The Conquest of Unhappiness

Bertrand Russell on what makes us unhappy (2)

“Of all the characteristics of ordinary human nature,” Russell writes, “envy is the most unfortunate; not only does the envious person wish to inflict misfortune and do so whenever he can with impunity, but he is also himself rendered unhappy by envy. Instead of deriving pleasure from what he has, he derives pain from what others have. If he can, he deprives others of their advantages, which to him is as desirable as it would be to secure the same advantages himself.”

This is an irrational behaviour that causes the envious person to invest effort not into improving their own condition but into making others worse off. If nothing is done to control and limit envy, Russel believes, envy might affect the whole of society and bring it into a downward spiral where, in the end, everyone is equally miserable.

How then, can we get rid of envy?

Russell proposes happiness as an antidote to envy. Someone who is happy will be content with what they have and will not be looking to compare themselves with others.

“With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable because someone else has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations.”

So when we have a salary that is sufficient for us, we should not look to compare it with the salary of others. Doing so would not increase our own salary, but merely remove the happiness that we can gain from it and replace it with sadness.

For Russell, the source of envy goes back to childhood. If the parents seem to prefer one child over another, this, he believes, will cause the less advantaged one to develop a…

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