Bertrand Russell’s other value
First, for the record: I intend to post on Leviticus and Deuteronomy soon, soon. I am wrestling with the triple difficulty of (1) rolling too many stones up too many different hills at once, (2) dealing with an increasingly severe cold, and (3) feeling repulsed by the books in question every time I open them. I will combine the two into a single entry and be done with it. Soon. Then you’ll get to read Timothy Mills’ truly terrific take on Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. In the meantime…
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Just finished reading The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. A fascinating person, clear thinker, lucid writer, and tremendous influence on me. All nonreligious parents would enjoy and ought to read the first two chapters (Childhood and Adolescence).
My stubbornly naive tendency is to picture such people as Russell gliding through life on a cloud of philosophy, observing the human condition from a higher elevation, untrammeled by the things that so trammel me and my ilk. A good look at Russell’s life cures a chap of this nonsense plenty quick. What a mess! Bertrand Russell was one very trammeled and very human guy.
One passage in particular would have been worth reading the whole book just to get:
Ever since puberty I have believed in the value of two things: kindness and clear thinking. At first these two remained more or less distinct; when I felt triumphant I believed most in clear thinking, and in the opposite mood I believed most in kindness. (vol 2, p. 232)
I touched on this several weeks ago in a post about what Christians generally do better than secularists:
[Freethought groups] fret and fuss over the urgent need for more rationality in the world, completely ignoring more basic human needs like unconditional acceptance. Most people do not go to church for theology—they go for acceptance. They go to be surrounded by people who smile at them and are nice to them, who ask how their kids are and whether that back injury is still hurting.
Freethought groups are not often good at making people feel welcome and unconditionally accepted. Whenever I walk in the door of a new group, either to attend or as a speaker, I mill around and look at the walls for ten minutes before someone says something. It’s a painful ten minutes for anyone, and makes them less likely to return. Get a greeter at the door to welcome new faces in and introduce them around.
Until we recognize why people gather together—and that it isn’t usually “to be a force for rationality”—freethought groups will continue to lag light years behind churches in offering community.
Nonreligious folks are not unkind. Many are the gentlest and kindest people I know. But as a movement, we too seldom recognize the importance of talking once in a while about human emotional needs — until those moments when we are feeling “the opposite of triumphant” and find ourselves, as individuals, looking for a kind word or thought or deed to come our way.
As a parent, I find myself more upset by the unkindnesses my children do — especially to each other — than by any fuzziness of thought. And I find it harder to forgive my own lapses in the former than in the latter.