Article 1 : “The Degree of Happiness” by Betrand Russell ; A New Order?

     Let’s kick start the discussion with an article called “The Degree of Happiness” written by Betrand Russell.  Who is this Betrand Russell actually? Let’s get a brief introduction about this awesome dude. The name is Betrand Russell; was a British philosopher, mathematician, logician, historian, a social critic and also a Nobel laureate, whose emphasis on rational analysis influenced the course of 20th century thinking. He was born in Trelleck, Wales, on May 18, 1872. He was educated at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. “The Degree of Happiness” is actually an excerpt from his own book entitled “The Conquest of Happiness”. What we are going to do is examine his article and try to understand his theory.

What I can came out with Betrand Russell’s piece of writing – The Degree of Happiness, is that it is a careful examination by him towards the different level of happiness attain by humankind throughout life. This can be seen when Betrand Russell explained that by happiness can be differentiates or divided them into two types;

1)    Open to any human being

2)    Only to those who can read or write.

For the happiness that opens to any human being, he uses his own childhood experience for example. This can be seen when he said he knew a man who is bursting with happiness whose business was only digging wells. The man was of enormous heights and of incredible muscles but could neither read nor write. The man was then got a vote for parliament and the man is unhappy with it because he is not capable of handling and overcoming the obstacle / problem of the parliament as he is not able to neither read nor write. Here we can see that the man’s happiness did not depend on intellectual sources but rather based on physical vigour. Hence, happiness is acquired only when the capability to work and neutralise any concrete, solid shape of unbeatable obstacles. Here Bertrand Russell also tries to conclude that happiness did not depend on intellectual sources, laws, fashion and belief, but it also depends on physical vitality. He also did compare the happiness of his gardener who was destroying rabbits to a policeman trying to deal with criminals which gives great pleasure to his gardener.

 I think the same principle is still applied to the situation where a footballer who manages to score goals for his team is similar to the above situation. If a  football player manage to contribute to his team by scoring goals for his team, the player would be extremely happy which means one’s happiness could be the other’s misery and vice versa.

Meanwhile, Betrand Russell also stated that the happiness that is only to those who can read or write are emotionally simple and are obtainable from their work – a satisfaction that is so great, felt and experienced very strongly that they can derive pleasure from eating and even marrying ; the men of science or scientists. It is quite astonishing on how merely the men of science capable of achieving happiness only from the satisfaction of their work instead of marrying, spend some quality time with their family, et cetera.

The scientists have an activity which he make use of his abilities to the fullest and he gain results which seem to be important not only to himself but to the general public as well. Well i think that is the main reason why scientists should be extremely happy. We could not curb their natural exuberance because it is already in their blood, it is their nature to behave so.

Nevertheless, artists and literary man are also can be considered in the same page, only that the arts, poems and pictures produced by the artists and literary  have their own creativity, semantics and values which some people cannot understand and making it hard for the artists and poetry to achieve happiness for their happiness is only achieve only if the general public can understand their masterpiece. Therefore i agreed that the happiest man describe in Betrand Russell’s the Degree of Happiness article is the scientist. 

From the sentence in the article, degree of happiness, “consequently Einstein is happy while the best painters starve in the gutter”, we can also conclude that the scientists are emotionally simple and acquire from their work some sort of fulfilment so considerate that they consequently able to gain happiness from daily routine enquiries. In a nut shell, happiness is describe to diverse from viewpoint of different level of people.

In proportion from the article, it is suggesting that pleasure is achievable after the objectives are being fulfilled and all the happiness acquired is all equal. Thus, people with knowledge and experience are much happier than one who has nothing in life.