Sooner or later everyone is confronted with the question: why do we suffer? Is all the suffering in the world really necessary? Do we ultimately gain anything worthwhile from it?

Most religious traditions and philosophical treatments of the subject concern themselves with reducing suffering. The problem is that in the same breath, the approach will turn to accepting suffering as a given and trying to find good in it, or worse, occasionally glorifying it as something desirable. If we truly wish to reduce suffering in the world, we will have to seriously reconsider and deconstruct many of our deeply held beliefs about its role in our experience. We cannot resign ourselves to accepting or even glorifying suffering while at the same time desiring to reduce it in our lives and the world. Our contradicting intentions will cancel each other out, and we’ll get nowhere. Let us instead turn our attention to questioning some basic assumptions in order to regain some consistency on the subject.

Does suffering build compassion?

One of the most frequent reasons given as to why suffering is necessary is that it “builds compassion.” If this is the case, then after so many centuries with no shortage of pain and turmoil, shouldn’t humanity be a race of saints by now? I recall reading a story recently (though unfortunately don’t remember where — if anyone recognizes it, please let me know!) where the writer told of seeing very young children working together and coming to the aid of one of their peers, unprompted by any adult. Stories like this abound — very young children, who have never known true suffering, are often seen to demonstrate compassion spontaneously and automatically. The writer then told of a decidedly less heartwarming incident from her college days. Her professor was late to class, and finally showed up looking a mess. He had slipped on a sandwich bag on the way to class and hit his head on the pavement, knocking him unconscious. For several minutes this very old man lay on the sidewalk, out cold and bleeding — with college students walking around and stepping over him! Not one of them stopped to help, or see if he was okay. This sad account raises an uncomfortable point that challenges common assumptions. Adults, who undoubtedly have much more knowledge and experience of suffering, seem less likely than young children to demonstrate compassion when it’s needed. For those who witness suffering, it only seems to bring out whatever compassion was in them to begin with — if someone has no compassion, or rather their natural compassion has been supressed, then witnessing suffering is not going to produce it.

What about those who experience suffering? It is also well known that people who are abused as children certainly don’t learn “life lessons” from it; they are more likely than not to become abusers themselves. Likewise, I have seen no evidence to indicate that greater suffering produces greater compassion in adults. I have, however, seen lots of evidence to indicate that extreme suffering can produce negative effects like PTSD, withdrawal from others, and the loss of empathy. Indeed, thinking back over the periods of physical and mental suffering in my own life, I did not necessarily gain compassion from those experiences. I had compassion before I suffered — afterward the challenge was to stay that way, and not develop an overly negative, cynical view of life and other people.

One last point here: if I come across someone struggling with a task he has taken up voluntarily, and I help him complete it, have I not shown compassion?

Compassion arises out of the innate knowledge of our interconnectedness. It is not something that necessarily needs to be taught, but rather, preserved and nurtured. Suffering distorts or stifles our sense of interconnectedness with others, and thus needs to be overcome in order to preserve our sense of compassion. The presence of suffering is not even necessary for compassion to be possible — all that’s necessary is the presence of problems to solve; struggles to challenge ourselves with.

Is suffering the best way to learn life lessons?

Many schools of thought, especially within New Age circles, claim that suffering is necessary for learning life lessons that could not be taught any other way. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable justification. Upon closer inspection, we find that this is usually an attempt to impose a “reason” upon one’s suffering after the fact, in order to justify why it “had” to happen. I’m all for finding the silver lining and taking whatever good we can from any situation. But all too often, this seems to come a bit too close to justifying our suffering — and thus giving our permission to attract more of the same. The truth of the matter is that when we’re suffering, we’re not focused on learning anything; our priority is to escape further torment. We think more clearly, objectively and creatively, and learn faster when we’re feeling good and positive. We may learn something from suffering later (the lesson usually being “how to avoid this in the future”) — but at what cost?

As I said in my last post, learning lessons the hard way often results in a situation where you’re stuck doing a lot of healing and cleaning up the damage in your life before you can focus on further lessons. The problem there is that the universe isn’t going to stop and wait for you to catch up — it will hit you with more hard lessons while your focus is diverted, and so the cycle of trauma repeats itself. Prolonged or repeated suffering releases certain chemicals in the brain, and neurons are actually rewired into new patterns. Suffering (and joy for that matter) can thus become chemically addictive in a sense, and attract further suffering to ourselves subconsciously to reflect those entrenched mental patterns. All our emotions are important, but negative emotions are the body’s way of telling us that something is wrong; something needs to change. As stated in my post on creating one’s own life lessons, all life lessons can be learned in a number of ways, whether fun or difficult. I can think of one exception; that being “This is what suffering feels like. It hurts, see? So don’t inflict it on yourself or others.” How many experiences, lifetimes even, does it take to learn that one lesson? That aside, wouldn’t it be much more efficient, easier and more fun, to choose the “how” and “when” of your own life lessons deliberately?

At the more extreme end of the “life lesson” spectrum is the idea that if one causes suffering, one should suffer, which is many peoples’ definition of karma, or from a western viewpoint, “an eye for an eye.” This sort of justice comes at a cost however. Far from decreasing suffering; you’re just creating another source of it! I’m not saying that those who are a threat to our safety and well being should not be stopped, even by force if necessary; I’m not a pacifist. I’m simply pointing out that if your goal is to reduce suffering in the world, inflicting it on someone to “teach them a lesson” probably isn’t the way to go. At its most basic (dare I say “sensible”) interpretation, karma is simply a spiritualized version of the laws of cause and effect; action and reaction. The energy you put out in the form of thoughts, words and deeds will return to you, either in this life or some other. At its most extreme, it has given rise to the caste system in Hinduism, which stems from the belief that one “deserves” the position he is born into and can’t expect to improve his living conditions until the next lifetime. This is just one example of the concept of “deserved” suffering in religion. I won’t even go into the sociopathic and soul-poisoning doctrine of eternal torment that found its way into Christianity several centuries after the life of Christ, contradicting everything that came before.

Is there virtue in suffering?

I could agree that there is some virtue in being willing to stand up for one’s principles even if it might involve suffering. This puts the focus on the principles; suffering is sometimes an unfortunate consequence. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t speak out about civil rights because his goal was to go to jail — he was jailed because he was willing to maintain what was then a controversial position, no matter the cost. This is to be admired. But that doesn’t mean that there’s any virtue in seeking persecution. This important distinction is often blurred, with tragic results.

The idea of virtue in suffering comes to us predominantly from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Before I start picking on them I’ll express my appreciation for all the beauty and truth to be found in both traditions; indeed it’s still where much of my theological influences come from. The fact remains that they both have a strong undercurrent of the idea that God’s glory is demonstrated in the suffering of his followers. At the very foundation of Judaism is the story of how Yahweh delivered the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt (by inflicting suffering on the Egyptians). Delivering people from slavery is all well and good, but if we take this story at face value, what have the Egyptians learned? Well… that might makes right, and you don’t want to piss off Yaweh. Interestingly the text specifically says that God himself “hardened Pharoah’s heart” so he wouldn’t free the Hebrews, otensibly giving Yahweh the justification to destroy the livelihood and kill the children of an entire civilization… for what? Just to make a point? Wouldn’t there be more glory in showing the slavemasters that all people have just as much of a right to be free as they do? Others are free to interpret this story how they will, but my personal interpretation is that it sheds a lot more light on the mentality of an ancient culture that listed personal revenge among its values, than it sheds on the nature of the divine.

This theme of glory in suffering repeats itself throughout the Jewish scriptures, which document centuries of exiles, persecution and war. With this institutionalized victim mentality so firmly entrenched in the group consciousness, this unfortunately describes much of post-biblical Jewish history as well. It is in this context that Christianity was born. Unfortunately, Jesus’ radical message of healing, forgiveness, empowerment and egalitarianism has often been eclipsed by a morbid preoccupation with the manner in which he died. The first few centuries of Christian history were thus characterized by the glorification of suffering and martyrdom. It is also worth noting that neither tradition seems to have gained compassion from their suffering; as soon as they found themselves in positions of political power, they immediately began persecuting and waging war against their neighbors. At which point Islam was born, and said “so it’s war and persecution you want, eh?!” Long story short, these three Abrahamic siblings have been struggling with a severe case of sibling rivalry ever since, and nobody seems to have gained anything worthwhile from it. As well meaning as the intentions of these traditions may have originally been, they contain a rarely acknowledged contradiction.

You cannot simultaneously glory in your own suffering, and seek to reduce suffering in the world. We are all interconnected; therefore to reduce my suffering, or your suffering, is to reduce the suffering of the whole. There is no virtue in anybody’s suffering.

Do we need suffering to provide balance in the universe?

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. This touches on the “problem of evil” wrestled with by theologians, philosophers and George Lucas alike. Indeed, there must be balance in The Force™. If we’re to know, experience and appreciate the extremes of good and divine bliss, do what’s right and develop our free will, then the possibility of evil also needs to exist. Otherwise it would be as if I wrote this post with white font on white background. It wouldn’t matter how gawrsh-darn brilliant it was (hah!) because you’d never be able to see it. So it is established that evil, and by extension suffering needs to be possible in a world of free beings. This does not, however, mean that we need to experience loads of it, continuously or repeatedly, lifetime after lifetime, in order to serve some greater purpose. As we have seen, the experience of excessive suffering can make it more difficult to experience, much less appreciate the good things in life by lowering one’s mental processing to a frequency of fear and pain. Just as I don’t have to experience torture to know that I’m not a fan of it, or to appreciate the good things in my life — we could all choose to stop killing and tormenting each other today, and we would be in a much better position to create something new. In a world where great suffering is possible, it can still serve its purpose as a contrasting influence without our active participation in it.

What about suffering from natural causes, like disease, injury and natural disaster?

The adversity brought about by natural causes can often bring out the best and worst in human behavior. We have all heard of someone who overcame disease and gained a new appreciation for life. We have also heard of the acts of heroism, and barbarism that come out of the extreme conditions produced by natural disasters. Unlike suffering caused by humans, this would fall under the category of challenges to be overcome; suffering is the occasional side effect when humans find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once again, preventing suffering in the first place is highly preferable to trying to find the good in a painful situation later. It is well documented that animals will act strangely, and even leave an area before many natural disasters. Humans would do well to relinquish any ideas about the nobility of suffering, as well as our attachments to material posessions, and take our cues from the animal kingdom to get the hell out when the warnings present themselves.

In the case of disease, it has often been shown that the mind has a powerful effect on the state of the body. A habitually negative mentality often produces disease symptoms; likewise, a deliberately positive outlook can bring about “miraculous” healing. From a more science-based approach, smallpox has already been eradicated, and polio nearly so, by a joint global effort. If two diseases can be wiped out, is it a stretch to say that all major diseases can and should be cured? How much “natural” suffering could we avoid by collectively reconsidering the questions addressed in this article?

Suffering is NOT necessary for some nebulous “greater good.” It is NOT the will of any so-called “benevolent” God. It is NOT the best way to learn life lessons. It does NOT breed compassion. The possibility must be there to keep balance and allow free will, but free will means increasingly being able to choose our experiences. Humanity suffers because it has not yet learned one of the greatest lessons of all: that it doesn’t have to be this way. We have seen the best and worst of human nature many times over; now it’s time for each of us to make a conscious choice. Only when we examine and change our collective beliefs in a fundamental way, will we break free of the seemingly endless cycle of suffering that enslaves us.

–Palehorse

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