tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339219732023-11-15T13:38:00.264-05:00About SufferingFOR A NEW APPROACH TO SUFFERING, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL, HUMAN AND ANIMAL.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-5780066319719797152009-11-26T22:59:00.008-05:002011-03-08T19:33:53.613-05:00What the hell must be done, for heaven’s sake?A good life guiding principle might be: let’s have a healthy and healing vision of things.<br /><br />An algonomist mind must deal healthily with the panic-inducing thought that zillions of beings are caught in extreme suffering throughout space-time. That thought is made even worse by the possibility of <a href="http://www.hedweb.com/diarydav/2008.html">superhell branches</a> in an <a href="http://www.abolitionist.com/multiverse.html">infinitely suffering multiverse</a>, as described by David Pearce.<br /><br />An algonomist mind must retain a modicum of self-confidence in the face of abysmal perplexity. I can assume being a relatively mediocre and too pretentious autodidact, but a more problematic realization is seeing how much complex essential questions are beyond my capabilities or those of anybody. Contemporary limits to our intellectual power are described with genius in Anthony Judge’s writings, for instance in <a name="emer"></a><a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/exisembo.php#emer">Emergent characteristics of knowledge-based society</a>, or in <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/singmem.php">Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society</a>. Besides, promises from technological progress are mixed: the next revolution in information processing might turn our brains into slaves as well as into gods, and while ad hoc solutions to our predicaments are necessary (like industrial production of meat in vitro that would free billions of abused animals), we know from the past that problems of suffering recreate themselves in new ways as technological progress pushes back moral frontiers. That is why an algonomy is and will remain indispensable.<br /><br />An algonomist mind must keep focused in spite of ‘distraction’. Blaise Pascal used that term for referring to our perverse diversion from God, but I like to use it instead with reference to our ease at drifting away from any sustained concern with the unpleasant and bewildering topic of suffering. It is easy to get distracted by television, radio, books, music, friends, or the internet (or even one's own talkative mind!). I noticed that almost any few meaningful bits of sentences are enough to attract my attention, and once my interest is caught, the show of almost any construction of meanings may keep me busy for hours. I noticed also that movies on television are the most attractive programs because they provide usually more well constructed, carefully crafted meanings than other programs. But the greatest peril with regard to distraction, for me, is the world of ideas, knowledge, theories, intellect. That is where the meanings become more complex than I am able to fathom, and I am tempted to become involved in several fascinating endless pursuits, such as understanding world problems, neuroscientific research on consciousness, organization of encyclopedic knowledge, philosophy of thought, multiverse quantic cosmology, technological singularity, etc.<br /><br />Resolving complex essential questions is beyond our capabilities, but those questions arise nevertheless, and whether they become a pernicious distraction or not, we must decide how to deal with them. Here is what I propose to do, from an algonomic perspective.<br /><br />Three kinds of constructed meanings are used, apparently, for dealing with intractable questions: hollow constructions (agnosticism), solid constructions (commitment to one cultural belief), and ad hoc constructions (valid for one fleeting moment only). Thus, in the field of the complex and essential question of suffering, there are countless ad hoc constructions which are not ‘systematic’ but just momentarily pragmatic; there are a few solid constructions, like the Four Noble Truth of Buddhism, or the redemptive mystery of Christianity; and there are various hollow constructions, for which suffering is something unknowable at this time. Hollow constructions come in two forms. The first one is high and narrow: suffering, although not necessarily mentioned as such, is a top emergency, that is a medical, social, political, or humanitarian priority, that requires socially organized, very specific help. The second one is low and broad: suffering, although not necessarily mentioned as such, is an everyday widespread phenomenon that must be used in various ways [in daily life] as a subordinate means for ensuring success, discipline, well-being, profits, or other achievements.<br /><br />In the light of what precedes, it is worth noting that algonomy has been until now a self-defeating idea. In the perspective of any ad hoc approach, suffering is too horrifying for being contemplated more than one moment. In the perspective of any solid approach, there is no need for another systematic construction because the solution to the problem of suffering is already known. In the perspective of any hollow approach, the problem is not so much suffering (what is suffering actually?) but rather illness, trauma, hunger, poverty, war, earthquake, success, discipline, well-being, etc. And on top of that, distraction has prevented since antiquity the development of any persistent systematic work which would address suffering, the whole of suffering, and nothing but suffering. Indeed, although countless people have been strongly motivated to spend their lives working on pain in the world, everyone of them until now, rather than becoming a specialist in algonomy, has been diverted into becoming a specialist in religion, philosophy, medicine, scientific research, revolution, social work, etc.<br /><br />However... Now, in our postmodern world, a new kind of systematically constructed meanings appears to take shape. Briefly, it is a high, broad, solid construction with hollow fringes... Thus, algonomy can be seen as a construct with a cultural commitment in its center, accompanied with a transcultural (non-, or alter-, or omni-) dimensionality at its periphery. One of the basic accompanying works which can express that transcultural dimensionality is the <a href="http://www.un-intelligible.org/projects/homeency.php">Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential</a>. But notwithstanding its value, the algonomy idea alone will remain unconvincing because the world of ideas, knowledge, theories, intellect is just too perplexing: everything, and its contrary, is possible! Then, the decisive argument will come from the world of concrete things, empiricism, practice, action. All is possible but only the actual is real! Under these circumstances, all things being considered, here is perhaps the most important question of all time: is it feasible, as a matter of fact, to act for an algonomic management of suffering? The answer, be it yes or no, can be proven experimentally, I claim. Providing the details is the next step for those interested in algonomy.<br /><br />[A few minor modifications have been brought to the text above on 2010-01-31 and 2010-08-30]Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-21061294461346872972009-11-01T06:59:00.005-05:002009-11-01T22:23:20.966-05:00In the Night from Halloween to All Saints’ DayRarely do I get up in the middle of the night to write.<br /><br />This time a giant pumpkin flash awakened my brain from a living dead dream.<br /><br />“Does each of us inhabit all alone a parallel universe within a Multiverse?”<br /><br />For one’s very dearest thought by no one is outrightly shared, isn’t it?<br /><br />How could we communicate, then, and act together?<br /><br />There ought to be a space-time hole, a road to the day<br /><br />when all hearts, open and close at last,<br /><br />collectively manage to not suffer, or not excessively at least.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-65910857663354092112009-09-09T23:05:00.006-04:002009-09-10T23:20:34.461-04:00Painism, a useful pre-algonomic deviationRichard Ryder’s book <a href="http://www.richardryder.co.uk/painism.html">Painism — A Modern Morality</a> figures in <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/intro/mediagraphy.htm#fund">Precursor Works for an Algonomy</a> because it proposes “the theory that moral value is based upon the individual’s experience of pain and that pain itself is the only evil” (page 26). Even if I think the theory is false, as every other all-encompassing ethical view based on a single most cherished value, the book for me has still a pro-algonomic usefulness because it shows in simple terms how the moral value of suffering, at least from one point of view, is second to no other value.<br /><br />The book has only three chapters, the first on “Ethics So far”, the second on painism as a new approach to ethics, and the third on “Some Applications” of painism. I believe Ryder was looking for a way to apply very generally the idea that the reduction (or we could say more sophisticatedly the sufficient collective mastery) of pain is a supremely important thing, and he thought ethics might be an appropriate way. However, an historical review might show that without an algonomy, which is specifically, universally, and exclusively about pain, no way of managing pain can be 'appropriate'. Until now, every solution to suffering has been inappropriate, every well-intended solution has been actually a deviation or a wandering from pain into something else. Ryder’s book is more about morality than about pain. As a consequence, it suffers from a dual focus that is blurring an otherwise clear matter. Pain has an importance so great that it cannot be conveyed by way of ethics: pain requires its own proper specific exclusive whole universal domain, second to none. And ethics cannot be reduced to pain without being pervertedly impoverished (v.g. p. 65: “Pain, broadly defined to include all forms of suffering, is the only evil. All other moral objectives are means to reducing pain.”).<br /><br />The author formulates some 42 rules for painism. Most of them seem to me less wise than they should be. Ryder’s manner of dealing ‘quantitatively’ with pain is, in my opinion, so clumsy or half-baked that it defies serious criticism! He may recognize rightly that “the severe suffering of one individual is a more serious matter morally than the mild suffering of millions” (page 2), that “pains cannot be aggregated across individuals” (page 27, reminiscent of a C.S. Lewis’ saying), or that “our first moral concern should always be with the individual who is the maximum sufferer” (page 29, reminiscent of an Abbé Pierre’s saying, and of a John Rawls’ principle — incidentally pp.19-21 and 92-94 are excellent about Rawls), but he still lacks the more sophisticated concepts that would prevent him from uselessly presenting “provocative and controversial results” (back cover). Especially, I guess, he is lacking the concept of a categorical distinction of INCOMMENSURABILITY between mild (more sophisticatedly: non excessive) suffering and severe (excessive) suffering. For instance, Ryder might say that an event causing 100 units of pain to a thousand individuals is worst than an event causing 10 units of pain to a million individuals. We might agree with that, but then, according to the same logic, we should agree also that an event causing 100 units of pain to a thousand individuals is worst than an event causing 99 units of pain to a million individuals. The problem is that concepts like mild suffering, severe suffering, aggregation of pains, and maximum sufferer have to be defined much more explicitly than Ryder does.<br /><br />It must be said in his defense that, as a former animal experimenter and a former chairman of the Royal SPCA council, Ryder has been much concerned with the number and the suffering of animals used in laboratories. That is perhaps why his perspective is so peculiar. In any case, algoscience should collect every ethical view that gives a prominent place to suffering or to the relief of suffering. Ryder mentions some names in this connection: Epicurus, Bentham, Mill, Singer… We might add to those names that of Richard Ryder, Karl Popper (who proposed a negative utilitarianism), Erich H Loewy (Suffering and the Beneficent Community), Jamie Mayerfeld (Suffering and Moral Responsibility), Henri Atlan (Le plaisir, la douleur et les niveaux de l'éthique)…<br /><br />There is one more point in Ryder’s view of pain that seems important to me. He quotes on page 121 an author who, like many others, suggests that there may be “no shared mental quality” between various painful states, such as nausea, a stubbed toe, existential angst, or frustration from not being able to walk around. On page 27 Ryder writes also that “The pain of A is as different from the pain of B as is a piece of chalk from a lump of cheese.” On page 121 however he writes: “But surely — their <em>painfulness</em> is shared. Their causes may differ, and so do their emotional and cognitive attributes, but at some basic level these states are all painful.” An on page 35: “Sooner or later, brain research will show that all pleasures (…) share some common cerebral mechanism. The same will be said of all varieties of pain.” I concur heartily. Suffering is a specific real phenomenon. It is a concrete thing sticking to the bodies of individuals who suffer. It exists in space and time, in a given number of nervous systems. It reacts to actions applied to it, it can be reduced, it can be stopped, it can be prevented.<br /><br />(Text has been somewhat modified on 2009-09-10)Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-12048376343092144602009-09-02T11:00:00.004-04:002009-09-02T11:11:08.597-04:00Cultivating a self-managed planetTime magazine of August 31 2009 has a cover on <a href="http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20090831,00.html">The Real Cost of Cheap Food</a>. It shows a package of ground beef with a sticker that reads: “Warning: This hamburger may be hazardous to your health. Why the American food system is bad for our bodies, our economy, and our environment – and what some visionaries are trying to do about it.”<br /><br />Our bodies, our economy, our environment, our, our, our… Nothing about “the others”, those beings who actually are suffering the most because of “our” food system: the billions of animals who are abused, and also the nearly one billion persons who suffer from unfair agricultural trade. From an <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm">algonomic</a> point of view, they are, presently, those who are paying the major part of THE (not 'our') real cost of cheap food.<br /><br />But there is no algonomic culture yet for considering our problems of food, health, economy, environment, etc.<br /><br />John J. Pilch has an article, <a href="http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/pilchj/Suffering.htm">How We Redress Our Suffering</a>, in which he looks somewhat at how different cultures across time respond differently to pain and suffering. He quotes Mark Zborowsky’s classic study “People in Pain”:<br /><br /><blockquote>Each human group has its own moral and ethical criteria, which are a part of its cultural legacy. They are part of its religious system, its social organization, or its economy. They might be absolute and universal in terms of the society that accepts them, but their nature is relative and even parochial when seen in the light of the diversity of human groups and cultures. </blockquote><p>In our new peculiar planetary context, most solutions to our painful problems now require the adoption of an algonomic culture, a culture that, hopefully, allows us to deal with suffering within a global framework. The <a href="http://www.un-intelligible.org/projects/homeency.php">Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential</a> offers the right frame for algonomic work, for choosing which elements, among ‘all’ relevant elements of the world problematique and resolutique, we may want to take into account. See in this connection the recent article of Anthony Judge: <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/disting.php#chal">Reframing Global Initiatives for the Future</a>.</p>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-33167398738334221542009-08-26T12:02:00.001-04:002009-08-26T12:06:00.989-04:00About masochistic sufferingI am just beginning reading Adam Swenson’s talk on <a href="http://www.csun.edu/faculty/adam.swenson/research/Hurtssogood24Apr09.pdf" send="true">what’s bad about masochistic pain</a>, and already I am thinking of a theory.<br /><br />I have not great personal experience of sexual or spiritual masochism, but I imagine it goes basically like this, generally speaking. The person happens to be feeling pleasure from sexual stimulation (or from thinking of God, or Jesus, or another spiritual object). Then a small or moderate pain happens, by chance or otherwise. Then the person realizes that her pleasure is not abolished by the happening of that pain, but on the contrary her pleasure is enhanced, is given more intensity, probably because her physiological and emotional arousal as a whole is heightened by the pain. Then the person may start to ‘play’ with the process that is occurring: a bit more pain brings a bit more pleasure. Psychologically, the person may think she is gaining a strange new power over pain, that she, among the privileged ones, is blessed with being involved in the solution of the great terrible mystery of pain: what a powerful feeling of happiness! Next comes ultimately the sexual orgasm or the spiritual ecstasy.<br /><br />As an instance in spirituality, I remember Francis of Assisi who claimed that the perfect joy was to be insulted and beaten up when asking for charity: in effect, Jesus Christ the perfectly lovable almighty savior asked us to be charitable and was crucified, so what a joy to be like him ‘for better or for worse’…<br /><br />Masochistic pain is perhaps not very bad, it might even have some evolutionary usefulness. However, it is certainly bad inasmuch as it leaves an individual or a collectivity with a false believe in the goodness of pain, when only ‘certain’ pains are 'tolerable' and without bad consequences.<br /><br />Let's continue reading Adam's text.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-9333750540313660362009-08-07T15:54:00.002-04:002009-08-07T16:03:09.557-04:00An open letter to Stanley Cohen on his book States of DenialDear Sir:<br /><br />Your <a href="http://www.amazon.com/States-Denial-Knowing-Atrocities-Suffering/dp/0745623921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201280693&sr=1-1">States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering</a> is one of the few books that figure in <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/intro/mediagraphy.htm#fund">Precursor Works for an Algonomy</a>. <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm">Algonomy</a>, have I proposed, is a field of activity in which we would deal with suffering.<br /><br />Here are, in relation with your book, a few 'algonomic' thoughts that I hope you will appreciate.<br /><br />On page X of your preface, you recall your former fantasy of a 'sociology of denial', and you say that the subject remains the same: "what do we do with our knowledge about the suffering of others, and what does this knowledge do to us?" This could certainly be a subject in the "sociology of suffering" proposed by Iain Wilkinson. And I suggest also that such a subject (as well as questions concerning knowledge about our own suffering) could be usefully approached from an algonomic viewpoint.<br /><br />On page 25, you wrote: "I take this simple formula - the 'need to be innocent of a troubling recognition' - as my guiding definition." This reminds me of what Cynthia Halpern says in her chapter on Nietzsche in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Suffering-Politics-Power/dp/0791451038/sr=1-1/qid=1156965992/ref=sr_1_1/002-2128840-2557644?ie=UTF8&s=books">Suffering, Politics, Power : A Genealogy in Modern Political Theory</a>: in the end, what is important for the philosopher on suffering, is that 'there is no blame'.<br /><br />Page 34, you evoke two modes of evading the realities of personal and mass suffering, <em>turning a blind eye, </em>and<em> retreat from truth to omnipotence</em>. That may correspond to the usual reactions that I get when I propose the idea of algonomy. People may say that algonomy is interesting but they cannot dwell much longer on it because they have other things to do (we respect but fear the truth, we keep facts conveniently out of sight, we cannot face all the time the disquieting implications of the facts). Or, alternatively, people may say that algonomy is not pertinent, because suffering is the business of a greater power, which they serve.<br /><br />While reading your book, I have been inclined to apply what you say on denial to the reactions regarding the proposal of an algonomy. When I first proposed the idea in 1976, I thought it would be a matter of weeks before people acknowledge the value of the idea and get down to business with it. Thirty some years later, I am still looking for a first collaborator! Of course, there are a lot of people like me who propose something and find no buyer, or even no rejector either, but just sympathizers. However, I suspect that in the case of reactions to a proposal having to do with the very topic of suffering itself, denial might be involved. After all, the algonomic attitude is the un-denial per excellence vis-à-vis suffering. The next few passages that I quote from your book might illustrate that point further. <br /><br />Page 54 (quoting Langer): "'(…) the patient must "know", but may at different moments have more or less ability to tolerate what is known and to integrate the knowledge into a meaningful reality.'" I guess that without an algonomy, the patient, or each of us, is lacking the means to fully integrate the knowledge into a meaningful reality.<br /><br />Page 119: "One of his [Freud] definitions of repression is a fine statement about denial: 'the effortless and regular avoidance of anything that has once been distressing… It is a familiar fact that much of this avoidance of what is distressing - this ostrich policy - is still to be seen in the normal mental life of adults.'" And as a consequence, there is still no algonomy in human culture or civilization. <br /><br />Page 131: "The impossibility lies not in seeing the past reality, but in perceiving it <em>as</em> reality"… I believe the problem with granting algonomy the importance it deserves is that we do not perceive past (or future) suffering as bad as it was (or will be). And if we are suffering in the present, we are disabled.<br /><br />Page 139: "Historical skeletons are put in cupboards because of the political need to be innocent of a troubling recognition; they remain hidden because of the political absence of an inquiring mind." It might well be that algonomy is unrecognized because everybody has a vested interest against it. Nevertheless, policing the 'necessary' use of suffering in a rational way, i.e. to the best interest of each of us, is impossible without an algonomy.<br /><br />Page 195: "(…) any dimming of compassion, any decreased concern about distant others, is just what the individual spirit of the global market wants to encourage. The message is: get real, wise up and toughen up; the lesson is that nothing, nothing after all, can be done about problems like these or people like this." Indeed.<br /><br />For the rest of your book, much could be said. I will only note that "The project of 'overcoming denial' is more complicated and stranger" than you imagined (p. 278). In effect, it takes an algonomy. Only algonomic action has enough scope to be an adequate reaction to the bystander effect (p.140). I find that channeled acknowledgement (p. 273) is the way to go: I believe there should be compulsory algonomic service like there is compulsory taxes or military service. I believe also that the kind of measurement you are talking of p. 276 or p. 293-294 is doable in algonomy. And to "determine which forms of denial matter, which can be left alone" and "then try to lower the toleration threshold by transforming knowledge into <em>inescapable knowledge" </em>(p. 295), or "to sort out atrocities and suffering, rank their demands in a principled way, then set up filters and channels" (p. 296), I believe it takes also an algonomy. Otherwise, "The world of suffering makes moral imbeciles of us all." (p. 294).<br /><br />I will soon post this message as an open letter in my blog <a href="http://aboutsuffering.blogspot.com/">About Suffering</a>.<br /><br />Thank you for your outstanding book.<br /><br />Best regards,<br /><br />Robert Daoust<br /><a href="http://www.algosphere.org/">www.algosphere.org</a>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-42621443453753062022009-06-14T11:14:00.003-04:002009-06-14T12:01:24.568-04:00The day pain diedThe following is excerpted from a recent article in the Boston Globe: <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/06/07/the_day_pain_died_what_really_happened_during_the_most_famous_moment_in_boston_medicine/?page=full">The day pain died</a>. It illustrates the kind of obstacles that are still preventing us from getting mastery over suffering.<br /><br />"The date of the first operation under anesthetic, Oct. 16, 1846, ranks among the most iconic in the history of medicine. (...) The room at the heart of Massachusetts General Hospital where the operation took place has been known ever since as the Ether Dome (...). What the great moment in the Ether Dome really marked was (...) a huge cultural shift in the idea of pain. Operating under anesthetic would transform medicine, dramatically expanding the scope of what doctors were able to accomplish. What needed to change first wasn't the technology - that was long since established - but medicine's readiness to use it. Before 1846, the vast majority of religious and medical opinion held that pain was inseparable from sensation in general, and thus from life itself. Though the idea of pain as necessary may seem primitive and brutal to us today, it lingers in certain corners of healthcare (...). In the early 19th century, doctors interested in the pain-relieving properties of ether and nitrous oxide were characterized as cranks and profiteers. The case against them was not merely practical, but moral: They were seen as seeking to exploit their patients' base and cowardly instincts. (...) The "eureka moment" of anesthesia, like the seemingly sudden arrival of many new technologies, was not so much a moment of discovery as a moment of recognition: a tipping point when society decided that old attitudes needed to be overthrown. It was a social revolution as much as a medical one: a crucial breakthrough not only for modern medicine, but for modernity itself. It required not simply new science, but a radical change in how we saw ourselves."Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-71213120131857354242009-05-31T13:03:00.004-04:002009-06-01T15:20:16.918-04:00New York Center for the Management of Suffering in the WorldThe following is a comment that I would have liked to publish on the website of the New York Times in response to an article (and its ensuing 141 comments -- mine was too late to be accepted), by Bob Herbert: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/opinion/30herbert.html">Holding on to our Humanity</a>.<br /><br />About suffering in the world, I agree with the many who say that we helplessly don’t know what to do, but I have something to suggest: algonomy (you may google it). Algonomy means: let us organize ourselves to deal actually with suffering itself, let us learn what to do about suffering, let us get the means to do what must be done. The fact of the matter is that there is no work area or study field specialized in the phenomenon of suffering, the whole of suffering, and nothing but suffering. No wonder we are ignorant and powerless! What I suggest is simple, and most people are sympathetic to it. However, it is so “new” or unusual that nobody, since thirty years that I am working almost full time for an algonomy, nobody has accepted to work along with me for the knowledge and management of suffering… I was in New York City three weeks ago, and was wondering where in this inspiring city could be located an Algonomic Center for the management of suffering in the world. Probably not far from the United Nations, the hospitals, the poor neighborhoods… But first, I would have to start up that Algonomic Center in my own life, my own city, my own country, and not only as a theoretical frame of work, but also as a practical endeavor. I tried to do it more than once, and will try again and again, alone or hopefully (with better chances) with others.<br /><br />Robert, in MontrealRobert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-2403070017361916062009-01-07T18:42:00.004-05:002009-01-07T20:27:01.411-05:00Mass Suffering and AlgonomyShankar Vedantam wrote an article in the Washington Post of January 5, 2009: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401307.html">Mass Suffering and Why We Look the Other Way</a>. He tells us about psychologist <a href="http://www.decisionresearch.org/people/slovic/">Paul Slovic</a>'s work "showing people's tendency to intervene in situations in which they can save all or most of the victims, but to turn away from situations in which they cannot help most of the victims."<br /><br />Slovic often showed how presenting the case of one single victim tends to elicit much more compassion and rescuing action than presenting the case of one million victims. Various observations, explanations and solutions are explored in relation to that vexing phenomenon. Algonomy offers another point of view. It is impossible for us to care in an organized or systematic way about all those who suffer too much, as long as there is no algonomic framework that allows us to do so. Meanwhile, we can only care for a person that inspires pity, or for a few fellows who need our help to a reasonable extent, or for this or that group of people that happens to fall within our very particular professional or philanthropic concern...<br /><br />Now, algonomy does offer a framework in which people can care for all those who might suffer too much (including themselves and their loved ones). The only problem, seemingly, is that people are unable until now to acknowledge that there is a clear and present possibility to manage suffering, the whole of suffering, collectively. Why do they seem unable to do so? I suggest it is not a question of numbing numbers in this case, though magnitude may be used as one of many convenient excuses. I suggest that the problem is simply of accepting a new challenging idea.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-11024186867092593472008-09-29T15:04:00.016-04:002011-08-21T14:42:39.926-04:00Another new legal theory sheds light on the production of sufferingLouis Wolcher will release soon a work called <a href="http://www.studia.no/vare.php?ean=9780754671329">Law's Task: The Tragic Circle of Law, Justice and Human Suffering</a>. The book, says an editorial review,
<br /><blockquote><em>(...) traces the rule of law all the way down to its most fundamental level: universal human suffering. The book argues that what we ordinarily call 'law' and 'justice' are most properly viewed not as objects, ideas, or even institutions, but rather as mere linguistic signs and ephemeral images woven into the temporal event of dividing universal human suffering into parts: the lawful and the unlawful, the just and the unjust, and the right and the wrong. Yet the very event of noticing and labelling some kinds of suffering as 'unjust' ignores and generates other kinds of suffering. Although law's tendency towards partiality and brutality is useful for maintaining existing relations of domination and resistance in society, it remains ethically invisible to those who actually perform law's task on a day-to-day basis. As Jesus is said to have alleged of the Romans, modern day law-doers quite literally do not know what they are doing. The book's most fundamental message is that the practitioners of law and justice participate in a human tragedy - a sort of fellowship of sadness - and that their pitiable attempts to provide foundational accounts of legal practice represent a hopeless effort to evade their existential and ethical responsibility for each and every legal outcome in which they participate.</em></blockquote>Wolcher dealt previously with the relationship between suffering and law in his 2005 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Transcendence-Philosophy-Louis-Wolcher/dp/1859419852/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222717140&sr=8-1">Beyond Transcendence in Law and Philosophy</a>, which argued from a zen perspective and with reference to thinkers like Heidegger, Levinas, and Wittgenstein, that the yearning for transcendence is born of the illusion that there is a fundamental difference between the ordinary and the profound. From and algonomic point of view, it often seems indeed that the management of suffering, which is an ordinary and profound thing at the same time, has been radically hindered until now by people's mythophilic yearning for transcendence. (Added on 2009-10-15 -- Wolcher asks, says the back cover of his 2005 book, "What produces our craven subservience to linguistic norms, and our shocking indifference to the phenomenon of universal suffering?" Our indifference to suffering would end, methinks, if and only if there was at least one algonomic institution. A year ago, I wrote the following to Louis: "I believe that the kind of acknowledgment which is required in your field, with regard to suffering, may happen only in conjunction with a similar acknowledgement in several other major fields of human activity, and that a common coordinating concept, therefore, is imperatively needed. That is why I propose the creation of 'algonomy', a field of human activity whose concern, suffering itself, has never been the specific subject of any field yet. Logically, how universal suffering could be managed adequately if there is no specific universal frame of work to deal with that management? Hopefully, thinkers concerned with the due place of suffering in our culture might before long become numerous enough to find that such a place stands at last right between them all!")
<br />
<br />It is interesting to note how much Wolcher's work is close to another law theoretician's, Scott Veich: see a previous blog entry, <a href="http://aboutsuffering.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-legal-theory-sheds-light-on.html">New legal theory sheds light on the production of suffering</a>, about Veich's book <a href="http://www.routledge-philosophy.com/books/Law-and-Irresponsibility-isbn9780415442510">Law and Irresponsibility - On the Legitimation of Human Suffering</a>.
<br />
<br />2010-03-30:
<br />See also Gray, David C., Punishment as Suffering (March 17, 2010). Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 64, No. 1, 2010. Available at SSRN: <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=1573600">http://ssrn.com/abstract=1573600</a>.
<br />
<br />2011-06-07:
<br />See also <a href="http://www.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/journals/elj/60/60.3/Kolber.pdf">THE EXPERIENTIAL FUTURE OF THE LAW</a>, Adam J. Kolber, Emory Law Journal, vol. 60, 2011, pp.585-652 (and a blog review on boingboing.net: <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/02/subjective-experienc.html" rel="bookmark">Subjective experience and the law: should fMRI evidence of high punishment tolerance affect sentencing?</a>) :
<br /><blockquote><p>ABSTRACT -- Pain, suffering, anxiety, and other experiences are fundamentally important to civil and criminal law. Despite their importance, we have limited ability to measure experiences, even though legal proceedings turn on such measurements every day. Fortunately, technological advances in neuroscience are improving our ability to measure experiences and will do so more dramatically in what I call “the experiential future.” In this Article, I describe how new technologies will improve our assessments of physical pain, emotional distress, and a variety of psychiatric disorders. I also describe more particular techniques to help determine whether: (1) a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, (2) a placebo treatment relieves pain, (3) an alleged victim has been abused as a child, (4) an inmate being executed is in pain, (5) an interrogatee has been tortured, and more. I argue that as new technologies emerge to better reveal people’s experiences, virtually every area of the law should do more to take these experiences into account.</blockquote>
<br />2011-08-21
<br />On March 30, 2012, there will be a <a href="http://www.law.ua.edu/programs/symposiums/knowing-the-suffering-of-others/">symposium at the University of Alabama School of Law under the theme "Knowing the Suffering of Others"</a>. Notes published in the New York Review of Books say:
<br /></p><blockquote>"Legal interpretation plays on a field of pain and death." These are the words that begin Robert Cover's essay "Violence and the Word," a work designed to
<br />reorient legal theory by recognizing that human pain is everywhere in law. This symposium will address the question of imagining and knowing this pain. From torts to international human rights, from domestic violence to torture, form fetal imagining to decision-making at the end of life, from victim impact statements to compensation funds, the law is awash in epistemological and ethical difficulties of knowing suffering. How do legal actors imagine suffering in legal life? What problems of interpretation plague our efforts to know the suffering of others? What resources can the law draw upon in this search? </blockquote>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-67753113795646603942008-09-22T14:41:00.006-04:002008-09-23T10:54:47.376-04:00Minimization of suffering : a principle for every science<span style="font-family:Arial;">Stanislav Kovac published in the journal Evolution and Cognition (2000, vol. 6, pp. 51-69) an article on the <a href="http://oldwww.fns.uniba.sk/~kbi/kovlab/princip.htm">Fundamental principles of cognitive biology</a>, among which figures the minimization of suffering principle.</span> <blockquote><p></p></blockquote><span style="font-family:Arial;">Kovac quotes Linus Pauling's "Scientists in Politics", a 1970 text that is reminiscent of <a href="http://www.utilitarianism.com/karl-popper.html">Karl Popper’s negative utilitarianism</a>:<br /></span><br /><p></p><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family:Arial;"><em>"(…) I want to be free of suffering to the greatest extent possible. I want to live a happy and useful life, a satisfying life. I want other people to help me to be happy, to help to keep my suffering to a minimum. It is accordingly my duty to help them to be happy, to strive to prevent suffering to other people. By this argument I am led to a fundamental ethical principle: the decisions among alternative courses of action should be made in such ways as to minimise the predicted amounts of human suffering. (...) Suffering and happiness are, of course, closely related. I might take as the basic ethical principle that decisions should be made in such a way as to maximise human happiness, human welfare. I feel, however, that there is so much suffering in the world, much of it unnecessary and avoidable, that it is better to place the emphasis on minimising suffering. (...) I have contended that the principle of the minimisation of human suffering is a scientific principle, with a logical, scientific basis. (…) I feel that, although we have theoretical freedom allowing various ethical systems to be formulated, the choice of a reasonable and practical ethical system is highly restricted by our knowledge about the nature of the physical and biological world, and that the only acceptable ethical systems are those that are essentially equivalent to that based upon the principle of the minimisation of human suffering."</em><br /></span><br /></blockquote><span style="font-family:Arial;">Kovac stresses that the minimization of suffering principle in cognitive biology is descriptive rather than prescriptive:<br /></span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-family:Arial;"><em>The "search for truth" has been often presented as an internal norm of science. It is not: science with lies is simply no science. In the same vein, the principle of minimisation of suffering gives science and additional dimension. Not as a norm: the more "genuine" science is, the closer it is to this extremum principle. While Pauling's reasoning ended with a normative proposal of a basis for an ethical system, this statement is purely descriptive. The origin of science, and its subsequent evolution as an institution, have been inherently linked with the reduction of human worries: pain, distress, labour, misery, anxiety.<br />Science has become the main instrument in human efforts to minimise pain and to maximise pleasure. Cognitive biology just explains why it is so. This is not to say that a research in which suffering, unintended or intended, is incurred, is no science. It is a science with a large proportion of ignorance. As life on earth, as life in the universe, science itself progresses forward in a maze: there is a major evolutionary tendency, but they are also many false paths and deadlocks. The success is not prescribed.<br /></em></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Thanks to Stanislav Kovac for showing so basically how </span><span style="font-family:Arial;"><a style="COLOR: blue; TEXT-DECORATION: underline; text-underline: single" href="http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm">algonomy</a> </span><span style="font-family:Arial;">belongs within every discipline epistemological and axiological principles.</span></p>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-24035968592141251962008-09-10T22:45:00.010-04:002008-09-11T18:16:08.542-04:00New legal theory sheds light on the production of sufferingWe knew that law legitimates suffering, be it only as a deserved punishment. But we learn now that law is also routinely used to organize irresponsiblility and sustain complicity with regard to large-scale production of suffering.<br /><br />Scott Veich published recently <a href="http://www.routledge-philosophy.com/books/Law-and-Irresponsibility-isbn9780415442510">Law and Irresponsibility - On the Legitimation of Human Suffering</a>. The synopsis says:<br /><br />"With a particular focus on large-scale harms – including extensive human rights violations, forms of colonialism, and environmental or nuclear devastation – this book analyzes the ways in which law legitimates human suffering by demonstrating how legal institutions operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as to acknowledge them. Drawing on a series of case studies, it shows not only how law facilitates the dispersal and disavowal of responsibility, but how it does so in consistent and patterned ways. Irresponsibility is organized, and its organization is traced here to the legal forms, and the social and political conditions, that sustain ‘our’ complicity in human suffering."Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-66271909912912748542008-06-29T21:22:00.005-04:002008-07-01T12:32:31.251-04:00Abolishing Pain through a Joyful Pursuit of Millennium Development Goals<p>I enjoy tremendously Anthony Judge's texts at his website called "<a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/">laetus in praesens</a>" (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 <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/brigade.php">The Charge of the Light Brigade</a>, "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."<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/">algonomy</a>, 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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/shunpop.php">Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge ─ Incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth</a> which describes, with reference to Atkin [2008-07-01: with reference to Atkin's q-analysis, more precisely in <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/shunpop.php#syst">that section</a>], 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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/world.php">Self-reflective Embodiment of Transdisciplinary Integration (SETI): the universal criterion of species maturity?</a> 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 "<a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/noospher.php">songlines of the noosphere</a>", 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 <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/shunpop.php">Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge</a>: "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:</p><ul><li>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. </li><li>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. </li><li>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.</li></ul><p>I sing:</p><ul><li>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. </li><li>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. </li><li>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. </li></ul><p>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 <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/thirdord.php#shad">Zen Ox-herding Pictures</a> [2008-06-30: link changed from the <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/cardrep.php">former one</a>].)<br /><br />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 <a href="http://sur-la-souffrance.over-blog.com/">Le (sous) développement fait partie de la (défectueuse) gestion collective de la souffrance, et vice-versa.</a> (in French only).<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/world.php">contribution to reflection on viable strategies for sustainable development</a>. Or see Judge's harsh judgment in <a href="http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/shunpop.php">Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge</a> 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 <a href="http://www.nsi-ins.ca/english/pdf/wtp_2008.pdf">We the Peoples 2008 — Getting to 2015: Building participation, seeking success</a>. 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.</p>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-47842360944738519792007-12-24T18:06:00.000-05:002007-12-24T18:08:40.214-05:00Catholicism, Suffering, and AlgonomyPope Benedict XVI gave on November 30 2007 an encyclical letter entitled <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html">Spe Salvi</a> (Saved by hope), a document which has less than sixty paragraphs, but in which the words suffer or suffering occur more than sixty times.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id16.html">The Faith of a Heretic</a>)<br /><br />Until now, suffering has been used as an argument for or against this or that ideology, religion, worldview, policy, etc. <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm">Algonomy</a>, 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.<br /><br />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."Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-16882385750944659122007-11-12T10:07:00.000-05:002007-11-12T10:09:57.037-05:00Going toward freedom from pain and sufferingPhilosopher David Pearce is advocating a project for the abolition of suffering through scientific techniques. Here is the introduction of <a href="http://www.abolitionist.com/" mce_href="http://www.abolitionist.com/">a text adapted from invited talks</a> that he gave at the <a href="http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/" target="_blank" mce_href="http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/">Future of Humanity Institute</a> (Oxford University) and the Charity International <a href="http://charity.se/conference/happinessconferenceEnglish.php" target="_blank" mce_href="http://charity.se/conference/happinessconferenceEnglish.php">Happiness Conference</a> (2007):<br /><br />"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."Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-73080302141501275552007-07-02T13:12:00.000-04:002007-11-06T09:21:53.721-05:00A venturesome view on the politics of sufferingIn 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.<br /><br />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 <em>Freedom from Enduring,</em> or rather <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom">Enduring Freedom</a>) ousted the Taliban in the end of 2001, and the opium production came back to normal (Information taken from <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2202148.stm">Poppy production soars in Afghanistan</a>). Recently, on June 17th, The New-York Times had this cover story on its magazine: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17pain-t.html?ex=1339732800&en=248f21203cdd821f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">When Is a Pain Doctor a Drug Pusher?</a> 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 <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6239734.stm">Afghan opium production 'soars'</a>.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-8783800161590006542007-06-24T09:59:00.000-04:002007-06-24T10:13:05.534-04:00Another support in favor of something like algonomyHere are the first and last paragraphs of a post in Evan Palmer's blog <em><a href="http://twicb.blogspot.com/2007/06/suffering-in-all-its-forms-by-evan.html">The Way It Can Be</a></em>:<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />(...)<br /><br />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."Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-20533211231112287772007-06-16T21:39:00.000-04:002007-06-17T10:53:59.385-04:00Global cooperation is needed for ending the world's sufferingThis title is taken from <a href="http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070616/OPINION07/706160319/1108/OPINION">an opinion piece</a> by Scott Beale in The News Journal (Delaware, USA). The last paragraph of his article goes like this:<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><p>"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."</p></blockquote><p></p><p>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. </p><p>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 <a href="http://algonomy.wordpress.com/the-argument-of-requisite-globality/"><em>the argument of requisite globality</a> </em>if you prefer, this framework can only be <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm">algonomy</a>. </p>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-46269687317556948192007-05-14T21:06:00.000-04:002007-05-14T21:15:39.610-04:00New Text Added in Wikipedia on SufferingWikipedia article on suffering, section "Health care approaches":<br /><br />Breaches in health such as disease and injury are a main source of suffering in humans and animals. The huge sphere of <a title="Health care" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">health care</a> addresses that suffering in many ways, as can be seen in much details through various Wikipedia articles: <a title="Medicine" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Medicine</a>, <a title="Psychotherapy" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotherapy" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Psychotherapy</a>, <a title="Alternative medicine" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Alternative medicine</a>, <a title="Health profession" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_profession" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Health profession</a>, <a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true" originaltitle="Hygiene">Hygiene</a>, <a title="Public health" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Public health</a>…<br /><br /><a title="Palliative care" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Palliative care</a> is presently the branch of medicine that is the most concerned with the relief of suffering <em>as such</em>. 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’.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering#_note-7" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">[8]</a><br /><br />Health care approaches to suffering remain highly problematic, according to <a class="new" title="Eric Cassell" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eric_Cassell&action=edit" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">Eric Cassell</a>, 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."<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering#_note-8" popdata="undefined" haspopup="true">[9]</a>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-6652600599208629602007-01-19T15:54:00.000-05:002007-11-12T13:54:18.788-05:00Suffering according to Cassell, Murray, and as far as yours truly is concerned<blockquote>“Most generally, suffering can be defined as the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of person.” Eric J Cassell, <em>The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine</em>, 1991.</blockquote><p>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).<br /><br />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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering">suffering</a>. <em>Suffering is usually described as a negative basic feeling or emotion that involves a subjective character of unpleasantness, aversion, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm"><em>harm</em></a><em> or </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat"><em>threat</em></a><em> 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 </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_and_nociception"><em>pain</em></a><em>, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea"><em>nausea</em></a><em>, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathlessness"><em>breathlessness</em></a><em>, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itching"><em>itching</em></a><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering#_note-0#_note-0"><em>[1]</em></a><em>. Examples of mental suffering are </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety"><em>anxiety</em></a><em>, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief"><em>grief</em></a><em>, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatred"><em>hatred</em></a><em>, </em><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boredom"><em>boredom</em></a><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering#_note-1#_note-1"><em>[2]</em></a><em>. 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.<br /></em><br />Jock Murray, in his 1995 report entitled <a href="http://www.wcb.ns.ca/chronicpain.pdf">Chronic Pain</a>, 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.<br /><br />[<em>Murray begins by putting a quotation from Cassell as an epigraph</em>] “[…] 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.” [<em>Unfortunately those dichotomies are perpetuated in Cassell’s and Murray’s ‘phenomenological’ distinction between pain and suffering, as we will see</em>]<br /><br />[<em>Murrays goes on</em>…] 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" [<em><strong>indeed</strong>!!!].</em> This would help us understand what is occurring to the people, their families, their therapists and all the others who relate to them.<br /><br />The aim of the medical profession is to relieve suffering [<em>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</em> <strong><em>for none this is THE aim</em></strong>]. 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 [<em>alas! a lot of undue</em>] suffering in the course of their treatment of the sick.<br />[…]<br /><br />Cassell makes three major points. First, suffering [<em>as well as pain, I must add in this context</em>] is experienced by persons [<em>or individuals I’d say without ‘speciesism’</em>]. […] Second, suffering occurs when an impending destruction of the person is perceived, as from any event that threaten the intactness of the person [<em>Cassell says that because he restricts the definition of suffering in a very particular way</em>]. The third point, and one that I think is often missed [<em>by physicians who are busy with other things, I presume</em>], 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.<br />[…] </p><p><br />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.”[<em><strong>indeed</strong>!!!</em>] […]<br /><br />In overcoming the weight and impact of suffering [<em>in other words in taking care and in suffering less because they take care</em>], people can begin to find meaning in their experience [<em>to suffer is to find meaninglessness</em>], or achieve transcendence over the experience [<em>to suffer is to achieve immanence</em>]. In many cultures, suffering is seen as a way of bringing one closer to God [<em>an artifact invented against, very closely against suffering</em>]. Frankl (1984) found that overcoming adversity and suffering was one way that people found meaning in their life [<strong><em>stubbing one’s toe requires instantly to reinterpret one’s position in life</em></strong>]. As Cassell says, “This ‘function’ of suffering [<em>i.e. to react against suffering by appealing to our highest means</em>] 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.”<br /><br />“Pain and suffering” are often identified as similar in medical literature but they are phenomenologically distinct [<em>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</em> <strong><em>there is some suffering in the slightest pain</em></strong>, <em>because thus I preserve the common use of a common language word (suffering) for referring to</em> <strong><em>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)</em></strong>]. 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 [<em>here the author means ‘only when’ where I’d rather say ‘when for instance’</em>] 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 [<strong><em>simply because pain and distress ARE suffering</em></strong>]. A loss of control is an important component of suffering. Cassell concludes that people in pain report suffering [<strong><em>of course, they would not report it to a doctor at other times</em> </strong><em>when it is in control, slight, etc</em>.] 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 [<em>the concept that the suffering of pain is worst when pain is a threat to the person, I guess</em>], 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 [<em>of course… but</em> <strong><em>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</em></strong>?]. </p>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-90272416300733576272007-01-11T11:34:00.000-05:002007-01-11T12:43:20.495-05:00On Scarry's "The Body in Pain"<blockquote>“Directed against the isolating aversiveness of pain,<br />mental and material culture assumes the sharability of sentience.” (page 326)</blockquote>The often cited Elaine Scarry’s 1985 book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Body-Pain-Making-Unmaking-World/dp/0195049969/sr=8-1/qid=1168524483/ref=sr_1_1/103-7921031-2107866?ie=UTF8&s=books">The Body in Pain – The Making and Unmaking of the World</a>” ought to be considered among groundwork classics for <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/intro/index.html">algoscience</a>, 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)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />I advocate the creation of <a href="http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm">algonomy</a>, 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.<br /><br />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?<br /><blockquote>“The problem of economic distribution (…) is the problem of distributing the<br />power of artifacts to remake sentience.” (page 263)</blockquote>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-43334287834824755862006-12-16T00:39:00.000-05:002006-12-16T00:49:59.048-05:00My comment in the blog "Pain"Your <a href="http://tonycole.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/rejection-pain-tolerance-and-iq-a-new-theory-of-group-and-individual-difference-in-iq/">November 30th 2006 post </a>has an hyperlink to <a href="http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~dewall/researchinterests.htm">DeWall’s Research Statement</a>. 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…Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-4643684926708158832006-12-12T13:53:00.000-05:002006-12-12T14:26:24.542-05:00Progress in Wikipedia Article on SufferingArticles 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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering">the Wikipedia article on suffering</a>.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering">there</a>.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-1164047394471050592006-11-20T11:14:00.000-05:002006-11-30T14:11:50.503-05:00The end of suffering is our mission in life, says Tim.Tim Sanders, according to his <a href="mailto:http://timsanders.com/bio/bio.html">bio</a>, delivers high-energy speeches and compelling seminars to high-level executive conferences, professional associations, and graduate schools. Let me quote <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-sanders/an-end-to-suffering_b_34233.html">this blog by him </a>:<br /><br />"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.<br />(...)<br />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.<br />(...)<br />It is my informed opinion that the most effective leaders in the world focus efforts towards the end of suffering."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Despite the best intentions, it seems that suffering continues unabatedly and that an approach <strong><em>more to the point</em></strong> 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.Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33921973.post-1161713961249981682006-10-24T13:24:00.000-04:002006-10-26T11:49:35.856-04:00Physical/Social Pain Overlap Theory<p>In their paper <a href="http://www.sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au/2004/Papers/Outcast-Eisenberger.doc">Why It Hurts to Be Left Out: The Neurocognitive Overlap Between Physical and Social Pain</a> (or see this <a href="http://webscript.princeton.edu/~psych/psychology/related/socneuconf/pdf/eisenberger-lieberman2.pdf">later version</a> 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:</p><ul><li>hypothesis #1: physical and social pain share a common phenomenological and neural basis</li><li>hypothesis #2: physical and social pain rely on the same computational mechanisms</li><li>hypothesis #3: inducing or regulating one type of pain similarly influences the other</li><li>hypothesis #4: trait differences relating to (a heightened sensitivity to) one type of pain relate to the other type as well</li></ul><p><br />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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://aboutsuffering.blogspot.com/2006/09/third-killing-spree-tragedy-in.html">previous post</a>: how shall we manage chronic social pain in our societies?<br /><br />We may relate also social pain to Wilkinson’s social suffering (see <a href="http://aboutsuffering.blogspot.com/2006/10/book-of-year-prize-for-suffering.html">that post</a>). 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.<br /><br />I want to thank Tony Cole who drew my attention to the pain overlap theory, first in the Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering">suffering</a>, and then in his <a href="http://tonycole.wordpress.com/">Pain Blog</a>, which I was allowed to find when the ever commendable Gary Rollman mentioned it on October 6 in his <a href="http://psychologyofpain.blogspot.com/">Psychology of Pain Blog</a>.</p>Robert Daousthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03716720876537360714noreply@blogger.com2