Bronnen bij Samenwerking en competitie: Russell

Een citaat uit een uiterst belangrijk boek over levenshouding: Bertrand Russell: The Conquest of Happiness - meer stukjes hier uitleg of detail :
  The trouble does not lie simply with the individual, nor can a single individual prevent it in his own isolated case. The trouble arises from the generally received philosophy of life, according to which life is a contest, a competition, in which respect is to be accorded to the victor. This view leads to an undue cultivation of the will at the expense of the senses and the intellect (p.42).
...
Competition considered as the main thing in life is too grim, too tenacious, too much a matter of taut muscles and intent will, to make a possible basis of life for more than one or two generations at most. After that length of time it must produce nervous fatigue, various phenomena of escape, a pursuit of pleasures as tense and as difficult as work (since relaxing has become impossible), and in the end a disappearance of the stock through sterility. It is not only work that is poisoned by the philosophy of competition; leisure is poisoned just as much. The kind of leisure which is quiet and restoring to the nerves comes to be felt boring. There is bound to be a continual acceleration of which the natural termination would be drugs and collapse. The cure for this lies in admitting the part of sane and quiet enjoyment in a balanced ideal of life. (p.43).

In de omgang met mensen is het ook waar te nemen: hoe meer neiging tot competitie, des te gefrustreerder het leven dat men leidt. Of men ziet pure kwaadaardigheid.


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3 mrt.2005