{"id":12978,"date":"2026-05-14T22:25:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T02:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/bertrand-russells-salve-for-hard-times-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T22:25:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T02:25:57","slug":"bertrand-russells-salve-for-hard-times-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/bertrand-russells-salve-for-hard-times-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Bertrand Russell\u2019s Salve for Hard Times \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"In<\/a><\/p>\n

Along the way of life, I have discovered three things you can almost always do in your darkest hour that almost never fail to recover the light: <\/p>\n

Learn something.<\/p>\n

Help someone.<\/p>\n

Feel it all.<\/p>\n

We need our sciences to learn how the universe works, to know what we don\u2019t yet know and to comprehend it. We need our arts to learn how the heart works, to feel what we are unwilling or unable to feel and hold it without apprehension. We need both \u2014 knowledge and feeling, intelligent comprehension and emotional intelligence \u2014 to be capable of empathy, as well as self-compassion.<\/p>\n

The damage of our time is that it pragmatizes everything, reducing the wonder of curiosity to the practical application of discoveries, reducing the symphony of feeling to the hold music of self-help, reducing human beings to data points in a log of user statistics and political polls. It is not only an insult but a violence to our humanity, the only antidote to which is a passionate defense of the irreducible things that make us human \u2014 those things useless as moonlight<\/a>, unnecessary as music, as love<\/a>: There is no practical value to apprehending the magnificent eye of the scallop<\/a> or the mystery of the ghost pipe<\/a>, no practical value to Leaves of Grass<\/em><\/a>, yet these are the things that mediate the worst propensities of our kind \u2014 our capacity for despair, which is the price of consciousness<\/a>, and our capacity for war, which is the cost of despair. <\/p>\n

A century ago, as the world was recovering from its first global war, Bertrand Russell<\/a> (May 18, 1872\u2013February 2, 1970) foresaw another unless humanity could find a way to resist this dehumanizing cult of utility. We didn\u2019t then, but maybe, just maybe, we can now with the prescription Russell offers in his wonderful essay \u201c\u2018Useless Knowledge,’\u201d later included in the altogether revelatory collection In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"bertrandrussell3\"<\/a>
Bertrand Russell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Observing that the Renaissance was so transformative because its \u201cmain motive\u201d was delight \u2014 \u201cthe restoration of a certain richness and freedom in art and speculation which had been lost while ignorance and superstition kept the mind\u2019s eye in blinkers\u201d \u2014 and that the Enlightenment was so transformative because it probed the workings of the universe without expectation of practical gain, he writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Throughout the last hundred and fifty years, men<\/a> have questioned more and more vigorously the value of \u201cuseless\u201d knowledge, and have come increasingly to believe that the only knowledge worth having is that which is applicable to some part of the economic life of the community\u2026 Knowledge, everywhere, is coming to be regarded not as a good in itself, or as a means of creating a broad and humane outlook on life in general, but as merely an ingredient in technical skill\u2026 This is part and parcel of the same movement which has led to compulsory military service, boy scouts, the organisation of political parties, and the dissemination of political passion by the Press.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a sentiment he would soon develop in his excellent essay on the value of idleness<\/a>, he adds:<\/p>\n

\n

We do not like to think of anyone lazily enjoying life, however refined may be the quality of his enjoyment. We feel that everybody ought to be doing something to help on the great cause (whatever it may be), the more so as so many bad men are working against it and ought to be stopped. We have not leisure of mind, therefore, to acquire any knowledge except such as will help us in the fight for whatever it may happen to be that we think important.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Illustration by Maurice Sendak from Open House for Butterflies<\/em><\/a> by Ruth Krauss<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But while the usefulness of \u201cuseful\u201d knowledge in making the modern world cannot be denied \u2014 here we are, with our computers and airplanes and ever-growing life-expectancies \u2014 we need its \u201cuseless\u201d counterpart to make life not longer, not more productive, but wider and deeper and more present. Russell writes:<\/p>\n

\n

There is indirect utility, of various different kinds, in the possession of knowledge which does not contribute to technical efficiency. I think some of the worst features of the modern world could be improved by a greater encouragement of such knowledge and a less ruthless pursuit of mere professional competence\u2026 When conscious activity is wholly concentrated on some one definite purpose, the ultimate result, for most people, is lack of balance accompanied by some form of nervous disorder\u2026 Narrowness of outlook has caused oblivion of some powerful counteracting force.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Several years before the Dutch art historian Johan Huizinga composed his revelatory treatise on how play made us human<\/a>, Russell adds:<\/p>\n

\n

Men<\/a> as well as children have need of play, that is to say, of periods of activity having no purpose beyond present enjoyment. But if play is to serve its purpose, it must be possible to find pleasure and interest in matters not connected with work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And yet play is an active rather than passive form of leisure. In a prophetic sentiment anticipating the menacing mesmerism of social media, the way it would turn the human animal into a screen zombie, he observes:<\/p>\n

\n

The amusements of modern urban populations tend more and more to be passive and collective, and to consist of inactive observation of the skilled activities of others\u2026 If a leisured population is to be happy, it must be an educated population, and must be educated with a view to mental enjoyment as well as to the direct usefulness of technical knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a>, also available as a solo print and more<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Half a lifetime before he looked back to reflect on the key to growing old contentedly<\/a> \u2014 \u201cmake your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life\u201d \u2014 he writes:<\/p>\n

\n

[Such useless] knowledge, when it is successfully assimilated, forms the character of a man\u2019s thoughts and desires, making them concern themselves, in part at least, with large impersonal objects, not only with matters of immediate importance to himself. It has been too readily assumed that, when a man has acquired certain capacities by means of knowledge, he will use them in ways that are socially beneficial. The narrowly utilitarian conception of education ignores the necessity of training a man\u2019s purposes as well as his skill\u2026 It must be admitted that highly educated people are sometimes cruel, I think there can be no doubt that they are less often so than people whose minds have lain fallow. The bully in a school is seldom a boy whose proficiency in learning is up to the average. When a lynching takes place, the ring-leaders are almost invariably very ignorant men. This is not because mental cultivation produces positive humanitarian feelings, though it may do so; it is rather because it gives other interests than the ill-treatment of neighbours, and other sources of self-respect than the assertion of domination.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even Bertrand Russell did not foresee that within a century bullies and lynchers with fallow minds would take the reins of superpowers, waging wars by whims and feeding the fragile ego\u2019s lust for power by terrorizing the powerless. But he did give us, as plainly and precisely as possible, a prescription for prevention:<\/p>\n

\n

Perhaps the most important advantage of \u201cuseless\u201d knowledge is that it promotes a contemplative habit of mind. There is in the world too much readiness, not only for action without adequate previous reflection, but also for some sort of action on occasions on which wisdom would counsel inaction\u2026 Hamlet is held up as an awful warning against thought without action, but no one holds up Othello as a warning against action without thought\u2026 For my part, I think action is best when it emerges from a profound apprehension of the universe and human destiny, not from some wildly passionate impulse of romantic but disproportioned self-assertion. A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than in action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Violeta L\u00f3piz for At the Drop of a Cat<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Describing what Iris Murdoch would later term \u201cunselfing,\u201d<\/a> which she identified as the chief reward of engaging with art and nature, he adds:<\/p>\n

\n

A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These contemplative acts of unselfing, Russell notes, have \u201cadvantages ranging from the most trivial to the most profound, [from] minor vexations, such as fleas, missing trains, or cantankerous business associates [to] the difficulty of securing international co-operation.\u201d In passage evocative of physicist Richard Feynman\u2019s classic Ode to a Flower<\/em><\/a>, he reflects:<\/p>\n

\n

Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant, but also makes pleasant things more pleasant. I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of the Han dynasty; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska introduced them into India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman Empire in the first century of our era; that the word \u201capricot\u201d is derived from the same Latin source as the word \u201cprecocious,\u201d because the apricot ripens early; and that the A<\/em> at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

But while the trivial pleasures of culture have their place as a relief from the trivial worries of practical life, the more important merits of contemplation are in relation to the greater evils of life, death and pain and cruelty, and the blind march of nations into unnecessary disaster. For those to whom dogmatic religion can no longer bring comfort, there is need of some substitute, if life is not to become dusty and harsh and filled with trivial self-assertion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a passage of overwhelming prescience, he adds:<\/p>\n

\n

The world at present is full of angry self-centred groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilisation rather than yield an inch. To this narrowness no amount of technical instruction will provide an antidote. The antidote, in so far as it is a matter of individual psychology, is to be found in history, biology, astronomy, and all those studies which, without destroying self-respect, enable the individual to see himself in his proper perspective. What is needed is not this or that specific piece of information, but such knowledge as inspires a conception of the ends of human life as a whole: art and history, acquaintance with the lives of heroic individuals, and some understanding of the strangely accidental and ephemeral position of man in the cosmos \u2014 all this touched with an emotion of pride in what is distinctively human, the power to see and to know, to feel magnanimously and to think with understanding. It is from large perceptions combined with impersonal emotion that wisdom most readily springs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Russell on the secret of happiness<\/a>, the two pillars of human flourishing<\/a>, how to heal an ailing and divided world<\/a>, then try an astronaut\u2019s antidote to despair<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along the way of life, I have discovered three things you can almost always do in your darkest hour that almost never fail to recover […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}