A Genius’ Ultimate Question To Direct Us To Happiness
The thought that broke and recreated John Stuart Mill is still relevant today
“I should say that from about 1860–65 or thereabouts he ruled England in the region of thought as very few men ever did: I do not expect to see anything like it again.”
— Henry Sidgwick referring to John Stuart Mill, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
What am I doing? It’s a question people often stop and ask themselves today. Technology has created the means to feed eight billion people on this world, but it’s also enabled us to see far beyond the horizon of our home. It gives us a picture of another life that could be ours.
Although, it’s not just one picture; there are endless images of different lives we could live. One can’t help but be confused. The visions of these other possible worlds we could inhabit populate our minds with existential questions.
Am I doing the right thing with my life?
Is there something else better?
Is there more than just what surrounds me?
Am I really happy?
In a way, it’s like our compass is disabled. While those before us didn’t have our technical knowledge, their world could direct them to true north, where our needle bounces all over. Or at least it appears this way.
But those before us were also confused, even the most brilliant people of their time. John Stuart Mill might be the greatest example of this. The celebrated thinker and author from the 19th century wrote classic books that inspired generations following him.
Yet at twenty, the genius suffered a mental breakdown of epic proportions that nearly undid him. Strangely, one question set it off. It’s a question that could still rock our worlds to this very day and overturn the foundations that hold up the very life around us.
But before we uncover the question, we need to understand John Stuart Mill.
A Child Turned Into An Experiment
“Utilitarianism: the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.”
— Definition by Oxford Languages
“Child experiment” sounds terrible, but we’re more familiar with children manipulated as lab experiments than you’d expect. In fact, we’re too familiar with it. It doesn’t take long to find examples:
Michael Jackson was trained as a child to be a popstar at six
Tiger Woods held a golf club before he could walk at two
Bobby Fischer’s young world existed on a chessboard starting at six
Colin Heydt at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes young John Stuart Mill was raised in a similar experimental fashion. He’d get no golf club, microphone, or chessboard though. Mill’s instrument was knowledge.
His father James Mill and friend Jeremy Bentham (father of Utilitarianism) created a movement called “Philosophic Radicals,” seeing the boy as the future “crown prince” of the movement.
The young Mill started learning Classical Greek at three, eventually studying Latin at eight. The boy was fluent at eleven, reading the classic Greek and Roman texts in their original languages. He also mastered the works of Isaac Newton.
His early teens involved economics, metaphysics, logic, mathematics, and starting his own intellectual societies. At fourteen he spent a year in France and mastered their language and political theories. Both Bentham and the older Mill used him as an editor, while the boy also was required to teach his siblings.
Andrew Klavan in his book The Truth and the Beauty says the young Mill was raised according to the Utilitarian ethos. He was praised for acts beneficial for society and punished for anything that wasn’t. The boy saw himself “as destined to be ‘a reformer of the world.’”
However, like Woods, Jackson, and Fischer the experiment went awry. It eventually had to. As with all young people, they start thinking for themselves, and it shatters the beaker their lives are stuffed into.
At twenty Mill had an original thought — not directed by his handlers — and it took the form of a question:
“Suppose that all your objects in life were realized. That all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely affected at this very instant. Would this be a great joy and happiness to you?”
Mill’s Answer And Our Modern Dilemma
No. The simple one word answer crushed Mill. His entire life and upbringing in many ways were a lie, wrapped in an unfulfillable promise. According to Klavan:
“With that, the entire purpose and foundation of his life collapsed.”
How could Mill be an agent to bring the long-sought happiness to humanity it’s always wished for if he couldn’t even find it himself? It set off a paralyzing depression.
According to Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith, Mill’s dilemma is one that’s all too abundant today. Goldsmith eloquently sums it up in an interview at the Knowledge Project:
“Never place your value as a human being on the results of what you’re trying to achieve.”
Over his forty-year career, Goldsmith has noticed the highest achievers tend to do this religiously. He mentions a recent conversation with the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla. The executive marveled over the breakthrough year he and his company had.
So, Goldsmith asked Bourla what his greatest problem is. Bourla quickly replied, “Next year.” The coach told Bourla if he only derives value in results, he’s in deep trouble, since this unique year could never be eclipsed.
Similarly, Goldsmith recounts that Michael Phelps won more Olympic medals than anyone else, but found himself contemplating suicide after his retirement.
While the coach wasn’t there to guide Mill, he found the help in the strangest of places — another English genius, William Wordsworth.
Wordsworth And Personal Happiness
Klavan explains the light of Wordsworth’s poems uncovered the darkness from a world Mill never knew. They focused on the beauty of nature. The simple reflection on the natural beauty of the surrounding world brought Mill inner personal happiness he never experienced.
For once he derived happiness for himself, not in the dull Utilitarian guidelines drummed into him by his intellectual teachers. The poems erased his depression forever.
They showed there was something more outside of him than just bland pleasure and pain. Something so much greater it demanded reverence. Klavan quotes C.S. Lewis as saying the poet’s words are an “advance” which helps to escape the “worst arrogance of materialism.”
Lewis also saw the poems as religious — without the words of religion — a step on the path of a greater, more meaningful life.
Wordsworth also made Mill rethink his original thoughts on happiness. And this journey is something that can teach us all.
Mill’s Revised Guide To Happiness
“The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.”
— John Stuart Mill, The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill
In his autobiography, Mill mentions he originally thought the path to happiness was to be focused outside of oneself on the improvement of mankind. Utilitarianism plain and simple. But he couldn’t find happiness in only addressing others’ wants and needs, which shattered the philosophy.
He found his painful question extremely useful: if you got everything you wanted, would you be happy. It answered like a punch in the gut. However, it pointed him in a direction, like the compass I mentioned earlier.
The needle spun wildly for a bit but steadied and pointed true north.
Although Mill gives the reader a warning — don’t question whether you’re happy too often. There’s danger in this. Like a dream or mirage, happiness can disappear when you spend too much time questioning whether it’s present or focusing on it.
It can often be found in things that are meaningful to you. When you’re engaged in these pursuits, “you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it.” It’s not tied to results, like Goldsmith mentioned.
Viktor Frankl in his classic Man’s Search For Meaning also says something similar. For Frankl, this advice was so powerful it helped him survive concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
Mill’s thoughts of last century are a perfect answer to our angst of this one. We look at our world like a computer game. We keep a score. Everything is a contest of some sort with a number to tell us how we’re doing.
Politicians continuously study polls with percentages
People count their “number of steps” and try to outdo the total
The everyday person dreams of increasing their yearly salary, is given a credit score, and a performance review with a tabulated number at work
While improvement is wonderful and a goal everyone should have, life isn’t Nintendo. A number-generated score is only ONE valuation, not THE valuation. That’s the realization which crumpled Mill under its own weight.
Mill realized achievement couldn’t bring happiness after Wordsworth opened his eyes. The poet painted a vision of the world with no numbers, no scores, and no dull lifeless utilitarian ethos, just beauty and wonder.
What am I doing? It’s that question we all find ourselves unhappily asking nowadays. Well, John Stuart Mill’s journey from an experimental childhood to functional adulthood is the guide to answer that question.
-Originally posted on Medium 7/26/22