Wikipedia will tell you that it is pain and unpleasantness. But that is too shallow. That isn’t true suffering. To me, suffering is when thoughts start causing physical pain. When the prospect of death seems like the only escape. But sometimes not even death can stop suffering.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What is the nature, the purpose of suffering. And then, it hit me. Maybe the lack of a purpose is the problem? It is easier to take pain when we know when it will end, or when we know that it is a pain of healing. But when it is a destructive pain, or suffering without a purpose, then it is true suffering. Pain for the sake of pain, where nothing is gained and everything is lost. Is that the nature of suffering? I don’t know. I can’t say that I experienced true suffering on that level. I don’t think anyone has. Or at least they haven’t lived long enough to tell the tale.
Is being stuck upside down in a cave until you slowly die, knowing nobody will come to rescue you true suffering? Is being a victim of a terrible crime and not being able to ever get justice for it true suffering? Or is it something simpler?
I was never good with words. So please don’t blame me if I can’t fully define it. That is exactly why I ask this question. I invite you all to discuss the essence and the nature of suffering with me. I wish to understand.
DISCLAIMER: This is a philosophical question. Nothing more, nothing less.
Life. Life itself is suffering. Life is the worst thing to have happened to anyone.
Regarding purpose, no one has any purpose. Purpose is assigned to tools; not to sentient beings with consciousness. Life is utterly meaningless, and it is due to this lack of meaning, that we search for superfluous things like purpose.
The true nature of life is suffering. The default state of life is pain. Everything you do from there is just to temporarily alleviate that pain. You keep doing that until you die.
We have friends and lovers because loneliness is painful. We eat because hunger is painful. We sleep because deprivation from it is painful. We laugh so that we can escape from crying.
People say suffering is a hurdle, and see it as something essential for character development, and whilst I acknowledge the essentiality of some types of pain, I also see it as something contingent on life. We suffer because we are alive. All sentient and conscious beings suffer. It just comes with life.
Note that I am not however, promoting termination of life. By terminating your life early, you would be depriving yourself of all the potential pleasures you could have had (regardless of the pain around them). Once you are here, your optimization problem should be maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain. So, whilst the asymmetry still exists, the potentiality for pleasure might (/should?) be enough of an reason to continue living. I do acknowledge that exceptions do exist where the asymmetry is so skewed for some, to the extent that there is little to no potential pleasure for them, in which case, it might be preferable for them to terminate their own life (think extremely painful chronic/terminal illnesses). I’m sorry if this feels a bit loosey-goosey.
With all that said, I believe we are all sufferers from the incurable disease of life. And the only thing to do from here is to vehemently struggle and rebel against suffering. To help our fellow sufferers and maximize the pleasurable moments. To do everything we can to cope with life whilst still being aware of the true suffering it stands for.
That is a very bleak perspective. By this logic, we can say that everything ever is meaningless.
Life of itself is not meaningless. It exists to test, create, and replicate patterns at a faster time scale than the regular processes of the universe. Meaning is usually assigned after the fact. Or at least that’s my experience.
Not necessarily. There can be meaning in suffering. You learn and change through it. And sometimes that’s a positive change.
I somewhat agree with you. The meaning you describe seems personal (correct me if I am wrong), i.e. we assign meaning to our own lives. The meaning I was referring to in my previous comment was a more absolute take on it; the kind of meaning people refer to when they are searching for it. From my perspective, people search for an all encompassing absolute meaning (or rather a guidebook) which tells them that they are here for something. I disagree with that perspective, and I think there is no such meaning or guidebook. We are not here for any grand purpose, we just exist because someone else got together and thought it’d be nice to be a parent (in the best of situations). I agree with you however, in that, we must assign meaning to our own lives, just so our lives won’t feel empty. It is more like drawing your own scenery on a canvas instead of looking for the perfect one.
I understand that this is a bleak perspective, but I see this as the true nature of suffering; and by acknowledging it, we can be more compassionate to our fellow sufferers. Although the perspective itself is bleak, the conclusion need not be. You can learn to live, stuff your life with pleasurable moments, and make the most of it, whilst helping others do the same.
I completely respect your perspective. But I do believe there is a meaning to life itself. Not just what we assign it. Even if there was no initial goal in life becoming a thing, now that it exists, it is tefined by its attributes. Evolution. Progress. Concentration of energy and resources. Engines of anti-entropy. That is the meaning of life. To me. It is the universe calling out to save itself from certain doom. That is the goal now. Survival. On an ultimate scale. But that is just my philosophy. I do not claim that it is the objective truth. But I do believe that it is the truth.
This doesn’t really explore the concept of suffering. Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts.