Suffering

The AI prompt was "Suffering Succotash"

Eliminating suffering has the biggest impact on utilitarian happiness of any other change you can make.

"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete." -Viktor E. Frankl

Due to habituation and the hedonic treadmill, you can only get marginally happier for some time before you go back to your baseline. However, there can be no end to suffering for those who are starving, lack shelter, have debilitating illnesses with chronic pain, or unexpectedly find themselves the target of a Spanish Inquisition.

Pain and Suffering

Modern society has significantly reduced the amount of pain the average person experiences in their life. Despite this fact, our suffering appears to be greater than it has ever been, judging by rates of depression and other mental maladies. The lack of pain is ironically the cause of the increased suffering, since many of us are not forced to build resilience in our idyllic childhoods where parents remove all obstacles in the name of safety. Lacking the experience of pain, we fail to develop the psychological techniques to deal with pain in a healthy and productive way. When life inevitably happens, it creates enough suffering to warrant an entry in the DSM.

There are many cultural issues that play into this. Religion provides rituals and beliefs that help us deal with suffering. Fewer and fewer people are being taught these techniques, and cognitive dissonance due to conflicts with the modern scientific worldview can reduce their efficacy. Those who are not taught a system to deal with suffering are left to create their own, which many fail to do.

Suffering in Religion

In many religions, but especially Buddhism, the focus is more on the elimination of suffering rather than the increasing of happiness. This reflects the nature of life at the time when these religions were created. There are many reasons why ancient life had so much more suffering, but the fact that the average person could expect to see the deaths of multiple children during their lifetimes should be sufficient evidence.

Modern life still has suffering, and reducing it is the fastest way to increase utilitarian happiness. However, focusing exclusively on eliminating suffering is insufficient when the average person experiences relatively little trauma, has free time, and disposable income. It can also lead to unnecessary rumination, since focusing attention on suffering can intensify it. Looking back at your life from the perspective of suffering can sometimes frame events in a negative context, when a positive perspective could be equally valid. Our thinking and attachment to suffering also causes suffering (it's all so meta).

"A problem cannot cause suffering. It is our thinking and attachment to it that causes suffering." -Buddha

The Christian manifestation of suffering focuses on the wretchedness, sinfulness, guilt and shame of the believer. While the intent is to be welcoming to all, even those who are at their lowest point in life, the message often fails to connect with those who don't see themselves as wretched. Most modern people have pretty good lives and, while we all have highs and lows, many of us can go through life without ever hitting "rock bottom." Helping those at their lowest is the most important thing, but the vast majority people live in the "spongy middle" and just need help getting to the top.

The Eightfold Path is the Buddhist practice designed to eliminate suffering in the mind through mindfulness practice, mixed with some Ten Commandments style advice. A significant amount of suffering is self-imposed by the mind, and mindfulness practices can help eliminate rumination, desire, and other thought-loops that exacerbate negative emotions.

How To Deal With Suffering In Your Life - Buddha

Suffering in Poetry

William Blake's Auguries of Innocence is an ode to the interconnectedness of all beings and the ways that all conscious beings experience suffering.

It should be noted that "To see the world in a grain of sand" is only possible if the universe is fractal.

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage

Puts all Heaven in a rage.

A dove house fill'd with doves and pigeons

Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.

A dog starv'd at his master's gate

Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misus'd upon the road

Calls to Heaven for human blood.

Each outcry of the hunted hare

A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,

A Cherubim does cease to sing.

The game cock clipp'd and arm'd for fight

Does the rising Sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl

Raises from Hell a human soul.

...

He who respects the infant's faith

Triumphs over Hell and Death.

The child's toys and the old man's reasons

Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,

Shall never know how to reply.

He who replies to words of doubt

Doth put the light of Knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known

Came from Caesar's laurel crown,

Nought can deform the human race

Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow

To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.

A riddle or the cricket's cry

Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile

Make lame Philosophy to smile.

He who doubts from what he sees

Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the Sun and Moon should doubt,

They'd immediately go out.

To be in a passion you good may do,

But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state

Licens'd, build that nation's fate.

The harlot's cry from street to street,

Shall weave Old England's winding sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,

Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see not thro' the eye

Which was born in a night to perish in a night,

When the Soul slept in beams of light.

God appears and God is light

To those poor souls who dwell in night,

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

Suffering in Music

Lots of good music, poetry, comedy, and all other art forms are borne from suffering. This doesn't mean that suffering is good, just that it is an inevitable part of life so you should find some way to profit from your trauma.

The War on Drugs - Suffering

Coheed and Cambria - The Suffering