Russell's delight

Near the end of chapter 3 in Conquest of Happiness Bertrand Russell writes: "They do not , on the average, have so much as  two children per marriage; they do not enjoy life enough to wish to beget children... Those whose outlook on life causes them to feel so little happiness that they do not care to beget children are biologically doomed."

That struck a nerve, in class. Several students said they do not intend to have children, though none admitted to not enjoying life.

I'm trying to recall my own feelings about the prospect of parenting when I was a 20-year old undergraduate. I think I had every intention then of doing it eventually, someday, but certainly not anytime soon. And that's how it happened: late marriage, later family, and yet all too soon now the nest will be empty again. I can't imagine what those years would have been like without our girls, and don't want to. I share Russell's attitude about the complexity, the delights, and the deep gratification of "parental feeling":

There is, first and foremost, sheer animal affection, and delight in watching what is charming in the ways of the young. Next, there is the sense of inescapable responsibility, providing a purpose for daily activities which skepticism does not easily question. Then there is an egoistic element, which is very dangerous: the hope that one's children may succeed where one has failed, that they may carry on one's work when death or senility puts an end to one's own efforts, and, in any case, that they will supply a biological escape from death, making one's own life part of the whole stream, and not a mere stagnant puddle without any overflow into the future. All this I experienced, and for some years it filled my life with happiness and peace. Autobiography

I was trying to talk in class about that dangerous "egoistic element," about the value of that feeling of being tangibly invested in our children's future, hoping to make a constructive contribution to their flourishing and caring about it in more personal terms than I imagine the childless do... but at the same time resisting the selfish impulse to (as Emerson put it) "make another you. One's enough." 

In other words, the kids are alright. "Cannot we let people be themselves and enjoy life in their own way?" So, maybe two, maybe one, maybe none: there are enough of us, we can afford a few happily childless adults. I'm just glad I'm not one of them.
==
Our concluding Russellian topics today, in Happiness, as we near the end of Conquest: family, work, and what he oddly calls "impersonal interests" - I call them personal delights or enthusiasms, "those minor interests which fill [our] leisure and afford relaxation from the tenseness of more serious preoccupations."

Our avocational interests may seem minor, but they can have a major impact on the quality of our lives and the extent of our happiness, and not just our own. Noticing how others embrace the sources of their own delight is an important step on the road to a deeper empathy, a step away from mutual blindness, hostility, and aggression. Or so I have long contended.

What objects of enthusiasm can imaginably promise so much?
Any we can imagine, and then someóbaseball, say, or the Beatles,
beer, Great Britain, literature, science, science fiction, Monet,
Mozart, Kentucky whiskey, Tennessee walking horses, walking,
running, tilling the soil, raising kids, healing, praying,
meditating, thinking, teaching, learning, and on and on. Whatever
disparate items may show up on anyone's list (these are a few
that crop up in my own family circle), their crucial essence is
to point at, but not to replicate or make transparent to others'
grasp, the depths of experience and personal significance they
attempt to name. I can tell you that I love baseball, but I
cannot begin to convey precisely why or how or the extent to
which baseball is important for my peculiar ways of experiencing
and living in the world. By the same token your account of the
joys of macramÈ, soccer, or cat-dancing will leave me in the
dark. But it is a darkness rimmed by the glow of a phenomenon we
should all recognize and treasure. "Springs of Delight"

"Raising kids" is on my list, and Russell said it was on his. But he paints a bleak picture of family life, c.1930. Were relations between parents and children really as unhappy (99%!) as he says they were, with so many demanding and despotically possessive parents, so many rude, disrespectful and churlish children? Expectations must have been very different on both ends, and tough economic times (though they probably wouldn't have noticed this in the Russell manor) tend to breed generational tension. But still.

Russell's remarks on women again give some discomfort, especially the claim that women in general have a harder time cultivating "impersonl interests." But his point that for lots of women the choice to pursue a vocation imposes spousally-unmatched domestic compromises is still relevant, even after the choice for most has become no choice at all. As for the quality of domestic life, and speaking as a former Dad-at-home, the charge that it can make you "fussy and small-minded" may be true to an extent, but it's definitely not gender-specific. And  "spinsterhood"? Is that still a thing?

I agree with Russell, feeling "part of the stream of life" is for many of us inseparable from family. I don't agree, though, that "death ends all" for the childless. We can invest ourselves emotionally and tangibly in the future of our species, whether or not our own "germ-plasm" is afloat downstream.

"The production of satisfactory children is a difficult constructive work capable of affording profound satisfaction." Yes, but don't take too much credit for the production process - especially if you employ a nurse and nanny. And consider Uncle Albert's observation: "Being both a father and a teacher I know we can teach our children nothing."

As for work: I do feel sorry for those whose work does not challenge, who must "prostitute" themselves to corporate "Philistines," or who simply find themselves devoting long hours to labor that seems Sisyphean at best. But as we've noted, he coped and found happiness. We shouldn't quit either. (But maybe some of us should quit one rock and seek another, they're not all the same.)

Speaking of Einstein and his "cosmic religious feeling" (and Spinoza's "bliss".. though for me it immediately conjures neither of them, but Sagan instead): Russell is again at his best when he evokes the cosmic perspective [NdT], with its appreciation of the calendrical brevity of life and its mind-opening, soul-expanding promise that "if you have attained to this outlook, a certain deep happiness will never leave you." With this outlook, when I can manage to muster it, I too am in church and in the spirit of A Free Man's Worship.

==
On this day in 1835 Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens], American author (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn), born in Florida, Missouri (d. 1910)...

And just like that, the Writers Almanac itself is history (WaPo). I don't know if Garrison Keillor is guilty as charged, but I'm grateful for all his good work over the years, and for instilling in me the poem-a-day habit. I hope he'll be well.

I am deeply grateful for all the years I had doing "A Prairie Home Companion" and "The Writer's Almanac", the summer tours, the outdoor shows at Tanglewood and Wolf Trap, the friendships of musicians and actors, the saga of Lake Wobegon, the songs and sketches, Guy Noir, Dusty & Lefty, the sheer pleasure of standing in the warmth of that audience. A person could not hope for more than what I was given. I've been fired over a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard. Most stories are. It's some sort of poetic irony to be knocked off the air by a story, having told so many of them myself, but I'm 75 and don't have any interest in arguing about this. And I cannot in conscience bring danger to a great organization I've worked hard for since 1969. I am sorry for all the poets whose work I won't be reading on the radio and sorry for the people who will lose work on account of this. But my profound feeling is that of gratitude, especially to my wife Jenny, and for this painful experience that has brought us even closer together.— Garrison Keillor 

Podcast
11.__.15. 5:40/6:34, 31/59