About Suffering

Abolishing Pain through a Joyful Pursuit of Millennium Development Goals

2008-06-29T21:22:00.005-04:00

I enjoy tremendously Anthony Judge's texts at his website called "laetus in praesens" (joy in the present). They are mostly about world problems, or what he sometimes calls the world problematique, and they are, as he wrote once in his revision of The Charge of the Light Brigade, "prepared at a time of an exceptional crisis of crises: energy, water, food, shelter, health, unemployment, climate, banking, confidence, drugs, etc. -- accompanied by continuing unchecked cycles of violence and rumours of possible nuclear war."

I enjoy his 'laetus in praesens'. The association of joy or enjoyment with world problems is highly revealing, methinks. Just as we feel problems painfully, we feel joyful in solving them. I would go as far as saying, with much provisos and caveats, that feeling painful is THE problem, and enjoying a problem is (dis)solving it. World problematique, that is to say the sum of all problems, is the most enjoyable problem of all: that's why friends who meet around a table often go for a while into the process of resolving the problems of the world. As for me, I cannot imagine a better line of work than algonomy, because inasmuch as work involves pain almost by definition, I prefer to work painfully to relieve pain, especially, to begin with, the pain of work.

However… Joy and pain considerations are not enough for real problem solving because reality and problems are wider than our affective sensibility or even our whole consciousness. In actual fact, our consciousness is a recent evolutionary produce and it is subject to constant delusion. On the one hand, we are so 'transcendentally' deprived that we hallucinate gods or extraterrestrials. On the other hand, we are so 'immanently' deprived that we are blind and deaf to our intellectual dishonesty or to the most obvious material needs. See for instance Judge's masterful account in Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge ─ Incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth which describes, with reference to Atkin [2008-07-01: with reference to Atkin's q-analysis, more precisely in that section], how some of the most basic problems escape collective care because they are hidden in psychological or structural traps underneath the scene, for the greatest benefit of exploiters or soulless self-perpetuating entities. Such deprivation is not the smallest of the growing pains that our species undergoes in this recess of the universe. However, despite everything, humankind seems already a viable species, already capable of the best morally as well as technically. So, at the very moment that we have to deal with problems that are typical of a species reaching maturity, we have no choice but to bet that our means are also coming to maturity.

Because… The big question that arises, the great unknown factor, has to do with evolution: do we have the brain-mind for the survival task that befalls us? Judge tries to answer this in Self-reflective Embodiment of Transdisciplinary Integration (SETI): the universal criterion of species maturity? I must mention here two peculiar features that Judge's texts presents, according to me, and which perhaps should be explained to new-comers. First, his texts at times may look overwhelmingly erudite, but readers should not be afraid: the guy has worked during decades in a world clearinghouse of information, he has no prejudice against even the most abstruse sources, but he always manage to express himself clearly, and, as a result, reading him is often extremely instructive. Second, his texts [2008-06-30: because they are so 'trans', 'meta', 'multi', 'pluri', 'poly', etc.] look to me like scores for the "songlines of the noosphere", an expression that he invented. Into those scores, I guess, one can replace the voice of any particular idea with that of another favorite idea, in such a way that, as a result, reading that author 'creatively' is like voicing one's own pet idea in a kind of world jubilation gospel choir. For instance, when Judge speculates and asks in Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge: "Is imminent population overshoot then to be understood as a significant mark on the collective face of humanity which it is as challenged to recognize as it would be for some immature species?", I, for one, rather ask whether the absence of algonomy is to be understood as such a mark. More specifically, when Judge sings:

rather than self-recognition in a conventional mirror, the standard of maturity may be the capacity of a species to recognize its reflection in its environment as a whole.
rather than "intelligence", maturity may be framed as the capacity to integrate such reflection meaningfully and to engage with others in the light of the recognition of how they mirror oneself.
rather than the capacity to recognize the existence of a mark on one's face in a mirror, it may be more a capacity to recognize how a problem in the environment is a reflection of one within one's own awareness -- from which the problem emerged and by which it is sustained.

I sing:

rather than self-recognition in a conventional mirror, the standard of viability for a highly intelligent species may be the capacity of its members to recognize their reflections in consciousness as a whole.
rather than "intelligence", maturity may be framed as the capacity to integrate such reflections meaningfully and to engage with others in the light of the recognition of how they mirror oneself.
rather than the capacity to recognize the existence of a mark on one's face in a mirror, it may be more a capacity to recognize how a problem in others is a problem within one's own awareness.

My point is that we are billions, each obsessed with one's own incommensurable stream of consciousness, collectively still unaware that the mark of consciousness is to be found not only on one's own face but also on the face of the others in the mirror, humans and animals [2008-06-30: the spot of one's own consciousness is not only on me but also on other humans and animals who all think that they are myself, literally!]. This is our most fundamental identity, beyond that of nation, religion, patronym, etc.: we are identical in consciousness. (Inspiration on this matter could probably also be taken from Judge's writings about the classic sequence of Zen Ox-herding Pictures [2008-06-30: link changed from the former one].)

So… Let us suppose that we have what's needed for maturing "just in time". Then what work should we collectively undertake for our survival, inasmuch as it depends on us? I suggest, for my part, the following operative rule, until the time comes that it can be replaced with another operative rule: let us work to save from 'intolerable' suffering each and every being that we are 'capable' of saving at a 'reasonable' cost. I trust that we can see the relevance of mastering suffering for the sustainable pursuit of our consciousness destiny, and I trust therefore that we are able to get a working consensus on what is the meaning in this context of 'intolerable' or 'capable' or 'reasonable'. Now, given that we can see and hear, that we can show enlightenment and sing together, it still remains that we have to decide and act, as far as what depends on us is concerned. What shall we decide and do? There are thousands of suggestions on the table! How are we going to choose? I suggest that we turn to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), since they are de facto constituting our most 'global' strategy of action, as I argued in Le (sous) développement fait partie de la (défectueuse) gestion collective de la souffrance, et vice-versa. (in French only).

MDGs, admittedly, are in many ways short of being adequate as a global strategy. First, they are not 'algonomic, be it only because they do not consider tough questions having to do with deciding who is going to suffer what, how, when, why, etc. For a glimpse at what should involve an adequate strategy, see for instance Judge's contribution to reflection on viable strategies for sustainable development. Or see Judge's harsh judgment in Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge about one of the masterminds of MDGs: "The seemingly naive 'fix-it' optimism of analyses such as those of Sachs -- as for climate change -- completely fail to take into account the track record of failures with regard to fix-it strategies of past UN 'development decades' and development goals ('health for all', 'food for all', etc.)" For a fresh report on MDGs by the North-South Institute, see We the Peoples 2008 — Getting to 2015: Building participation, seeking success. As far as I am concerned, I am looking since last January for a place where I, as a 'thinker', could take part in the success of MDGs. I am not sure that such a place exist yet, but in any case, I believe MDGs could be conceptually improved and become one of the central pieces of a global strategy for the management of suffering, until 2015, and far beyond that date, well into the new millennium.

Catholicism, Suffering, and Algonomy

2007-12-24T18:06:00.000-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI gave on November 30 2007 an encyclical letter entitled Spe Salvi (Saved by hope), a document which has less than sixty paragraphs, but in which the words suffer or suffering occur more than sixty times.

Suffering has a tremendous importance in Catholicism: its suffering founder taught that to suffer for good and to help those who suffer are necessary for being saved from eternal suffering.

The best that Catholicism has to offer on the subject can be found in Benedict XVI's piece, but an author like Walter Kaufmann should be read also in order to have a glimpse of the worst that the doctrine may show. Kaufmann writes for instance: "According to Augustine and many of his successors, all men deserve eternal torture, but God in his infinite mercy saves a very few. Nobody is treated worse than he deserves, but a few are treated better than they deserve, salvation being due not to merit but solely to grace. In the face of these beliefs, Augustine and legions after him assert God’s perfect justice, mercy, and goodness. And to save men from eternal torment, it came to be considered just and merciful to torture heretics, or those suspected of some heresy." (See The Faith of a Heretic)

Until now, suffering has been used as an argument for or against this or that ideology, religion, worldview, policy, etc. Algonomy, the work domain concerned with suffering, is now offered as a neutral framework for looking at the phenomenon itself from diverse perspectives. Obviously, religions like Catholicism or Buddhism might bring a lot to algonomy, and hopefully, algonomy might also be useful to Catholicism or other faiths. Of course, interfaith dialogue cannot be a logical discussion, because words do not have the same meanings in different universes of discourse. However, within an algonomic framework, we could probably share our views more usefully and reach collectively better results concerning that topic about which many of us feel so strongly.

The encyclical itself, section 22, says: "A self-critique of modernity is needed in dialogue with Christianity and its concept of hope. In this dialogue Christians too, in the context of their knowledge and experience, must learn anew in what their hope truly consists, what they have to offer to the world and what they cannot offer. Flowing into this self-critique of the modern age there also has to be a self-critique of modern Christianity, which must constantly renew its self-understanding setting out from its roots."

Going toward freedom from pain and suffering

2007-11-12T10:07:00.000-05:00

Philosopher David Pearce is advocating a project for the abolition of suffering through scientific techniques. Here is the introduction of a text adapted from invited talks that he gave at the Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference (2007):

"This talk is about suffering and how to get rid of it. I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences. First, I'm going to outline why it's technically feasible to abolish the biological substrates of any kind of unpleasant experience - psychological pain as well as physical pain. Secondly, I'm going to argue for the overriding moral urgency of the abolitionist project, whether or not one is any kind of ethical utilitarian. Thirdly, I'm going to argue why a revolution in biotechnology means it's going to happen, albeit not nearly as fast as it should."

A venturesome view on the politics of suffering

2007-07-02T13:12:00.000-04:00

In my view, there are presently, in our societies, NATURAL extended systems for the management of suffering. Societies are equipped with supply and security systems for our survival, our biological, psychological, social, educational, and various other kinds of needs... These systems evolved to meet two contradictory aims : the aim to avoid suffering because of its often dreadful discomfort, and the aim to inflict suffering for various advantages. What I propose is that we PURPOSIVELY develop a systematic management of suffering, and thus make clear for whose interests suffering is now going to be managed in our societies.

Let us look for example at the war in Afghanistan. The country’s main production is opium poppy, a plant indispensable in the control of many forms of suffering. In the late 1990, Afghanistan was supplying 70% of world's opium. In 2001, just before September 11, the Taliban had reduced the production to near zero, because the drug is “a great threat to personality, wisdom, life, health, economy and morality”. The US-led war (an operation called Freedom from Enduring, or rather Enduring Freedom) ousted the Taliban in the end of 2001, and the opium production came back to normal (Information taken from Poppy production soars in Afghanistan). Recently, on June 17th, The New-York Times had this cover story on its magazine: When Is a Pain Doctor a Drug Pusher? It is on medical uses of ‘the immense power’ of opioids, on how much pain is still radically undertreated, on how doctors are imprisoned or kept in fear in the name of the war on drugs. As if the international drug dealers were lobbying against doctors who could take control of their lucrative market, and as if Taliban-like moralistic governments were more responsive to these criminal money-profiteers than to our most dedicated welfare-makers… According to the latest news, Afghanistan produces now more than 90% of world’s opium: see Afghan opium production 'soars'.

Another support in favor of something like algonomy

2007-06-24T09:59:00.000-04:00

Here are the first and last paragraphs of a post in Evan Palmer's blog The Way It Can Be:

"If we want a guiding principle, it seems that directing ourselves to the reduction and elimination of suffering will lead us eventually to a kind of paradise. It's similar to having compassion for all creatures. It's similar to "love your neighbour as yourself" or "do unto others..". However, it has an advantage in that it has more of an orientation to action. It pushes us to look at suffering and try to see its causes and remedies and then asks us to act.

(...)

The reduction and elimination of suffering leads us to good stewardship of nature, to vegetarianism, to peace, to right living and livelihood. It does bring us face-to-face with spiritual laws and if we accept them or want to follow them. It does force us into the unpleasant calculus of the greatest good for the greatest number and accepting some suffering against greater suffering, or accepting some suffering against violation of a spiritual law and what we feel would be the certainty of greater future suffering. It makes us address deluded suffering brought on by things like consumerism or greed but with compassion and an appropriate gentleness."

Global cooperation is needed for ending the world's suffering

2007-06-16T21:39:00.000-04:00

This title is taken from an opinion piece by Scott Beale in The News Journal (Delaware, USA). The last paragraph of his article goes like this:

"It is important to recognize the contributions that the U.S. has made to address global challenges like human trafficking; but it is also time to reflect on what more can be done to promote international cooperation. Personally, I refuse to be a passive participant in the global politics abdicating the power we all have to make a difference. I am embracing my role as a global citizen and the shared responsibility we have to address the suffering that persists in the world."

Scott makes judicious remarks about the complexity of problems and solutions, based on his experience in India, Bosnia, and Columbia. He created recently an organisation called Atlas Corps. He says: "Former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford, one of the founders of the Peace Corps, has joined our Senior Advisory Board and in a few months we will launch a new approach towards international cooperation." All this is very good.

Yes, indeed, global cooperation is needed for managing successfully the world's suffering, but then I submit respectfully that an overarching frame of work is needed, and by definition, or by the argument of requisite globality if you prefer, this framework can only be algonomy.

New Text Added in Wikipedia on Suffering

2007-05-14T21:06:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia article on suffering, section "Health care approaches":

Breaches in health such as disease and injury are a main source of suffering in humans and animals. The huge sphere of health care addresses that suffering in many ways, as can be seen in much details through various Wikipedia articles: Medicine, Psychotherapy, Alternative medicine, Health profession, Hygiene, Public health…

Palliative care is presently the branch of medicine that is the most concerned with the relief of suffering as such. A concept of 'total pain' was thought of by pioneer Cicely Saunders for referring to the whole set of physical and mental distress, discomfort, symptoms, problems or needs that are painfully experienced by a patient. Textbooks authors like Robert Twycross or Roger Woodruff are now rather using the expression ‘total suffering’.[8]

Health care approaches to suffering remain highly problematic, according to Eric Cassell, which is the most often cited author on that subject: "The obligation of physicians to relieve human suffering stretches back to antiquity. Despite this fact, little attention is explicitly given to the problem of suffering in medical education, research or practice." "In fact, the central assumptions on which twentieth-century medicine is founded provide no basis for an understanding of suffering. For pain, difficulty in breathing, or other afflictions of the body, superbly yes; for suffering, no." Cassell proposes to define suffering as "the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person."[9]

Suffering according to Cassell, Murray, and as far as yours truly is concerned

2007-01-19T15:54:00.000-05:00

“Most generally, suffering can be defined as the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of person.” Eric J Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, 1991.

Suffering can be defined in many ways. Cassell wants to restrict its meaning to the severe, the mental, and the personal whole intactness. His redefinition is certainly good for certain purposes, but I think it has done inadvertently a disservice to the study and management of pain and suffering. Instead of the word suffering, I suggest that we should use for what he means the expression ‘integrity suffering’ (or something like that).

Few words in English are more ambiguously entangled than pain and suffering. As a solution, here is what I wrote at the beginning of Wikipedia article on suffering. Suffering is usually described as a negative basic feeling or emotion that involves a subjective character of unpleasantness, aversion, harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be said physical or mental, depending whether it refers to a feeling or emotion that is linked primarily to the body or to the mind. Examples of physical suffering are pain, nausea, breathlessness, itching[1]. Examples of mental suffering are anxiety, grief, hatred, boredom[2]. There is much ambiguity in the use of the words pain and suffering. Sometimes they are synonyms and interchangeable. Sometimes they are used in contradistinction to one another: e.g. "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional", "pain is physical, suffering is mental". Sometimes yet, like in the previous paragraph, they are defined in another way.

Jock Murray, in his 1995 report entitled Chronic Pain, has a section on suffering, page 51-53. Here is what I retained from it. All along, and to the end of this post, I will be citing his text, and will put between brackets and in italics my own contribution.

[Murray begins by putting a quotation from Cassell as an epigraph] “[…] Attempting to understand what suffering is and how physicians might truly be devoted to its relief will require that medicine and its critics overcome the dichotomy between mind and body and the associated dichotomies between subjective and objective and between person and object.” [Unfortunately those dichotomies are perpetuated in Cassell’s and Murray’s ‘phenomenological’ distinction between pain and suffering, as we will see]

[Murrays goes on…] Although the title of this report is related to "Pain", I suspect that we would understand the situation and the patients much better if we concentrated more on the concept and meaning of "suffering" [indeed!!!]. This would help us understand what is occurring to the people, their families, their therapists and all the others who relate to them.

The aim of the medical profession is to relieve suffering [false, it is to treat mind and body dysfunctions and further health: a lot of professions claim that relieving suffering is a concern to them, but for none this is THE aim]. Cassell (1982) reminds us, however, that this may be naive. He states that the public, and patients, feel that the aim of the medical profession is the relief of suffering, but apparently the profession doesn't. Doctors tend to separate the physical and the non-physical aspects of suffering. Medicine's traditional concern for the body and physical disease, and the widespread belief in the mind-body dichotomy in medical theory and practice, resolves to the paradoxical situation in which physicians may even create [alas! a lot of undue] suffering in the course of their treatment of the sick.
[…]

Cassell makes three major points. First, suffering [as well as pain, I must add in this context] is experienced by persons [or individuals I’d say without ‘speciesism’]. […] Second, suffering occurs when an impending destruction of the person is perceived, as from any event that threaten the intactness of the person [Cassell says that because he restricts the definition of suffering in a very particular way]. The third point, and one that I think is often missed [by physicians who are busy with other things, I presume], is that suffering can occur in relation to any aspect of the person, whether it is in social role, group identification, the relation with self, body, family, or the relation with a trans-personal transcendent source of meaning. Suffering is ultimately a very personal matter. Patients may report suffering when one does not expect it, or do not report suffering when one expects they would.
[…]

As Fordyce (1988) comments, “One of the greatest problems in clinical pain, particularly chronic pain, is the confounding of pain with suffering, both by the patient and by the professional.”[indeed!!!] […]

In overcoming the weight and impact of suffering [in other words in taking care and in suffering less because they take care], people can begin to find meaning in their experience [to suffer is to find meaninglessness], or achieve transcendence over the experience [to suffer is to achieve immanence]. In many cultures, suffering is seen as a way of bringing one closer to God [an artifact invented against, very closely against suffering]. Frankl (1984) found that overcoming adversity and suffering was one way that people found meaning in their life [stubbing one’s toe requires instantly to reinterpret one’s position in life]. As Cassell says, “This ‘function’ of suffering [i.e. to react against suffering by appealing to our highest means] is at once its glorification and its relief. If, through great pain and deprivation, someone is brought closer to a cherished goal, that person may have no sense of having suffered but may instead feel enormous triumph.”

“Pain and suffering” are often identified as similar in medical literature but they are phenomenologically distinct [phenomenologically here means subjectively; we will be told next that pain, even extreme or excruciating, can occur without suffering; I object and prefer to say that there is some suffering in the slightest pain, because thus I preserve the common use of a common language word (suffering) for referring to one of the most basic categories of the objective-subjective world reality, that is our sensibility to the unpleasantness that there is both in pain (physical suffering) and in suffering (i.e. mental suffering)]. Women undergo extreme pain in childbirth, but regard childbirth as joyous and rewarding. I have a friend who has repeated kidney stones which cause excruciating pain, but he knows what it is, understands it and endures it like one of those irritating problems of life like a flat tire or a broken window pane. Patients suffer when [here the author means ‘only when’ where I’d rather say ‘when for instance’] they perceive that there is some threat to their person, they have no control and the pain may not pass. When patients feel that their problem can be managed, and that their pain and distress can be controlled, their suffering is remarkably reduced [simply because pain and distress ARE suffering]. A loss of control is an important component of suffering. Cassell concludes that people in pain report suffering [of course, they would not report it to a doctor at other times when it is in control, slight, etc.] when they feel it is out of control, when the pain is overwhelming, when its source is unknown, when the meaning of the pain is dire, or when the pain is chronic. Thus, they perceive pain as a threat to their continued existence, not merely to their lives, but to their integrity as persons. There is some hope in this concept [the concept that the suffering of pain is worst when pain is a threat to the person, I guess], as we may be able to relieve suffering if we can make the source of the pain known, or change its meaning, or demonstrate that it can be controlled, or that an end is in sight [of course… but couldn’t we make it all clear if all those who are deeply concerned would meet and discuss at last the question of defining suffering usefully?].

On Scarry's "The Body in Pain"

2007-01-11T11:34:00.000-05:00

“Directed against the isolating aversiveness of pain,
mental and material culture assumes the sharability of sentience.” (page 326)

The often cited Elaine Scarry’s 1985 book “The Body in Pain – The Making and Unmaking of the World” ought to be considered among groundwork classics for algoscience, the field of studies on suffering that I advocate to create. Well, of course Scarry proposes a new science of creation (p. 280), not of suffering, but such a displacement illustrates by itself the difficulty of focusing on suffering that is so typical in the whole history of human concern with that subject. Her book is an instance of what it talks about, a human creation, brought about like every creation, in final analysis, by the need and purpose to relieve suffering. At the same time, it is an instance of the difficulty about which it speaks, the difficulty to speak about suffering: “(…) the sentient fact of physical pain is (…) so flatly invisible (…) that almost any other phenomenon occupying the same environment will distract attention from it.” (page 12), and “(…) as physical pain destroys the mental content and language of the person in pain, so it also tends to appropriate and destroy the conceptualization abilities and language of persons who only observe the pain.” (page 279)

Her book is a success because it goes beyond that difficulty in an unprecedented manner. Not so much because the unbearable depiction of pain in torture is flatly put in words on the pages, but because the reality of suffering is presented at length as the most salient and the most reality-conferring feature of the most real of all phenomenon, the one which for us gives reality to every thing in the world, our sentience.

It is high time, I suggest, that we accord to the sentient group of things its due place among our main objects of concern, among our deepest motives of common allegiance, among our most dear and sacred but hopefully never absolute terms of personal identification like our nation, religion, ideology, profession, family, species, etc.

I advocate the creation of algonomy, a whole new domain for dealing with the knowledge and management of suffering, because it appears to me, based on millions of utterances among which Scarry’s book is one of the most knowledgeably heartfelt, that the management of suffering is the activity that will decide, at this time in our planet history, whether our humanly made world will be unmade into a hellish desert or made into a more inhabitable world for all sentient beings.

But where shall we find a place to meet for studying suffering, in particular Scarry’s insights on the crucial role of that monstrous feeling in human creation? Do we first have to find money for that? If yes, who will validate our claim for subvention? If no, as I believe, can you help, at least by circulating this call toward those who might be interested in meeting for the sake of sentience rather than money?

“The problem of economic distribution (…) is the problem of distributing the
power of artifacts to remake sentience.” (page 263)

My comment in the blog "Pain"

2006-12-16T00:39:00.000-05:00

Your November 30th 2006 post has an hyperlink to DeWall’s Research Statement. Reading DeWall, I think that suffering from rejection, like any suffering, has the potential to deturn one’s attention from other suffering and one’s willingness to exert self-control. Also, I like the idea that “as evolution prepared animals for increasing social interaction, instead of creating entirely new systems to react to social events such as being rejected or excluded, it piggy-backed these responses onto the existing systems that were hard-wired for responding to physical pain.” It is a pet theory of mines that physical pain is hard-wired to the system of ’suffering’, and that sometimes, like in cingulotomy, this hard-wiring is severed…

Progress in Wikipedia Article on Suffering

2006-12-12T13:53:00.000-05:00

Articles in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, are often among the very first results coming up when a search is made on the internet. Thus it is with the word suffering or the word pain. So, people who want to contribute to human knowledge about suffering, and particularly to the circulation of that knowledge, should probably pay attention to this paramount point of collective focus that represents the Wikipedia article on suffering.

I have now begun to edit that article, with the goal of bringing it to the highest standards, first as a ‘Good Article’, and ultimately as a ‘Featured Article’. For now, there is a new introduction, and a new table of contents. The old and somewhat primitive contents have been revised.

Your own special concern with the subject of suffering could help in developing one section or the other within the new 'comprehensive' structure of the article. Please have a look there.

The end of suffering is our mission in life, says Tim.

2006-11-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

Tim Sanders, according to his bio, delivers high-energy speeches and compelling seminars to high-level executive conferences, professional associations, and graduate schools. Let me quote this blog by him :

"I believe that our mission in life is simple: Participate in the end of suffering. If we reduce suffering in the world, we enable the positive. We make a difference. You cannot make people happy and you cannot make them like you. You can, however, be a part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. Suffering is everywhere waiting to be addressed. It comes in physical and mental forms from hunger to uncertainty.
(...)
Think about it, your greatest energy comes from your innate desire to end suffering. If you are bored, you find great energy to deal with that. If someone you care about needs something, you find it in yourself to give her your very best. This mission I suggest, the end of suffering, comes from your true nature as a compassionate being.
(...)
It is my informed opinion that the most effective leaders in the world focus efforts towards the end of suffering."

What Tim says is ‘motivational’, of course, and it is so because of the high-energy and compelling meaning that is involved in dealing with suffering. Therefore, in every realm of life, religion, politics, sports, or here business, people find it wise to appeal to suffering, sometimes for its ‘ending’, sometimes for its use as a means to a gain.

Despite the best intentions, it seems that suffering continues unabatedly and that an approach more to the point is required. I agree with Tim : at this time in history, our mission is to “participate in the end of suffering”. More precisely, I propose that we should all take part in the knowledge and management of suffering, that we should literally spend at least a few hours each month in some relevant and collectively acknowledged setting (edited on November 22 : I mean a setting expressly accepted as a part of a common plan by those who agree to a common mission) for learning about suffering and contributing to its wise use or relief.

Physical/Social Pain Overlap Theory

2006-10-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

In their paper Why It Hurts to Be Left Out: The Neurocognitive Overlap Between Physical and Social Pain (or see this later version if you prefer), Eisenberger and Lieberman present the pain overlap theory which proposes that social pain, the pain that we experience upon social injury (when social relationships are threatened, damaged or lost), and physical pain, the pain that we experience upon physical injury, share parts of the same underlying neural circuitry and computational processes. They review evidence from the animal lesion and human neuroimaging literatures suggesting that the anterior cingulate cortex plays a key role in the physical-social pain overlap. And they present evidence for the four corollary hypotheses derived from pain overlap theory:

hypothesis #1: physical and social pain share a common phenomenological and neural basis
hypothesis #2: physical and social pain rely on the same computational mechanisms
hypothesis #3: inducing or regulating one type of pain similarly influences the other
hypothesis #4: trait differences relating to (a heightened sensitivity to) one type of pain relate to the other type as well

In conclusion, they say, accumulating evidence is revealing that physical and social pain are similar in experience, function, and underlying neural structure. Continuing to explore the commonalities between physical and social pain may provide us with new ways of treating physical pain and new techniques for managing social pain. Having a better understanding of the physical-social pain overlap may help to grant social pain the same status that physical pain has achieved in the medical and clinical communities, as evidenced by the amount of time and attention dedicated to its treatment and prevention.

The authors insist that social connection is a need as basic as air, water, or food and that like these more traditional needs, the absence of social connections causes pain. Indeed, they propose that the pain of social separation or social rejection may not be very different from some kinds of physical pain, and they highlight that the anticipation and experience of being socially excluded has been shown to have damaging psychological, behavioral, and physiological effects. Damages must be especially large, I would say, when the pain is chronic. I am thinking of those socially wounded mass killers in schools, or other ‘terrorists’, and I reiterate that question raised in a previous post: how shall we manage chronic social pain in our societies?

We may relate also social pain to Wilkinson’s social suffering (see that post). What is the difference or similarity between pain and suffering? Eisenberger and Lieberman speak of “the evolution of a social pain system that piggybacked onto the physical pain system”. By analogy, a converse suggestion could be made : suffering is a basic mind-brain phenomenon to which sensory pain got “hardwired”, and from which it can be sometimes disconnected. What is pain without unpleasantness? What is unpleasantness if not suffering? Hopefully, the day is approaching when a new terminology will allow things to be referred to unequivocally in the field of pain-and-suffering research.

I want to thank Tony Cole who drew my attention to the pain overlap theory, first in the Wikipedia article on suffering, and then in his Pain Blog, which I was allowed to find when the ever commendable Gary Rollman mentioned it on October 6 in his Psychology of Pain Blog.

Book of the Year Prize for 'Suffering: A Sociological Introduction'

2006-10-17T22:47:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Iain Wilkinson for these good news concerning his book Suffering: A Sociological Introduction, a book which I mentioned earlier in that post.

Iain is developing a programme of research that can be referred to as a 'sociology of suffering'. In the whole field of knowledge there is presently NO specialty whatsoever that deals specifically with suffering : it is high time that there be a beginning somewhere. Our societies utterly need, admittedly, better knowledge and management concerning this phenomenon which torments or threatens all their members. Therefore, Iain's work deserves utter support, doesn't it? This prize from the British sociology community is a great opportunity : those of us who care should ask how we can contribute to advance Iain's work further, if we can.

I have a suggestion : let's include a mention about it in Wikipedia's article on suffering. I say "let's do it" rather than "I'll do it" because the whole idea of what I propose has more to do with our knowledge and action about suffering, which is our common business, than with our truth and commitment about it, which is our own private concern. We care since millenia in various partial ways, let's start organizing what we can do as a whole.

Challenging the Media from a Compassionate Perspective

2006-09-26T10:59:00.000-04:00

Media Lens is a UK-based media-watch project, which offers authoritative criticism of mainstream media bias and censorship. It does this especially through its "media alerts".

As they say in their FAQ : "Fundamentally, we wish to reduce suffering wherever it occurs." (...) "We are convinced that the increasingly centralised, corporate nature of the media means that it acts as a de facto propaganda system for corporate and other establishment interests. The costs incurred as a result of this propaganda, in terms of human suffering and environmental degradation, are incalculable." (...) "Media Lens has grown out of our perception of the unwillingness, indeed inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing humanity, such as poverty, human rights abuses, war, pollution and climate change. Because much modern suffering is rooted in the unlimited greed of corporate profit-maximising - in the subordination of people and planet to profit - it seems to us to be a genuine tragedy that society has for so long been forced to rely on the corporate media for 'accurate' information." (...) "Our focus is on encouraging the public to look beyond the mainstream to honest, non-corporate media rooted in compassion for suffering rather than greed for profits."

May they be successful.

N.B. : One of Medialens member, David Edwards, has written The Compassionate revolution - Radical Politics and Buddhism.

The Least Suffering for the Smallest Number

2006-09-20T10:03:00.000-04:00

Title above is taken from the home page of Socrethics.com, a website proposing a "moderate version of negative utilitarianism", an ethical theory which certainly goes toward the best politics on suffering that can be proposed at this time.

Moderate negative utilitarianism deals cleverly with such ethical concepts as preference, consequence, satisfaction/frustration, compensated/uncompensated suffering, hedonism, justice... Side constraints such as basic rights are introduced to mitigate the 'hostility' potential of a 'negative' theory that might let think for instance that killing everybody is a solution to end suffering...

One Socrethics thesis is that "investments in the development and propagation of ethical knowledge have the highest cost-benefit ratio in the fight against suffering", and it is advocated to allocate priority resources to "systems theory of suffering". Elsewhere on the website, Algosphere is mentioned as a resource in "Systematic Study of Suffering".

Several references in Socrethics pages are worthy of a look at :

Parfit's mere addition paradox, also known as repugnant conclusion : how should we decide how numerous and how well we will live?
Ryder's painism : pain, broadly defined to cover all types of suffering, should form the basis for ethics.
Le Guin's Omelas : a utopian city where everything is pleasing, except for the secret of its happiness: the good fortune of Omelas requires that an unfortunate child be kept in filth, darkness and misery...

Socrethics work should be discussed as an important contribution to the politics on suffering, but where can this be done?

A third killing spree tragedy in Montreal academic milieu since 1989

2006-09-14T16:10:00.000-04:00

Our town, which is normally so safe, was shocked again yesterday by a violent event (see BBC - Probe into Canada college attack). I hear a psychiatrist on tv today, whose name is Nicolas Bergeron, a specialist in post traumatic stress disorder who works at the Centre hospitalier de l'université de Montréal, and who is also vice-president of Médecins du Monde in Canada. Doctor Bergeron says that a question we should ask now in our society is how suffering has to be managed. He was referring to the gunman's distress, which was manifest long before the event (each of the three events in fact) and was never properly treated.

I concur wholeheartedly with Nicolas. If we are to prevent us from spilling blood all over the place, we have to prevent suffering from driving us mad. Mental illness, said someone, is the worst problem in the world... and the second one is the way we treat it!

Well, there are many candidates to the first rank among problems, but I believe no coherent strategy or prioritizing will ever be possible for dealing with all our various woes until we pay systematic attention to the very basic problem of suffering. Like in this Wikipedia draft page, which might be a beginning among other 'academic' initiatives.

"Our most important task", says Grace

2006-09-13T11:05:00.000-04:00

It is my intention with this blog to link to what people say about suffering in blogs or other medias. Here is an excerpt of Grace Davis' September 10 post entitled Suffering :

"Then, my middle-way self will gently push herself forward and try her best to see the balance of 9/11 and Katrina and everything else. That it's all suffering and that our work is to alleviate suffering, as much as we can.
Then, middle-way self reminds me of our most important task - alleviate the suffering, and start with oneself.
So, I will run. Long may I run." (emphasis is mine)

My comments can be found in Grace's blog.

Besides, as a follow-up to my previous post, I started a 'draft' page for the Wikipedia article on suffering.

Wikipedia main article on suffering

2006-09-10T14:35:00.000-04:00

A Google search on suffering refers to Wikipedia among the very first results. Understandably, this popular general encyclopedia might well be, for most people, the first reference concerning suffering in our new contemporary, webmediated, culture.

However, in its present state the Wikipedia article on suffering leaves much to be desired. As goes the warning at the top of the page : "To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup." I suppose none of us feels ready to show up there and fix things up. But that is an obvious place where to go and start collaborating with other fellows interested in the subject.

Works that are closely relevant to the new approach

2006-09-08T16:08:00.000-04:00

Here are, to begin with, two websites and three books that I consider closely relevant to the approach that I am advocating. People who are responsible for these works will be notified that they are cited here, though no particular response is expected. At this time, it is only question of laying the table (setting the stage, I mean).

Websites :

The Abolitionist Society. Their motto is 'Toward the abolition of suffering through science'. This kind of abolitionism is inspired from David Pearce's The Hedonistic Imperative.
International Society for Panetics. Panetics is an integrated discipline to study and help reduce the infliction of suffering by humans upon other humans.

Books :

Suffering, Politics, Power : A Genealogy in Modern Political Theory, by Cynthia Halpern, 2002. From the book back cover : "Suffering, Politics, Power argues that human suffering on a global scale constitutes the most urgent and least understood question of contemporary politics and political theory." The author also looks at how suffering has been approached by modern thought until now.
Suffering and Moral Responsibility, by Jamie Mayerfeld, 2002. Editorial reviews at Amazon.com say that this is "the first systematic book-length inquiry into the moral significance of suffering". From the book preface : "The world knows an immense amount of suffering, much of it humanly inflicted and much of it humanly preventable. My book seeks to shed lights on the moral dimensions of this fact. Ultimately, it aims to clarify the nature of the duty to relieve suffering, and to encourage reflection on the kind of changes that would be necessary to bring our lives into adequate compliance with this duty."
Suffering – A Sociological Introduction, by Iain Wilkinson, 2005. From the book back cover : "In Suffering Iain Wilkinson provides a compelling sociological exploration of human suffering, and its political and moral repercussions." The author is proposing a 'sociology of suffering'.

Suffering as a primary subject by itself

2006-09-08T11:16:00.000-04:00

Suffering as a theme is often used to talk about religion, morality, philosophy, etc. That's alright. I propose however that be set up in our culture a place, a new 'domain of interest', where suffering is considered as a primary subject by itself.

Such a place can be set up on the internet, I believe. The purpose of this blog is to contribute to that end by visiting the works which speak of suffering as a first concern. With time, with links to one work and then to another, it is hoped that people of various groups will progressively interlink in one coherent setting to form an internet hub on suffering. For instance it could be in a wiki like Dealing with Suffering which would be developed on a model like The Psychology Wiki. [last two sentences were edited on 2006-09-12]

Suffering in the Blogosphere

2006-09-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

The word suffering is often found in the blogosphere. However, the subject as such seems not to be treated, except in passing (for instance in this) or indirectly (for instance in that). The closest to my topic that I have been able to find until now are those excellent blogs about pain : Pain for Philosophers, and Psychology of Pain. What is the relationship between pain and suffering? This is a question that could be usefully discussed between interested bloggers, I guess.

Introduction

2006-09-05T18:50:00.000-04:00

I am particularly interested in the topic of suffering since 1976. For a complete story, you may see my Biographical Notes. In short, I have tried in many ways to set up the basis of a theoretical and practical approach that deals with the matter of suffering 'specifically' and 'as a whole'. I am persuaded that approaching suffering in a general, global, systematic manner is quite appropriate, and sorely needed. My endeavor was met only with polite approbation until now, but it has been instructive. I hope this blog will contribute to a better knowledge and management of suffering.