Optimal Suffering -
Ideological Deadlock
Our modern era seems locked in an ideological deadlock - stuck between two extremes, caught between two ideologies.
On the one hand, we have the remnants of the traditionalists who view the world from the perspective of a dogmatic theist. In their eyes, suffering is to be expected, and even embraced! For their God ordained suffering, creating it intentionally as shown in Genesis. This world functions like a testing ground to see if we can handle what God throws at us. If you suffer, it means you are special enough have been chosen by God for a greater test! Since God (or karma) is just, every instance of suffering will be converted into a blessing! In fact, spiritual growth is the purpose of life, and suffering is the way to bring about that growth. Hence, suffering is good.
On the other hand you have the post-traditionalists who have given up on the ancient ways. Once they cast off their moral inheritance, the gaping chasm in their souls lead them clinging after a new framework for understanding good and evil. Utilitarianism rushed in to fill the void and they began to look at the world through maximization functions and trade offs. But philosophers poked so many holes in utilitarianism that people fled back to deontology. For how else could you ensure peoples rights, freedom and dignity? Surely some red-lines need to be drawn? For under utilitarianism there are always exceptions. Slavery is bad, UNLESS it gives net-happiness to the group. Torture is bad, UNLESS it gives net-happiness to the group. The conclusions of utilitarianism seemed so repugnant that a moral stand needed to be made. Slavery is always wrong. Torture is always wrong. Suddenly a new conclusion emerged - the idea that suffering was always wrong - that suffering was evil!
What a novel thought, and a dangerous one too. For if the very existence of suffering could be viewed as evil, and any causer of suffering was evil, what would stop one from deducing that the universe itself was evil? For whence commeth the suffering if not by means of the universe? For in a world of entropy, is not suffering the fate of all living things? Is not every second a chance for entropy to whittle away at one's existence? Isn't death the inevitable result? If living is a terror, and death a monstrosity, isn't the universe the birthing grounds of evil itself? For if nothing existed, then evil would find no way to manifest.
How are we to navigate between these moralities? Is suffering good? Or is it evil? Should it be avoided or embraced? Is it one or the other, or a combination of both? Can a dialectic be had? Is there a synthesis hiding in plain sight?
epigenetics and hormesis
greenhouse plants - weak stems , slow introduction to wild
therapy - slowly face fears at tolerable level of discomfort
line between order and chaos
study on stomachs - pain has 2 functions, psychological and constructive - epigenetic signal to fortify area
Goldilocks principle - The concept of "just the right amount"
Aristotelian ethics - Virtue is the balance between two extremes.
What is balanced suffering? What is "just the right amount"?
In order for there to be a right answer, there must be a goal.
What is the evolutionary goal of suffering?
Perhaps we should look to what the wrong amounts are.
Religious suffering - overboard excessive trust in epigenetics
Pessimistic suffering - nihilism antinatalism
transcendent suffering for a goal
solves meaning crisis
video game concept of leveling up brings meaning