• Valentinus
    1.6k
    I agree with your last sentence. I have trouble with the first one.

    There are a number of ways to approach this. I propose two of them as possible reasons to frame the topic in other ways than you have rather than as a rebuttal to what you have proposed.

    All the reasons we hurt each other are not necessary to understand that suffering is part of being better or learning stuff. Unnecessary suffering is cruelty that serves cruel people. It is what has been going on for a long time. I accept that making universal claims on no other basis are problematic but I don't recognize a world where this element does not shape what I see.

    Many people (probably myself in ways I don't understand) repeat the beat downs given by others. I see this clearly as something that is happening. Things get darker when I try to explain it. I don't have to explain everything. I am involved when I look away from something.

    As a matter of full disclosure, I practice a kind of faith. An important part of the "Lord's prayer" is where it prays one does not get tested too much.

    Anyway, there you have it.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    No, does that deny my logic?Posty McPostface

    I don't see much of an argument. What I am trying to say is that having a home doesn't magically make suffering go away and is not usually an end in itself. It may be a goal if you are homeless or you are not independent and you want to be. That isn't a panacea though- just part of living in a certain stage of life. That life still requires the three things I mentioned. I'm not sure why you would try to reduce things this particular goal. You seem to be conflating some personal desire you have to own a home to solving your existential question about suffering. It doesn't compute. Work towards having your own home if that's what you want, but that in itself is not an argument for happiness unless you are combining it with some other idea of growth, or a hierarchy of needs, or being independent, etc. Having one's own home itself does not mean one is happy.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    I'm only generalizing for things which we want or need. People want various things for differing reasons. That I can be happy over owning a home or apartment is one thing. But, that doesn't apply to all people. Some people want different things. The inherent lack in life is (momentarily) satisfied by certain actions. Then we go back to needing things or boredom.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    The inherent lack in life is (momentarily) satisfied by certain actions. Then we go back to needing things or boredom.Posty McPostface

    This I agree with.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    I'm not sure what post you are addressing Valentinus?
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    This I agree with.schopenhauer1

    But, still, sometimes we are satisfied for longer periods of time or non-temporally. Such as reading a good poem and remembering it due to its significance. Or owning a place one can call "home".
  • Valentinus
    1.6k
    I mean to say that if all what is intelligible in life which are certain events and situations, then suffering, which stands out from such events and situations therefore makes life more meaningful. How can one know joy without sadness?Posty McPostface
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    As a matter of full disclosure, I practice a kind of faith. An important part of the "Lord's prayer" is where it prays one does not get tested too much.Valentinus

    Job was tested; but, was vindicated in the end. And what is unnecessary suffering? This is new to me.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    But, still, sometimes we are satisfied for longer periods of time or non-temporally. Such as reading a good poem and remembering it due to its significance. Or owning a place one can call "home".Posty McPostface

    If you are fulfilled with romantic notions of home and poems, great. Still has to be maintained, paid for, worked, and the person dwelling there entertained. However, I think we both agree that perhaps imagination has something to do with getting by. The freedom of the mind to find significance and insights.
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    If you are fulfilled with romantic notions of home and poems, great. Still has to be maintained, paid for, worked, and entertained. However, I think we both agree that perhaps imagination has something to do with getting by. The freedom of the mind to find significance and insights.schopenhauer1

    I take the Kantian or Platonic notion of noesis with "imagination" here interchangeable. Schopenhauer based his philosophy as a form of idealism with noesis.
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    If you are fulfilled with romantic notions of home and poems, great.schopenhauer1

    What's wrong with denying people happiness with such notions? People live in the realm of the ideal for the most part of their lives.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k
    Hundreds (thousands, millions, if you are counting) of years of slavery. How much was enough? Toward what purpose?
    Stupid stuff we tell our kids. I try to not do that and I often fail. What is that about?
    We live in a place we are sort of prepared for but little of that preparation gives a crap about what is happening to us or people we know.
    Our life here is not just about whatever concerns us when we are challenged as individuals. It is also this mess that we have inherited. And we give to our successors.
    I humbly propose that some things require further investigation.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    Yes, I agree.
  • Artie
    26
    I want to ask how do you understand word suffering? What do you mean? Does suffer emotionally or physically or material? I think that people must experience difficult because without it life and truth will be very boring and monotone. Who would we'll becose if "suffering" disappeared? Friedrich Nietzsche said: "That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
  • Tzeentch
    3.7k
    Does a solipsist suffer?Posty McPostface

    I'd say so. It's the circumstances of the being that may cause one to suffer, but suffering is a mental or psychological interpretation of such circumstances.
  • WhiteNightScales
    10

    lets be honest life can be stupid at point but suffering plays a major role It was conficious that said
    suffering is part of the world because its true Living in its basic form is just suffering Since technology has risen it has an impact that is no different than anything else
  • WhiteNightScales
    10

    falling into aesthetic philosophy any good philosophers
  • TWI
    151
    "The answer to the problem of suffering is not away from the problem but in it. The inevitability of pain will not be met by deadening sensitivity but by increasing it, by exploring and feeling out the manner in which the natural organism itself wants to react and which its innate wisdom has provided".

    Alan W. Watts.
  • Jake
    1.4k
    The inherent lack in life is (momentarily) satisfied by certain actions. Then we go back to needing things or boredom.Posty McPostface

    This is a common pattern for sure, but it's not a fixed universal truth, as so many posts on the forum seem to imply. If this is what Schopensour is saying (I don't claim to know) he is wrong, misinformed, incomplete in his understanding.

    The cycle being discussed is a fixed permanent condition only if we refuse to examine that which is generating the experience of lacking, a refusal which is admittedly very common.

    Please stop chanting Schopensour and do your own investigation. Yes, there's a void underneath all the busyness and goals etc. Why? What's causing it? What is it's source?
  • Artie
    26
    You wrote:"...suffering plays a major role..."
    I aren't such but I think that rich people don't especially suffering and they have good life. My point of view - suffering in full measure - fate middle class and sufferin don't plays such a major role in the life everyone.
  • Jake
    1.4k
    Whoa, good quote from Watts!
  • BrianW
    999
    Is there any inherent meaning in suffering?Posty McPostface

    There's a degree of rationale which gives a person the capacity to extract value from every experience. However, the mitigating factor can be expressed in the sentiment, "if we value pain and suffering by the good it provides, then we may never want it to cease. For how can we choose to deprive ourselves of anything beneficial."
    Perhaps, finding other ways to cultivate the same benefits is a better path;
    or perhaps, a shift in attitude would serve just as well, for example, suppose instead of referring to it as pain and/or suffering, we chose to call it a condition of extreme focus of attention in our awareness. Maybe it's a response to the latter that we determine the appropriate course of actions which enable us to avoid future pain and suffering.
  • BrianW
    999
    I say this because life is inherently filled with suffering.Posty McPostface

    I don't believe in this. I think our perspective is clouded by pain and suffering. Maybe out of fear, maybe out of weakness or maybe it's just plain ignorance.
    There was a time we wanted to keep the stat quo on the idea that the earth was flat, some people still do. Currently, we're overcoming the point of view that women are inferior to men and that there are races of people superior to others. Pain and suffering may seem inherent in life until you meet that buddhist monk who asks, "what do hardships have to do with pain and suffering?" People who climb everest, if they're well prepared, endure the hardships but do not succumb to pain and suffering.
    I think pain and suffering are indications of particular conditions (hardships, maybe?) which demand our attention and how we respond determines the nature of our future interactions in those conditions.
  • BrianW
    999
    And, even then am I morally obligated to relieve others of their suffering had I known how unpleasant the feeling is?Posty McPostface

    Would you want it done for you? Then, I think you know what you ought to do.
  • Nort Fragrant
    25
    Suffering is a point for perspective!
    How you think about suffering defines where that point is.
    Your thoughts shift the tolerance point back and forth, fundamentally you decide if indeed you are suffering.
    Comparisons to others is irrelevant.
  • alan1000
    200
    There are only two ways to answer the question. Either ask God, or ask the patients in a palliative care ward.
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