The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

was allowed to be erratic. In the modern world we
are losing this source of social freedom, and
therefore a more deliberate realisation of the
dangers of uniformity has become desirable. I do
not mean that people should be intentionally
eccentric, which is just as uninteresting as being
conventional. I mean only that people should be
natural, and should follow their spontaneous tastes
in so far as these are not definitely anti-social.
In the modern world, owing to the swiftness of
locomotion, people are less dependent than they
used to be upon their geographically nearest
neighbours. Those who have cars can regard as a
neighbour any person living within twenty miles.
They have therefore a much greater power than
was formerly the case of choosing their
companions. In any populous neighbourhood a man
must be very unfortunate if he cannot find
congenial souls within twenty miles. The idea that
one should know one’s immediate neighbours has
died out in large centres of population, but still
lingers in small towns and in the country. It has