BigThink: Is a meaningful life impossible without suffering?
“From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we feel pain: It trains us to avoid experiences or stimuli that harm us. But that begs the question, why do so many people choose to pursue things that will bring them pain? Why do some people choose to do things like eat spicy foods, watch horror movies, compete in triathlons, fight in mixed martial arts competitions, or climb mountains? To psychologist Paul Bloom, the answer is that living a meaningful life requires that we choose to take on a reasonable amount of pain.
The writer and philosopher Alan Watts once posed a thought experiment: Suppose you could dream any dream you could imagine, night after night, for as many years as you wanted.
Odds are you’d start off by pursuing fun and simple pleasures, like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. But that would inevitably get old. At some point, you’d start ceding control over your dreams because you’d desire a challenge, chaos, and, eventually, suffering.
In the end, Watts said, “You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.” Watts’ thought experiment raises a question about how people derive meaning: Is it possible to live a meaningful life without suffering? To psychologist Paul Bloom, suffering and meaning are often inextricably linked.
“I think the way people think about meaning — our very notion of what a meaningful experience, or meaningful goal, or meaningful life is — is that it requires some degree of suffering, where suffering could be physical pain, it could be difficulty, it could be worrying, it could be the possibility of failure,” Bloom told Big Think.
Bloom was also clear to differentiate between chosen and unchosen suffering. As in all of the examples above, chosen suffering can help us achieve different levels of pleasure and meaning. Unchosen suffering, such as chronic illness or the death of a loved one, might sometimes make us stronger in the long run or give us a sense of meaning, but it’s not necessarily good in and of itself.”
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#Suffering #Pain #Meaning
💬 What do you think about the connection between meaningful life and suffering?
@globalBraid3744
I think in order to understand happiness you have to understand suffering, it's kind of like how there cannot be the concept of darkness without light.
@sunnyWriting4806
I think so too. Perhaps without knowing the suffering, we would never be truly able to appreciate joy and happiness and we might take it for granted.
@globalBraid3744 This is definitely a tough question! I think that we are all going to suffer with something in life and it definitely makes us stronger. I'm not sure if I would say that it leads to a meaningful life, but I would say it was a life worth living. Suffering means we care and love and to have those two means that we are living a good life. :)
@fruityPond7887
I agree with you! A certain amount of suffering is normal, and it means we care and love. I also liked that Bloom emphasized that not all suffering is alike (chosen and unchosen suffering). I think this distinction makes a big difference. I also think that suffering does not necessarily need to lead to a meaningful life.
@globalBraid3744 Exactly! There are so many other aspects of life that make it meaningful that don't have to necessarily be negative!
@globalBraid3744
Thank you for the forum post 😊❤️ I enjoyed reading this.
@SparkyGizmo
Thank you for taking time to read this post and respond, I appreciate it :)
@globalBraid3744 Only someone as privileged as Bloom, with a functioning body, could come up with such claptrap. He has almost no notion of what "unchosen suffering" is, or what it does to those it has captured. Frankly, a life without suffering is something I think quite a few of us would opt for.
@slowdecline48
Of course, when we think about life without suffering it seems like the best dream, why would anyone want to suffer if they do not have to. I think Bloom was trying to contrast suffering and life as we know it now. I cannot imagine what life without ANY suffering would be like. In one simple example, I am not sure whether someone would be totally happy having only their favorite food for the rest of their life (even if that specific food makes them feel good/happy). The fact that we can choose what to eat is probably making it appealing. I find that the same concept can be applied to this.
I think it is completely all right for people to have different views as we do not know the whole life history of that other person to judge why they have opinions like this.