also more
productive and equipped to manage
stress in their workday.
Also: be grateful, hug, smile, and
volunteer (it boosts your oxytocin
levels), hang out with happy people,
spend on others.
And that’s enough psychology for
me.

10. William James's "Springs of Delight"
(I can give you a great deal on this book, if you'd like
a copy.).
They who know the truth are not equal to those who
love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who
delight in it. Confucius
"The worm at the core of our usual springs of
delight can turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
But the music can commence again, and again and
again, at intervals."

11. “To begin with, how can things so
insecure as the successful
experiences of this world afford a
stable anchorage? A chain is no
stronger than its weakest link, and
life is after all a chain…”
Varieties of Religious Experience,
“The Sick Soul”

12. "The really vital question for us all is,
What is this world going to be? What
is life eventually to make of itself?
The centre of gravity of philosophy
must therefore alter its place. The
earth of things, long thrown into
shadow by the glories of the upper
ether, must resume its rights.”
Pragmatism, Lecture 3

13. “Remember when old December's
darkness is everywhere about you, that the
world is really in every minutest point as full
of life as in the most joyous morning you
ever lived through; that the sun is whanging
down, and the waves dancing, and the
gulls skimming down at the mouth of the
Amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the
first morning of creation; and the hour is
just as fit as any hour that ever was for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. I
am sure that one can, by merely thinking of these matters of fact, limit the
power of one's evil moods over one's way of looking at the cosmos.”
-William James

24. Julian Baggini spoke to an Anglican
Church in England recently,
beginning by "repeating that tired
cliché of our times: 'I’m not religious,
but I am spiritual.'"
I told the congregation what I thought people
meant by this. They mean that they reject the
creeds and institutions of traditional
religions, organised or not. They can’t accept
that any religion has a claim to divine truth
when history suggests that every religion is
the product of the particular time and place in
which it emerged. Religions are too
obviously human institutions to own
universal truth, and sacred texts too obviously
the product of the human hand to claim
divine authorship.

25. Nor do the best-known teachings of the
main religions make sense to them. They
don’t believe in the stories of ancient
miracles, of angels dictating God’s word,
of a saviour rising from the dead. Even
more unbelievable is the need to perform
certain rituals in order to attain salvation,
or at least to have a relationship with God.
But rejecting all this does not mean they
are willing to embrace the full-blown
naturalism of atheism. They cannot believe
there is nothing more than the physical
realm. They believe that there is more to
life than the material, and that something
they give the label “spiritual”.

26. the vast majority of religious
people are literally spiritual, in
the sense that I am not...I found
the large majority believed that
Jesus is divine, not simply an
exceptional human being; that his
resurrection was a real, bodily one;
that he performed miracles no
human being ever could; that he
needed to die on the cross so that
our sins could be forgiven; and that
Jesus is the only way to eternal life.
Only a small minority disagreed
with these statements. As for the
main reason why they went to
church, it was not for reflection or
to be part of a community, but
overwhelmingly in order to
worship God.

27. the religious attitude is a way of
living with reverence and in awe,
with a deep respect for the good
and the true and with a sense of
wonder and mystery. Together
with the intellectual element, this
leads us to a moral seriousness, an
acceptance that we cannot fully
understand all that matters, and
that the best we can do is sincerely
strive for the true and the good, in a
spirit of openness, humility and
self-doubt.
Atheists are often perceived as
being incapable of this kind of
religiosity, since talk of a need to
orientate our lives towards
something other, something
greater than themselves, has
traditionally been understood as
requiring something transcendent:
that which exists over and above
the immanent, physical world of the
here and now.
But it needn’t be understood in this
way. The values and truths that
are greater than any one of us do
not need to exist in a
transcendent realm, independent
of time and space.

28. We should not get too hung up
about nomenclature. The key point
is simply that when we consider
what is most important about living
life in a religious spirit, we should
see that we can do this whatever
we believe about the spiritual or
the supernatural. And so, I
concluded my sermon, that is why
there should be room for atheists
in the community of the religious.
And, I could have added, room for
the religious in the community of
atheists.
it is a kind of fundamentalism to
believe that the world is neatly
divided between atheist and theist,
heathen and believer. I would
ascend the pulpit again if asked and
I would hope that many atheist
groups would be willing to have
believers in their midst. Our shared
religiosity is common ground
enough to justify mutual curiosity
and respect.

29. You Sunday Assembly folk seem a bit further down the
secular road than the Anglicans, judging by your stated
affirmation that "we are born from nothing and go to
nothing. Let’s enjoy it together." You claim no doctrine and
no sacred texts, but endeavor to "make use of wisdom from
all sources." You worship no deity, having found
something "bigger than Phil" - nature, and the humanity
nature has spawned.
" Mel Brooks’s 2000 Year Old Man, asked to explain the origin of God, admits that early humans first adored “a guy
in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshipped him.” Phil “was big, and mean, and he could break you in
two with his bare hands!” One day, a thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. “We gathered around and
saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s something bigger than Phil!’ ” The basic urge to
recognize something bigger than Phil still gives theistic theories an audience, even as their explanations of the
lightning-maker turn ever gappier and gassier..." Adam Gopnik: When Did Faith Start to Fade? : The New Yorker

30. "We don’t do supernatural but we also won’t
tell you you’re wrong if you do… won’t tell
you how to live, but will try to help you do it
as well as you can."
You sound like my tribe.

31. Spirituality is the link of continuity between every human
breath, every moment, and every epoch. It is what binds the
personal, the social, and the philosophical. Life, as James
says, is a chain: a flowing stream of succession to which we
may contribute, not only through the spires of our genes but
more overtly in our voluntary devotions and ideals. The living
breath that measures our moments and days also marks the
distance between an attentive present, coveted futures, and
life's remote denouement. Respiration, inspiration, and
aspiration are entwined aspects of the vision of life as a chain.

32. The "spirit" in spirituality, for those
of like mind, means the living
breath of finite natural existence.
Super-nature is not required,
though tolerant Sunday Assemblers
"don't do supernatural but won't tell
you you're wrong if you do." The
philosophers will take care of that.

33. My view is a bit different than Baggini’s. I think
many atheists find themselves much happier
when, as Carl Sagan said, they look life and death
in the eye and don’t blink. They do feel better, find
life more rewarding.
“The world is so exquisite with so
much love and moral depth, that there
is no reason to deceive ourselves with
pretty stories for which there's little
good evidence. Far better it seems to
me, in our vulnerability, is to look
death in the eye and to be grateful
every day for the brief but magnificent
opportunity that life provides.” ― Carl
Sagan

34. “Somewhere, something incredible is
waiting to be known... We are a way for
the cosmos to know itself... it is far better
to grasp the Universe as it really is than
to persist in delusion, however satisfying
and reassuring." Carl Sagan
"Two billion years ago, our ancestors were microbes; a half-billion years ago, fish, a hundred
million years ago, something like mice; then million years ago, arboreal apes; and a million
years ago, proto-humans puzzling out the taming of fire. Our evolutionary lineage is marked by
mastery of change. In our time, the pace is quickening." Pale Blue Dot
Four billion years of evolution in 40 seconds... in 8 minutes… Golden record... Contact opeing...
A way of thinking (video interview/transcript)

35. Atheist Spirit
Not believing in God does not prevent me from having a spirit.
The human spirit is far too important to be left to priests,
mullahs or spiritualists. It is our noblest part, our highest
function… Renouncing religion by no means implies
renouncing spiritual life.
We are ephemeral beings who open onto eternity… This
“openness” is the spirit itself. Metaphysics means thinking
about these things; spirituality means experiencing them,
exercising them, living them.
==
The universe is our home; the celestial vault is our horizon;
eternity is here and now. This moves me far more than the
Bible or the Koran. It astonishes me far more than miracles (if I
believed in them). Compared to the universe, walking on water
is a cinch!
Why would you need a God? The universe suffices. Why
would you need a church? The world suffices. Why would you
need faith? Experience suffices.
-Andre Comte-Sponville

36. "If we were to ask the
question: 'What is human
life's chief concern?' one of
the answers we should
receive would be: 'It is
happiness.' How to gain,
how to keep, how to
recover happiness, is in fact
for most men at all times
the secret motive of all they
do, and of all they are
willing to endure."

38. Godless people are often assumed, by believers, to be unhappy. It isn't so. The literary critic James Wood
recalls the godless "life-loving heroes" of his adolescence as providing "reasons to be cheerful."
There was plenty of happiness in our
household, but it was rarely religious
happiness. The self was viewed with
suspicion, as if it were a mob of appetites
and hedonism. As an adolescent, I was
often told that “self, self, self is all you
think about,” and that “selfishness is your
whole philosophy.” Life was understood
to be constant moral work, a job that
could never really be “done,” because the
ideal was Jesus’ unsurpassable
perfection. My mother and I quarrelled
over the corpse of my religious faith. She
told me that at night she prayed I would
“come back into the fold.” As a young
man, I lined up my pagan, life-loving
heroes—Nietzsche, Camus, D. H.
Lawrence, Keith Moon, Ian Dury—in
glorious defensive formation: reasons to
be cheerful. "Lessons From My Mother"
Formula for our
happiness: a Yes, a No,
a straight line, a goal.”.
I tried several things and this was
the only one I enjoyed doing.

40. So my message today: secular folk have plenty of reasons to be cheerful, plenty of historical allies, and
plenty of proven strategies for living good, honorable, meaningful, constructive, happy lives. Believe me. Or
believe Lord Russell.
“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of
my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life.
But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought
of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true
happiness because it must come to an end, nor
do thought and love lose their value because they
are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself
proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should
teach us to think truly about man's place in the world.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us
shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional
humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings
vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of
their own.” -What I Believe

41. "A Free Man's Worship" was originally "The Free Man's
Worship" (1903), a more than merely stylistic change.
Russell's trajectory generally was away from precise Platonic
exclusion and towards a pluralistic loosening of attitude and
judgment. He would later declare his "outlook on the cosmos
and human life... substantially unchanged" when he wrote
Conquest of Happiness in 1930, but if FMW was written "only
for people in great unhappiness" the change of article reflects
a change of heart as well. Where the younger man wrote to
steel himself and his readers against the "unyielding despair"
of ultimate cosmic finitude and indifference to human destiny,
the more seasoned philosopher "turned his atttention to other
things" and focused on practical strategies for flourishing on a
more human scale. So, from 1927, another text for our
consideration:

42. ..if you accept the ordinary laws of
science, you have to suppose that
human life and life in general on
this planet will die out in due
course: it is a stage in the decay of
the solar system; at a certain stage
of decay you get the sort of
conditions of temperature and so
forth which are suitable to
protoplasm, and there is life for a
short time in the life of the whole
solar system. You see in the moon
the sort of thing to which the earth
is tending—something dead, cold,
and lifeless.
I am told that that sort of view is
depressing, and people will
sometimes tell you that if they
believed that they would not be
able to go on living. Do not believe
it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really
worries much about what is going
to happen millions of years hence.
Even if they think they are worrying
much about that, they are really
deceiving themselves...

43. They are worried about something
much more mundane, or it may
merely be a bad digestion; but
nobody is really seriously rendered
unhappy by the thought of
something that is going to happen
to this world millions of years
hence. Therefore, although it is of
course a gloomy view to suppose
that life will die out—at least I
suppose we may say so, although
sometimes when I contemplate the
things that people do with their lives
I think it is almost a consolation—it
is not such as to render life
miserable. It merely makes you turn
your attention to other things. "Why
I Am Not A Christian"

44. That's what Dr. Flicker said: the
universe "won't be expanding for
billions of years yet, Alvy. And
we've gotta try and enjoy ourselves
while we're here." I'll bet it's what
you say at Sunday Assembly too.

45. FMW is more somber and detached in tone, but both it and CH are concerned with how to accept and make the most of
godlessness in a finite and indifferent cosmos. FMW was later described by Russell as written for unhappy people, a young
author's sermonizing attempt to buoy the spirit against tides of unhappy despair...
That Man is the product of causes which had no
prevision of the end they were achieving; that his
origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and
his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental
collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no
intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an
individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of
the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the
noonday brightness of human genius, are destined
to extinction in the vast death of the solar
system, and that the whole temple of Man's
achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the
debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not
quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that
no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on
the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the
soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

46. CH is a mature author's lighter report on
what he's learned about living well, a call to
all to "conquer" happiness based on his
own life experience. It embraces and
celebrates our fully vested citizenship in the
cosmos.

47. Russell the peripatetic. “Every
morning Bertie would go for an
hour’s walk by himself, composing
and thinking out his work for that
day. He would then come back and
write for the rest of the morning,
smoothly, easily and without a
single correction.”Gymnasiums of
the Mind

48. Solvitur ambulando
It’s a Latin phrase that literally means,
“It is solved by walking.” Or, a little
more loosely, “It is solved by walking
around"... There was a time in which
writers and philosophers wrote poems
and paeans to the humble walk,
publishing books and essays with titles
such as “The Reveries of the Solitary
Walker,” “In Praise of Walking,” and
“Walking as a Fine Art.” Bipedal
locomotion was referred to as “the
manly art of walking,” and enrollment in
the “noble army of walkers” was
encouraged... (continues)
Diogenes of Sinope, the
“dog philosopher,” solved
Zeno’s paradoxes of
motion by walking away.

50. "Happiness can be
found, even in the
darkest of times, if one
remembers to turn on
the light." Dumbledore

51. Bertrand Russell - Message To Future Generations
In 1959 Russell was just short of his 87th birthday, when asked what he would like to say to a generation living 1,000 years in the future.

52. “The secret of happiness is this: let your
interests be as wide as possible, and let your
reactions to the things and persons that interest
you be as far as possible friendly rather than
hostile.” And,
“The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim
at the possession of a number of subsidiary
interests in addition to those central ones upon
which his life is built.”

53. “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.”

54. “The trouble arises from the
generally received
philosophy of life,
according to which life is a
contest, a competition, in
which respect is to be a
ccorded to the victor. This
view leads to an undue
cultivation of the will at the
expense of the senses and
the intellect.”

55. “anyone who can obviously
afford a car but genuinely
prefers travel or a good
library will in the end be
much more respected than
if he behaved exactly like
everyone else.”

56. four general maxims[...].
The first is: remember that your motives
are not always as altruistic as they seem
to yourself.
The second is: don't over-estimate your
own merits.
The third is: don't expect others to take as
much interest in you as you do yourself.
And the fourth is: don't imagine that most
people give enough thought to you to have
any special desire to persecute you.”

57. “The wise man thinks about
his troubles only when
there is some purpose in
doing so; at other times he
thinks about other things,
or, if it is night, about
nothing at all.”

58. Education used to be
conceived very largely as a
training in the capacity for
enjoyment - enjoyment, I mean,
of those more delicate kinds that
are not open to wholly uncultivated
people. In the eighteenth century it
was one of the marks of a
'gentleman' to take a discriminating
pleasure in literature, pictures, and
music. We nowadays may disagree
with his taste, but it was at least
genuine. The rich man of the
present day tends to be of quite a
different type. He never reads.

59. Each of us is in the world for no
very long time, and within the few
years of his life has to acquire
whatever he is to know of this
strange planet and its place in the
universe. To ignore our
opportunities for knowledge,
imperfect as they are, is like going
to the theatre and not listening to
the play. The world is full of things
that are tragic or comic, heroic or
bizarre or surprising, and those who
fail to be interested in the spectacle
that it offers are forgoing one of the
privileges that life has to offer.

60. “To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to
feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be
over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote
and unknown future.”
Russell says this in the "Family" chapter of Conquest of Happiness, and while
he's talking about the stream of generations and the "procreative impulse" he's
not saying you have to have children of your own to to feel a part of the
stream of life. Or rather, he's saying that happy people claim a lasting stake in
the life of their species and care about "the world that shall come after them"
because we are all family, they are all our children.

61. That's what John Dewey meant too,
when he said we're all links in the
continuous human community.
Personal death does not end all, the
loss of those near us does not
obliterate the streaming possibilities of
life to come, the tragic aspect of life
does not exhaust it.
“The things in
civilization we
most prize are
not of
ourselves...
But stagnation and social hostility
might. We must enlarge our hearts
and transcend selfish isolation. We
must evolve past envy, past the age
of Drumpf.

62. ...They exist by grace of the
doings and sufferings of the
continuous human community in
which we are a link. Ours is the
responsibility of conserving,
transmitting, rectifying and
expanding the heritage of values
we have received, that those who
come after us may receive it
more solid and secure, more
widely accessible and more
generously shared than we have
received it.”
John Dewey, A Common Faith

63. The greatest joy. To be happy,
concludes Russell, is to be “a
citizen of the universe, enjoying
freely the spectacle that it offers
and the joys that it affords,
untroubled by the thought of
death, not really separate from
those who will come after us. It is
in such profound instinctive union
with the stream of life that the
greatest joy is to be found.”

64. “We have reached a stage in evolution which is not the final stage. We
must pass through it quickly, for if we do not, most of us will perish by the
way, and the others will be lost in a forest of doubt and fear. ..
To find the right road out of this despair civilised man must enlarge his
heart as he has enlarged his mind. He must learn to transcend self, and in
so doing to acquire the freedom of the Universe.”
Let us make it so. Amen.

65. Quotable Russell. The good life is one inspired by love and guided by
knowledge. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love
can produce a good life...What we need is not the 'will to believe' but
the will to find out... I shouldn't wish people to dogmatically believe any
philosophy, not even mine... Contact with those who have no doubts
has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts... The fundamental cause
of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while
the intelligent are full of doubt... If there were a God, I think it very
unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by
those who doubt His existence... In all affairs it's a healthy thing now
and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for
granted... Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main
sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom... Most
people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so... To teach how
to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation,
is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for
those who study it... It has been said that man is a rational animal. All
my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."

66. About Russell. As a philosopher, mathematician, educator, social critic and political activist, Bertrand Russell
authored over 70 books and thousands of essays and letters addressing a myriad of topics. Awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1950, Russell was a fine literary stylist, one of the foremost logicians ever, and a gadfly for
improving the lives of men and women.
Born in 1872 into the British aristocracy and educated at Cambridge University, Russell gave away much of his
inherited wealth. But in 1931 he inherited and kept an earldom. His multifaceted career centered on work as a
philosophy professor, writer, and public lecturer. Here is a detailedchronology of Russell's life, an overview of
his analytic philosophy, and a completebibliography of all his publications... (continues)
Bertrand Russell, third Earl Russell, was born on 18th May 1872 at Cleddon Hall, Monmouthshire, into one of the great political
families of Britain. His grandfather, Lord John Russell, the Whig politician and first Earl, who twice became Prime Minister,
steered the 1832 Reform Act through Parliament. John Stuart Mill was Bertrand’s godfather, and young Bertie was introduced to
Queen Victoria when he was two years old. Russell became a great and innovative philosopher, but he had politics in his genes.
Russell’s mother died when he was two years old, his father when he was three. There were two older siblings, a brother Frank,
and a sister Rachel, who died young. Russell and his brother were brought up by their grandparents in Pembroke House, in the
middle of Regent’s Park in London. (The house was the gift of Queen Victoria, and had been given in gratitude for Lord Russell’s
political services. This was fitting, since, without the Reform Act, Victoria might not have had a throne to sit on.) Here the
friendless boy grew up, looked after by a succession of Swiss and German nurses and governesses, and taught at home by a
succession of English tutors. He was lonely, unhappy and highly precocious... (continues)
Russell texts online...

67. Bill Bryson's THREE REASONS
NEVER TO BE UNHAPPY (#s 1 &
2 are more elegantly put by Richard
Dawkins in Unweaving the
Rainbow - "We are going to die,
and that makes us the lucky
ones..." - and isemphatically
supported (as is Bertrand Russell's
"stream of life" advice) by Neil de
Grasse Tyson's most astounding
fact; #3 may be currently
inoperative, but "peace" is always
relative).

68. First, you were born. This in itself is a remarkable achievement. Did
you know that each time your father ejaculated (and frankly he did it
quite a lot) he produced roughly 25 million spermatozoa -enough to
repopulate Britain every two days or so? For you to have been born,
not only did you have to be among the few batches of sperm that
had even a theoretical chance of prospering - in itself quite a long
shot - but you then had to win a race against 24,999,999 or so other
wriggling contenders, all rushing to swim the English Channel of
your mother's vagina in order to be the first ashore at the fertile egg
of Boulogne, as it were. Being born was easily the most
remarkable achievement of your whole life. And think: you could
just as easily have been a flatworm.

69. Second, you are alive. For the
tiniest moment in the span of
eternity you have the miraculous
privilege to exist. For endless eons
you were not. Soon you will cease
to be once more. That you are able
to sit here right now in this one
never-to-be-repeated moment,
reading this book, eating bon-bons,
dreaming about hot sex with that
scrumptious person from accounts,
speculatively sniffing your armpits,
doing whatever you are doing - just
existing - is really wondrous beyond
belief.

70. Third, you have plenty to eat, you
live in a time of peace and 'Tie a
Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak
Tree' will never be number one
again.
If you bear these things in mind,
you will never be truly unhappy -
though in fairness I must point out
that if you find yourself alone in
Weston-super-Mare on a rainy
Tuesday evening you may come
close. Bill Bryson, Notes From a
Small Island