R-79 On Suffering

 This is a rare “response” posting. Normally I read other’s blogs and, should the mood move me, I respond in the comments like a normal human. But my responses can get a (ahem) bit long. In this particular case, I thought I’d do us both a favor and move this to my blog.

You are referred to “https://butimbeautiful.wordpress.com” for her 5 October 2022 post “The REAL Problem Of Suffering”.

Go. Read it. Or at least check out her books. She’s a terrific writer — I own most of her stuff. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

Got it? Good. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

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I think your question is less "what to do with suffering?" and more "what's the point to any of it?" I've been considering this for some time now. Since you posted it, in fact.

I'm a hard-core rationalist, as you probably know by now with a life philosophy that could generally be called "Stoic" without too much modification. And I am more than familiar with the concepts of pain and suffering for a variety of reasons I can't or won't go into here.  

And I 100% agree with your evaluation that to be alive is to suffer for a substantial percentage of the time.  

But suffering should be separated from mere physical pain. Physical pain usually causes suffering, of course, but that is not what suffering is.

From hangnails to slow death, physical pain is ubiquitous, mostly because it's become hard-wired in to us as a powerful survival characteristic. I don't think it takes too much of a leap to realize that any putative group or species incapable of feeling or reacting to pain in any form is doomed. Failure to strongly react to bad stimuli and learn from it is a near-100% certain one-way ticket to your DNA being skimmed off as waste from the crucible of evolution and dropped into the slag pile.

For example, those rare humans who are incapable of feeling pain usually die young. And badly. Being eaten alive by termites or leaking excessively or being on fire just doesn't strike them as a problem that demands a priority solution and it doesn't take long for evolution/nature/the universe to disassemble them and make something else out of the parts which may or may not do better.

But all that's just pain. "Suffering" on the other hand, is the mind's response to pain. In case you think I've missed your point, I suspect you're more interested in the part of suffering that goes on in one's head even when not supplemented by the physical inputs from your nerve endings.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of suffering, although because of overlap and the way that memory works, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them.

1. Response To Physical Stimuli. When termites are nibbling  your nethers or your shoes are too tight or some more-or-less terrible thing is happening to you physically, you suffer, and generally will take whatever actions you need to take to stop or mitigate the suffering.  See "Evolution" above, or, as you prefer, the general principle that organism's strategy for spreading its DNA begins with not being damaged or dying for as long as it can manage.

2. The Past. You and most other animals have the capacity for being informed by things that made you suffer in the past. But your newly-evolved big brain has the rare and advanced capability to continue to revisit and recreate the past, presumably in order to continue running scenarios which will have less-suffering outcomes. This has the salutary effect of preparing you even better for a future in which a similar event occurs again.
   

   The problem is that the more suffering that was encountered in the past in a given situation, the more likely the big brain is to continue to spend time "living" there and recreating scenarios in which the suffering/damage can be mitigated.
   
   In other words, the stronger the suffering at the time, the more likely the big brain is  to get hung in a "what if - if/then" loop. If the pain/damage was strong enough, the brain is unable to break free of replaying the event looking for a solution.  Given the way that memory works (another subject for another day) this essentially means that the big brain is literally re-living versions of the event over and over while trying to find a way out of it should it come up again. Which leads to:

3.  Forecasting The Future. Most animals, and especially humans, are capable of projecting the bad stuff that happens to them into the future. The difference is that animals (generally) use it to inform immediate reactions to specific stimuli (hide, run, roll over, play dead, rip his arm off so he won't hit you anymore, etc.)
   

   Humans (and maybe[?] elephants, porpoises, great apes and whatnot) have the cognitive power to not only project one-off events and how to handle them, but also to run scenarios of alternate versions of the future. This is a direct result of the big-brain thing in which the capacity to plan and forecast emerged. This vastly enhanced the mere ability to instinctively react as the future arrives based on prior survival strategies. It is, in short, an improved survival strategy.
   
   As a humblingly offhanded, more-or-less accidental side effect, this also resulted in the emergence of a powerful conscious sense of "self" as, in the final analysis, everyone's experience of a "self" is simply a collection of the memories and the stories built around them that they accumulate. Consider yourself and what the actual experience of consciousness consists of and you'll shortly arrive at an obvious but for some reason little recognized fact:

 Zero memories = Zero "Self". "You" (your consciousness, not your physical body) are, in the most literal sense you can imagine, simply the story you tell yourself.

   This type of suffering is often (if not usually) marked by strong "If I'd Only..." or "I Should Have..." or "I Wish That..." feelings. This is your big brain running survival scenarios, blithely ignoring the fact that it is no longer a viable survival tactic. It is in fact sucking up the system's resources dealing with the pain and terror inflicted on the conscious "you" of the long-gone incident itself.
   
   See PTSD, Grief, Panic Attacks, and the Rolling Stones "Paint It Black" for the outcome of these high-energy loops.

In short, "you" (conscious you) are an emergent, probably accidental, by-product of a big brain that can imagine alternate scenarios to improve its odds of passing on genes. As with all evolutionary improvements, this was not an unmitigated good thing. It results in the conscious "you" being dragged again and again into an experience that your big brain keeps revisiting in order to find a solution to a problem, which is not exactly a perfect mechanism.

So what to do with it? Well, there's the trick isn't it?

As I've said before, I'm a more-or-less Stoic (in the philosophical sense, which is different from the "keep a stiff upper lip" sense that most people think when they hear the word).

The basic tenet of Stoicism is that literally the only thing we actually control in life is our minds.  

This is a surprisingly complex concept probably best summarized as:

"Man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged."
(Attributed to Zeno, Founder of Stoicism, About 350 BC)

...and expanded in the story of Roman conquerors who, when parading their conquests through the streets of Rome and receiving the adulation of the masses, had a slave in the chariot with them whose only job was to whisper in the conqueror's ear "Memento Mori", roughly translated into English as "Remember You Must Die".  

The slave is reminding him that (a) he could literally leave life in the next second, and that should guide what he does and says, and (b) in the end he's going to wind up in the same place as the slave or the offal-cart driver regardless of the frippery, good or bad, surrounding him at the moment.

In short, all the plans and schemes of the big brain may increase the odds of some short-term outcome, but only a fool thinks that they actually CONTROL anything outside of their own mind.  

Stoics therefore spend most of their time trying to reach the ideal in which the mind is disciplined to be its best self regardless of what the universe is doing around them.  It's an often failed discipline.

For example, if you work for a boss who's an asshole, that's a condition of the wagon you're tied to. The only part you control is your internal reaction to it, i.e., your mind.

• If you spend your time pissed off, worried, aggravated, and annoyed, not sleeping nights; if your entire life is consumed over your boss's assholery, he is STILL going to be an asshole. You can't control him.
  
  
• If you get control of YOUR reactions to your boss and be as calm as you can while working and not giving him a thought once you walk out of the door, he's STILL going to be an asshole.

Which of these is better? You ain't changing your boss either way.

That's a simple example. But it rapidly gets more complex.

Let's say you find you have some debilitating and incurable disease.

• If you spend your time pissed off, worried, aggravated, and annoyed, if your entire life is consumed over your disease, you've STILL got it. It isn't going anywhere. You can't control it.
  
  
• If you get control of YOUR reactions to your disease and be as mentally peaceful as you can, you've STILL got it. It isn't going anywhere. But you're disregarding the parts you can't do anything about.

This is a tough one. This is not a Pollyanna philosophy. There is not a single thing I've said that mitigates the terribleness of the situation. It is simply an acknowledgement that the situation exists, and that the single, sole, one thing you have control over is your mind, and that's the work. Nothing simple about it. Anyone confusing this with "Don't Worry! Be Happy!" should probably be punched in the kidneys.

See? That's NOT a Stoic reaction. Magical thinkers are gonna be magical thinkers whether I stir myself up in my desire to punch them in the kidneys or not. But we all fall short of the ideal, innit? It's useful to learn to recognize these failings and tamp them down.

And death? Ah, now there's something we both know something about, yes?

My grief takes the usual forms. But I've come to understand that what is, just is. The past is written, and the universe continues to tumble into the future, chaotic as a flooded stream around and over me, and the only part of that equation that I have any slightest power over is MY reaction to it. MY mind.

The grief is always there, probably always will be. But that is a human condition, and I would not do without it even if I could. But when the grief erodes into suffering, when I'm no longer remembering a life lived, warts and all, and beginning to devolve into "what if" and pain, I stop, shake out the sheets of my mind, and again become aware that it's just life, and all the suffering in the world will not change it a whit. And I clear my mind and start over.

I'm actually getting pretty good at it. Not perfect (re: "Kidney Punch" above) by any means. But it is astonishing how freeing it is to just do the best you can do and win, lose, or draw, walk away with a clear mind.

Starting points, if you're curious:

1.  The Daily Stoic: https://dailystoic.com/
   

   More self-helpery and aphorism-heavy than I've normally got a use for, but still contains valuable resources and ideas, particularly in the articles.

2. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor 161 - 180 CE):  https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3IYJA2LLGOB8S&keywords=meditations+gregory+hayes+translation&qid=1665689825&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIyLjE4IiwicXNhIjoiMS41NSIsInFzcCI6IjEuMjEifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=%22gregory+hayes%22%2Cstripbooks%2C297&sr=1-1
   

   Assuming that link works, it should take you to the Gregory Hayes translation of "Meditations" written by Roman Emperor/Philosopher Marcus Aurelius, widely considered to be the most accessible/best English translation available. I've about got my copy worn out, and have so many marginal notes it's getting unreadable.