Managing So Much Suffering

It feels like I understand the idea that all suffering comes from expectation in a way I didn't used to. Now it seems so obvious, but I'm not really sure what flip was switched. It's not just that if we stop expecting to get things, we'll be happier, but how ridiculous it is to expect anything to stay the same at all, much less get better, ever. And that understanding seems to help reduce some anxiety over the things that can't be easily changed. Suffering is inevitable, but it can be somewhat diminished in order to have more contentment. We can change what counts as suffering, and we can change our perspective around tragedies, so maybe we can also change how we can continue to bear witness to, or experience, absolute atrocities.

One simple way to reduce suffering is to narrow the definition. Comedian Michelle Wolf jokes, "It's hard to have a struggle and a skin care routine," which clarifies that we might be considering some difficulties as suffering in a way that doesn't fly when we widen the scope of our horizons. Pain is pain and can't definitively be compared, yet I believe many of us have an automatic judgment in our heads that lists events in a hierarchy. Typically suffering from having to do a task we don't want to do, like write a boring report or clean out the fridge, or from wanting luxuries we can't afford, like another trip, might be relegated to the bottom as whining. The pain from it is there, though: the agony and stress from uninteresting maintenance that's necessary to further our own existence or the grief over lost opportunities. Furthermore, it can develop an extra layer of shame on top of the suffering if we try and fail to elicit sympathy for having so much food that some is left to rot and needs to be cleaned. When we realize we can't afford that trip after all, this is a suffering we are expected to bear without complaint.

A Microcosm of Arguments

This thread of comments of how Covid is affecting younger people encapsulates many of the attitudes affecting the people most affected - and general ableism. I used pseudonyms, and I'm not linking because it might not be the thing they want to be known for. It was Elsie's thread, so responses were to her.

Teen: "Why don't more people talk about what the Covid lockdowns did to young people like me? At 15 years old, I was involuntarily isolated from my friends for SIX MONTHS. I didn't see them, I didn't meet them. The lockdown RUINED young people like me. An entire Generation."

Elsie: "Okay, so I was 19 when the pandemic started. I caught covid in March 2020, before lockdown, and never recovered. Now I can't work, can't leave the house, and I've had no friend for 3 years. So which is worse? A few months of lockdown or a lifetime of isolation?"

Mom: "My daughter spent a year and a half doing virtual school. Lost out on a lot of dreams she'd worked hard for (National competitions etc). I'm immune compromised, and me dying would be worse, but do NOT diminish the impact of isolation on many teenagers." 

Elsie: "I was also a teenager! What about my dreams? Or do they not count. I might never live independently, never have a job, never get married or have children. Why are my dreams worth less?"

Mom: "Why are you hosting the Suffering Olympics? It's quite unnecessary."

Seligman's Hope Circuit

Martin Seligman is famous for a learned helplessness study I wrote about a few years back:

In a famous experiment, dogs were put in a compartment and trained to jump a barrier when given an electric shock. After one or two tries, the dogs jumped the barrier immediately after being put in the compartment even when no shock was given. BUT some dogs were restrained the first time and not able to jump the barrier. They had to tolerate the shock without being able to escape. When they were unharnessed, they still didn't jump the barrier, but just stayed there, tolerating the pain.

On Comparing Existentialism and Stoicism

This summer, I went on one camping trip with a book on Stoicism, then another camping trip with a book on Existentialism, and I was intrigued by the many similarities. Then I came across this video that has some overlap with what I had noticed. As they say in the video, Massimo Pigliucci (MP) on Stoicism and Skye Cleary (SC) on Existentialism, both are philosophies that offer a way to live instead of just a way to think about the world. I'm putting it all together here with quotes (names linked to sources) to sort it out for myself. I'm just thinking out loud here. This is too long for any normal person to want to read.

These are both philosophies that allow surveyors to pick and choose from variations on a theme as neither has one authoritative dude overriding all others, and, it would appear, few of the big guns cared to adopt either label anyway. For the Stoics, defining yourself as one is avoided because it's pretentious. In The Role Ethics of Epictetus, it's clarified that we are simultaneously different things, and how we play each role is more important than what our roles are. The roles are often not our choice, but how we do them are, i.e. whether or not we're a virtuous son, mother, teacher, or waiter (MP). For Existentialists, we can't be defined by the roles we take on because we're more than the mere facts about ourselves (SC), so labels become meaningless.