Philosophy - this explains a lot about life...

[Rebelde para Siempre]

- Life on Earth includes suffering.
- The root cause of suffering is desire.
- Desires can be controlled, therefore suffering can be controlled.

[Umoja]

I thought about stuff like this. Suffering isn't relative. A person who lives in Colorado can suffer just as much for failing a test, and knowing it denies them from going to college, just as much as a person in Angola learning that their village was destroyed. Since a human body only can exert a certain feeling of suffering to warrant a situation you feel the same amount of distress, social issues are the only thing that change how you deal with the stress (the person in Colorado may become Gothic(?) and the Angolan may join another rebel faction).

[canikickit]

A person who lives in Colorado can suffer just as much for failing a test, and knowing it denies them from going to college, just as much as a person in Angola learning that their village was destroyed.

This means that suffering is relative. I agree. Wha the hell is this thread in aid of?

(Edited by canikickit at 9:00 pm on Feb. 25, 2003)

[Eastside Revolt]

I don't know if suffering is reletive or not, but I'll put it this way:

I am one of the luckiest people ever to be born. I live arguably the most beautiful city in the world. Suck my dick. I have almost always had food in my belly, and I have always had a roof over my head. Suck my dick. Theoretically, I have not suffered the slightest. Although, I would rather die in my sleep tonight than anything else. Do I suffer? I guess that is the question.Suck my dick.

[Umoja]

Okay, yeah I wasn't thinking. It is relative I guess, but I thought that meant it was determined by the situation, because it isn't. Your going to suffer the same. Everyone is unhappy (or indifferent) a majority of the time, it's just how we deal with it that matters.

[Pete]

Suffering exists, but it is relative. Some people allow themselves to suffer over simple, trival things, like an extra helping of cake, where as other people suffer because they have not had a bite to eat in days, or even weeks. Of course their are the people who suffer for having to much to eat, and too little of anything else. It is all relative, but universal. I suffer from periodic depression, many other members of this board do too. I am that this mental suffering is the basis of all other suffering, except starvation of course. We feel we need something so if we do not get it we suffer. I think I need to establish socialism. I am suffering because I do not know enough, knowledge or people, to do so yet. The person starving thinks they need food, so tehy suffer because they do not have any. Who's suffering is genuine? In the cases I presented, where I am willing to give my lifes works so the straving man isn't, and so noone else is. I suffer for this, he suffers because he is dieing. Malthus and others said this was natural. It isn't to be changed. Suffering can end, but it takes conctreated effort on the whole to drop to the level of the weakest, and to build up from there.
Hasta la victoria siempre comrades. Let us hope we fight in the wars to come!

[CheViveToday]

The reasons for which people suffer are based on their situation and surroundings. Someone born with little, will most likely only suffer over major losses and disappointments. Someone born with privelage will suffer over small and major losses and disappointments. However, the person born with privelage would probably only come across a few major losses in their lifetime, when the person born with little would most likely come across several of these major losses and disappointments. If everyone was in the same situation, as communism/socialims works towards, they would suffer over similar things. This would make it extremely easy to address, deal with, and eliminate these causes of suffering. Of course some major losses can never be stopped, like losing a parent or loved one to a death from natural causes. Many of these causes can however be stopped, in a place where the situation is the same for all of the citizens. Sorry if I restated what someone was already trying to say. My main point is that suffering could be decreased and more easily delt with in a communist/socialist society, as most of us already know.

[DEFMARX]

RpS- those lines are simplified Buddhist philosophy. But if you study them, you realize that it is only the abolition of all desires that will result in eliminating suffering. a.k.a. Nirvana- the point at which you become enlightened by your non-self.

And to those that believ that suffering is objective and can simply be experienced on one level, I must say that I highly disagree with you. To suffer the embarrassement of a practical joke, and to suffer the loss of your human rights are two entirely different experiences. True, they both result in suffering, but surely none can lump the two into comparable levels of emotion.

[Iepilei]

ugh, relativism is such a cop out it's not even funny.

certainly there are the extremes of "what suffering is", but overall it's a universal concept. a man with 500lbs on his chest in Idaho is the same as a man with the same amount in Columbia. do those who trifle over the miniscule details 'suffer'? indeed, it's a self-imposed prison, but what depends is HOW it's handled and not the person. a person can overcome anything, the question is if they WANT to.

[CruelVerdad]

"Life on Earth includes suffering" yes i agree with this, but your point of view of suffering can change, all depending on your age, sex, and cultural matters.

[Blibblob]

Psychoanalytic theory states that humans generally have a healty psyche, but in this world it is taken over by a state of neurosis. This state of neurosis exists in all humans, and you never escape from it, it creates the illusionary world full of suffering and terror. This state of neurosis is passed from parents to children, and is unceasingly comanding the world.

So, basically psychoanalytic theory states that this world is a utopia, but human neurosis is what decieves us into thinking its a terror ridden, evil land.

[Pete]

Perhaps I could interprete what you said Blibblob a different way. This world was a upotia for humans. Through the years we have developed and there was a communal defect, greed, that somehow became embraced by the society, like a splinter in your skin. Slowy the wound festered unnoticed, touching minor things, until it spilt out and contaminated first the arm, and then the body of society. Maybe the contimanation is contained in one spot, so it can be removed, but I fear it is so well spread that humanity is either a) fucked or b)we need a huge change and a large dose of medicine aka communism.

[Palmares]

I think what was originally said is too much of a generalisation.

I'm too tired to argue, maybe later.

[KRAZYKILLA]

I noticed REDCANADA said he could die in his sleep. Well you can my friend; very quickly and painlessly too. It happened to a friend of mine at school on tuesday. watch what ya say. your wish might be granted sooner than expected.

[apathy maybe]

Quote: from Blibblob on 12:27 am on Mar. 13, 2003
Psychoanalytic theory states that humans generally have a healty psyche, but in this world it is taken over by a state of neurosis. This state of neurosis exists in all humans, and you never escape from it, it creates the illusionary world full of suffering and terror. This state of neurosis is passed from parents to children, and is unceasingly comanding the world.

So, basically psychoanalytic theory states that this world is a utopia, but human neurosis is what decieves us into thinking its a terror ridden, evil land.


but of course psychoanalytic theory is male bovine manure, only a few parts of it are revalent (inluding some of the ideas of Sub/Un consciousness and dreams).

Seems to say that someone suffers because of someone elses desires. So I suffer because someone desires to build a road. sorry Sounds Silly

[ravengod]

yep
this is as old as the f***ing enuma elish
that is sumerian primitive philosophy

[Hegemonicretribution]

I doubt very much I have reached enlightenment, but I never become depressed. I am too optimistic and most of all too fucking stubborn.

I decided a while ago that I wouldn't be part of a system I did not like, I avoid as much as I can, as impracticle as it is. I will not allow myself to consume certain things.

In the same way I see depression as failure. I also believe in relative suffering, the level is not important if you can only comprehend, express certain levels. However I would feel like a right twat for commiting suicide for failing exams, when people are worse off. I am just too fucking stubborn/petty to get depressed.

The only time you are truely free is when you hit rock bottom. Do whatever the fuck you like, with no care of the consequences.

I think everyone has to come to terms with their surroundings. NOT like them. By coming to terms with them people are happy an enpowered enough to do what they can. If people are depressed they lose the ability to change things.

What is happiness? For me it would be guitar, friends, reading and discussion, all coupled with nature.
At the end of the day I could make do with my own mind.

[AINATANIA]

The question remains; Is there a correlation between "desire" and "suffering?"

I would agree, that an answer may be sought in eastern philosophies. I would disagree with the presented understanding of "nirvana."

This would be an example of the "Graduated Path to Liberation." Here, it is suggested that the Klesha or avarana (In our case, desire) is the cause of suffering, not that suffering in itself will achieve nirvana. The presence of desire, or any other of the 84,000 forms of avarana is called jneyavarana, "the covering of what can be known," or obscuration to omniscience.

Turning to western social theory, I would suggest that suffering is relative to what the individual has learned what suffering is. This is seen in writings by Georg Herbert Mead, Talcott Parson, Randall Collins, Garfinkle, etc... It is understood that the "self" or the individual's concept of "self" does not come into existence as does the biological human organism, rather it is created through interaction, first with the significant other (Pa, Ma, and the rest of the family) and eventually the generalized other (The general society). Systems like these create roles for the individual. These roles carry with them the emotions of that role given by society. Thus, suffering is not relative to the situation, but to the role of the individual in his/her society. The "third-world" child, thus, experience the suffering of hunger, but is not exposed to the various mental health issues prone to an individual in an ever increasingly complex society.

Therefore, I would suggest that Desire and Suffering have no correlation unless society has taught the individual to believe so. How could a correlation be universal? That would be antithetical to masicism and munchausen, and munchausen biproxy.

[hazard]

suffering has an oppositte, joy
to claim one is superior, or more predominant than the other is to only infer the validity of both

in other words, you think life is to suffer only because you prefer joy

and there are, of course, those who prefer to suffer (like Jesus Christ perhaps) who say things like life is joy

the glass only SEEMS to be half empty, brothers