I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience. Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well. Also, what about parenting? Telling your child to pull the weeds feels like an enormous burden of suffering when you are the 12-year-old child who has to go out in the summer sun to pull weeds, but for the parent, the view is quite different. The garden produces food for the family, and the child learns to do things they don't want to do or don't like to do.
Your statement "Suffering is anathema..." is Enlightenment thinking that has had a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the cultures that have adopted it.
> I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience.
Resilience is only necessary if there's some purpose to it.
> Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well.
Right, as a means to an end, for lack of a better solution. If we could accomplish those goals without suffering, we would. Suffering is a last resort, not good in itself. It's a compromise. An all-powerful entity doesn't need any, thus loses any justification to resort to it.
The question also sneaks in the presupposition that suffering is anathema, or that suffering is never acceptable or worthwhile. Anyone who has been a part of a sports team (especially one that was successful) can attest to the fact that short-term suffering and sacrifice can lead to long-term success or joy.
There are many episodes in my life that were horribly difficult while I was going through them, but later on, I see how they have changed the course of my life and have benefited me deeply, in a way I couldn't foresee while going through the struggle.
The "problem of evil" also assumes that a world filled with automatons with no choice to do anything except submit to God's will is somehow superior to a world where anyone can choose to follow the Way of Life while surrounded by those who either haven't chosen yet, or have made the choice not to walk that path.
I truly don’t understand the mindset that suffering is not only something that we should not try to eliminate, but something that we should actually indoctrinate people into.
Given the exact same suffering, two people who have had similar lives will react in different ways. One may break down completely, one may soldier through.
Suffering doesn't build character, it reveals it.
You're doing the very thing I was saying we do too much of: glorifying suffering.
You're also trying to dismiss me by saying what I'm saying is opinion while also trying to say that I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, then it's not technically an opinion I hold. It's just bad information.
But you posit that you build mental strength through adversity without actually demonstrating that it's true. Then you claim my position is that I don't value the growth or feel it is worth suffering. That is not what I said. That is a deliberate misrepresentation of what I was saying.
I was saying suffering does not teach anything special that cannot be learned elsewhere.
I also like how you choose to engage me, rather than the people who shared personal anecdotes of suffering without being granted any special wisdom or knowledge, effectively saying what I said: suffering is not a teacher, suffering is just suffering.
Yep, I'm with you. I think this "suffering is necessary" point Huang is making is his weakest point. Maybe a more nuanced version of it that I think would be a stronger point is that there is a "sweet spot" of life challenges - not too much, but also not too little - that increase the odds of positive outcomes for people.
But as you say, people who experience extreme suffering are much more likely to experience a lifetime of profound difficulty than to become a great auteur, entrepreneur, or leader.
I agree with you but your conceptualization doesn't explain why people should put up with suffering just because they've seen suffering and are used to suffering. That's not logical. There's no reason to go in depth unless you can actually present an argument based on necessity or some kind of platform that would explain it other than "people put up with it".
I think it's clearly relevant that lots of people live in conditions of terrible privation and still enjoy life and don't think of killing themselves. Your argument is that suffering is relative, which is true to some extent, but suffering is also absolute and people can adjust to new circumstances quickly.
Yeah, just saying suffering is bad without any context is not helpful. Apart from being unavoidable, certain kinds of suffering produces happiness for people down the road. For example, running & training for a marathon was suffering but the reward and experience of doing it was life changing, taught me so much about myself.
You're hyper focused on the instant effects of suffering. Intentional suffering helps prepare us for unexpected things down the road that will be much more difficult, such as deaths in the family, injuries to ourselves, getting fired, etc... Suffering that is out of our control will also make us more resilient
Your assessment of suffering being unappreciable is borderline ludicrous. I can appreciate someone else who works hard. Do they have to earn 20 million to get my appreciation? Absolutely not. I can appreciate my own hard work when I get off my couch and run a few miles. I could have stayed on the couch and taken it easy. Do I have to break my back for a noble cause for it to be suffering? Absolutely not.
If life was just a happy stroll for 100 years straight, that would actually be miserable.
I think there are two sides to this. Either ignore it, or embrace it and accept it as part of the human experience. If you accept that suffering is inevitable, you recognize the positives in life more readily. To me, this approach allows me to be present in life, as opposed to numb with drugs, waiting to expire.
Suffering will come to most people eventually; no need to do fancy summoning rituals.
> When we each learned to suffer, we also learned that the suffering eventually ends
Oh that that were true!
I think it's a bit naive to call endurance suffering. I get that it might be nice to be able to experience endurance in a pure/controlled enough form where it can be retroactively framed as a positive experience / accepted as a nurturing challenge, but...
Your statement "Suffering is anathema..." is Enlightenment thinking that has had a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the cultures that have adopted it.
reply