“Talk Amongst Yourselves”: Bertrand Russell Quote

I find his words disturbing, depressing and unappealing.

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It doesn’t resonate with me, because he’s struggling with a problem I just don’t feel. The problems he faces in the first paragraph strike me as the problems of a theist-turned-atheist. As an atheist-from-birth, I never felt this troubling emptiness he struggles with. When I was a little kid, theists would ask me, “But then what’s the meaning of life?” and it wasn’t until years later that I even understood what they were talking about. It wasn’t a question that I thought had an obvious counter-answer, so much as an incomprehensible question, like “But then why are there no monkey in blue, blue?” I just had no idea what they were even getting at. I understand the question better now, but to some degree, I still feel that way.

. . .Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs. . .

Sounds great for Man! I wonder what Woman should do during her brief years? Maybe take up knitting or something.

No agenda on my part, just stuff that I thought would be interesting to hear others’ thoughts on.

Ah, so we finally found out your agenda! You want to “hear others’ thoughts”, which is obviously an euphemism for something far more sinister!

Somebody contrasted this essay with Carl Sagan’s approach, which would usually evoke an awe with the wonders of the universe. But I think I actually prefer Russell’s approach. There is just something about cosmic sadness and tragedy that I find aesthetically pleasing. Tragedies make some of the best stories, I think. And that’s ultimately what it is, just a story. I don’t really consider Russell’s version to be any more or less true than Carl Sagan’s version.

Thank you Mike for an enjoyable conversation.

I have understood and accepted this basic view of the universe since I was a kid, and it has never depressed or defeated me. I’m not really sure that Russell was personally feeling the despair that he was describing. He might have been singing the lament of others who thought it was supposed to be different, who thought that somehow life was supposed to have a meaning and a fairness built into it, and then were disappointed to discover that it does not.

However, nothing has been lost but our childhood fantasy. Meaning and fairness are our inventions, and we can pursue their perfection if we wish, as best as we can within the limits imposed by our utterly mindless surroundings. It’s not that the universe is “unfair” and “uncaring” because those words subtly imply that, like a person, it is capable of fairness and caring but it chooses not to. No, it is neither fair nor unfair, neither caring nor uncaring. It is not capable of any of that because it is not conscious. Only living things have varieties of that, and we still fail to have a clear understanding of what consciousness even is. Some of us spin intricate and starry-eyed notions about the significance of our awareness and that other questionable concept we call free will, wanting to pump ourselves up to something that is worthy of the meaning and fairness that we still hope the universe will grant us. Nope. That stuff is up to us and only us, every day, year and lifetime.

I know that some day there will be no trace of us but a thin dark line in the sedimentary rock, no poets to sing our heroic story, no monuments to our glory. Not one stone we cut will stand upon another. That is not sad or depressing or defeating to me. My carbon and calcium will be re-used again and again until the sun swallows the earth, and even after that, molecules everywhere will go on and on for trillions times trillions of eons until the final entropy. It’s silly and vain to think that my particular use of them is so important that it must somehow be preserved for eternity.

In the meantime, I am living my life, inventing its meaning as I go along. I’m just as engaged in the struggle to survive as any animal or plant, but I’m one of the luckier ones, and I don’t take that for granted. I appreciate and take full advantage of my good fortune. Sandwiched between the sandstone of ages past and the shale of ages to come, I am here right now and I feel joy and love, and I happily accept that with that comes grief and pain. I’m able to pursue those popular hobbies called meaning and fairness. My version has to do with helping others and as far as the local standards go, I’d say that I’m doing a good job.

I found it sweet, sad and inspiring, kind of like life is sometimes. None of his facts are wrong (or almost – there’s the old “random” canard), but his words (outside of the presentation of the basic facts) aren’t actually bleak – they’re more like turning to face the wind. He sees a kind of heroism in that, and I like that.

I wouldn’t say I always feel the same way, but I sure get where he’s coming from. Facing up to the facts that there’s no particular purpose there, no destination and doing what you can anyway is kind of heroic.

wow. Richard, you made me cry!

Do you have to be so poetic???? 🙂

Personally, when I dwell on the meaninglessness and amorality of existence, I find it liberating. I’m always careful about how I express that thought, because you never know how someone is going to take it, but I cannot deny that nihilism appeals to me.

@ Mike: I agree with you about Norse mythology. Tom Shippey wrote about Norse mythology’s influence on Tolkien, and in describing it’s basic outlook, summarized it as “Dying undaunted is no defeat.” That resonates with me.

I too like Russell’s piece aesthetically. Sagan can offer inspire when he describes the beauty of nature, but, and maybe this is just because I’m depressed, but I can only keep that feeling for a short time. Russell’s stuff upper lip is much more my style. When I look at the world of human affairs, there is so much hatred, violence, suffering, ugliness and despair, that any awe I have for science is completely overwhelmed.

Russell here reminds me of Camus, who I think would agre with the Norse outlook. We live in an universe devoid of meaning, deaf to human cries for meaning, and that opposition is the Absurd; it is only by keeping the Absurd before us that we can avoid the totalizing worldviews that result from thinking one has grasped “the Meaning” and lead to totalitarianism.

There is no such thing as purity. We all have blood on our hands, either directly or indirectly, but we can’t let that stop is from living our lives. The best we can do is make a stand for human solidarity against the plague of evil and suffering and death. It may be a small gesture, compared to the immensity of the coming darkness that awaits all, but it is the only thing we have.

It’s an era thing, that whole late 19th/early 20th century when science had really laid the smack down on our sense of ourselves — the discovery of evolution, and the growing understanding of just how big the universe is.

I think this gets at the heart of what is wrong off to us about the Russell quote. Since his time, we’ve discovered much more about our Universe, though I am sure many atheists still take the “cold and uncaring” view.

I would recommend “View from the Center of the Universe” as an antidote to this view. Abrams and Primack lay out modern cosmology in such a way that it centers humanity in a unique and inspiring position in the Universe. I had the pleasure of meeting them, and while I won’t venture a guess as to their religious views, I would say that their understanding of science and the Universe has given them the warm fuzzies and not the cold shoulder.

The world of science, so described, is not the one of which I think. The world I think of is a world for man and woman alike with which to become intimate. One that is unhindered and unobstructed by wastes of energy and time known as superstition. One that can provide countless beauties called natural phenomenon and deep meaning in understanding the intricate workings of nature.
And, the lack of an ultimate destiny can be a marvellous thing. One can stop looking for answers in the shadows of invisible, untouchable phantoms; and start–to borrow from a cliché–creating one’s own destiny. Efforts need no longer go wasted. The potential of a person need no longer be leached to imaginings.

Well that was my attempt to write early Victorian-esque (I’m assuming that’s the era) prose. Hopefully it some of it is comprehensible; if not organised, I admit.

I grew up in a very conservative home. Typical of the creationists I was taught that one couldn’t have any sort of morality unless one believed in a Creator. When I left the burdensome, heartweary, faith of my youth I was struck by how open the universe was. A world of possibilities, but I had to reach for them myself. It was amazingly freeing. I get that same image from Russell’s words here.

I’m also a lover of the old Norse myths of standing against wrong even if one knows that one will lose. It is that sort of ‘romance’ (if one could call it that) which I think inspires. To fight against what I perceive as the unfairness of life and to make the world a better place than I found it. I liked Sagan’s sub-title to “A Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.” Our lives may be short like candles, but the light from a source goes on (though ever dimmer) into the night long after the source has vanished.

The brighter we burn, the more we strive to make the world a better place, to understand that much more about the universe in which we live, the longer that our impact on the world will be