January 6, 2008
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Suffering and Ethics
Do you think suffering improves a person's ethical outlook? How?
This is one of this week's topics at Socrates_Cafe.
"Suffer a little, It's Good for you" is an old idea much admired by many of the world's religions. Suffering does focus the mind, but mostly I think, on how to end your suffering.
Somehow we have gotten the idea that suffering improves people and that those who have suffered are somehow made better by the experience; this in the face of a weight of evidence to the contrary. We even sometimes hold up the sufferers as persons to be venerated or even worshiped. Most religions have a pecular view of the efficacy of suffering - a saint may be made because he/she suffered just a sinners are depicted as suffering eternal torment. If suffering makes you better, why damn the wicked to suffering? Oh, I see, it's to make them better somehow just as suffering punishment in a prison is supposed to somehow improve the criminal. Everyone knows how much most criminal's ethics are improved after incarceration
Perhaps the impact of another's suffering is what's important. To somehow aleviate suffering through help or charitable contribution does make us feel better about ourselves and, if we are public enough about it, admired.
If ethical outlook and action is determined by how strictly we adhere to our moral code, even if we must suffer for it; I suppose the two are related, but it seems to me that a person's ethical outlook is paramount here and is not improved by any discomfort involved. You may suffer for your ethics but I can't see how suffering makes you more ethical.
Comments (18)
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I think the question itself is faulty. All things affect different people in different ways, and suffering is no exception. Suffering has the potential to improve someone's ethics, but another man could just as easily choose to become less moral after suffering.
"Suffering has the potential to improve someone's ethics"
OK, I'll ask it this way: How does suffering potentially improve someone's ethics?
Under what circumstances could this happen?
What ethical values would be potentially improved? Why?
Everyone suffers in different ways and can affect people what is going on in the world for example (whether it is to do with religion or not
I think suffering is good for you a little as long as it does not cause too much pain for yourself and others
(life is tough) and so people have to cause suffering to get anywhere to get their message across
People can choose to be improved by their suffering or be swallowed by it.
What do you think is the effect on the sufferer who makes a conscious choice to suffer for a moral code?
In that case, Ethics is the active cause here isn't it? The person wasn't ethical or more ethical because they suffered, rather the reverse.
The martyr who suffers because of the ethical stand they have taken may feel better about themselves but that's a selfish, not an ethical attitude, isn't it?
The choice to suffer might not be selfish but based on a belief that it will benefit the collective...is it then an ethical stand?
That's right. Remember, the Ethical stand resulted in the suffering - the suffering did not result in improved ethics - the egg came first here
"Suffering does focus the mind"
Do you think in the long run this focus is even of any benefit?
Do we not have a tendency to develop bad habits and traits as a way to get through?
Do you think "temporary focus" gained from suffering takes a backlash to life long bad habits?
How long after suffering does the mind stay focused? Do you think there are many times when focus is achieved only a long while after suffering when looking back and seeing things in a new light?
PacificismP: As I've said above, I'm not in favor of suffering for any reason. The mind focus of a suffering person may help them avoid more suffering, but that's not necessarily ethical. The idea that suffering might result in life-long bad habits is a common one among psychologists. It is one explanation for neurotic behavior
Dick, Thanks for commenting my blog. Too bad you cannot travel to Italy: i would really have appreciated to host you and to take you to a really authentic Italian wine bar.
My two cents worth.
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EVERYONE suffers ... and, not everyone suffers because of ethics. Say someone was born with palsy or another was paralized in an accident. These sufferings are not caused because of beliefs or such. Pain is suffering, and what person can make it through life without any pain - smashing a finger, breaking a bone, etc.? The degrees of suffering is different for every person, but every person has suffering. Some do suffer because of ethics also. However, suffering is inevitable so I think the question is how is the person going to handle the suffering? I think the sufferings that come can improve a person depending on how they handle it causing them to be a more understanding caring person or it could make them bitter and britle. I also think that suffering can improve (though it depends on the person's choice of how they handle it) one's ehtical outlook - the choice ultimately boils down to, Is there a higher Being who is out for our best intrest whom I can trust though everything seems to be going wrong, or Am I only the product of chance?
One more thing, I think that some suffering is the consequences of wrong choices and not nessasarily given to make us better - it's the law of physics. Jump off a cliff then the consequence is death or major injury. Take drugs, the consequence is a delapitated mind and body. Sometimes suffering is the result of a person's bad choice that affects us such as a mother choosing to do drugs during pregnancy thus deforming her child, etc. In any case, even here, suffering can improve the ethics of the person, in that the person says to himself, "I better not jump off a cliff again or I might kill myself next time." (this may not be ethical but at least they are learning and gaining something from their suffering.)
Of course this question is just concerned with how suffering (of any type) might improve a person's ethical behavior. For example would suffering make a person a better person? How or why would this take place?
My contention is that the ethical behavior and outlook must already exist in the person prior to their suffering - a sort of [a priori] situation - and that the act of suffering can in no way create a more ethical outlook or action in the sufferer. This is not to say that others might observe the suffering and themselves vow to act more ethically or admire the sufferer and attribute more ethical actions to them because of this attitude.
In other words, I don't see how suffering can ever be "Good for you", though observing another's suffering might readily change your ethical outlook ,in that you may resolve to do whatever you can to alleviate or end such suffering - which is surely an ethical action (at least in Western Culture).
heheh - RYC, you have to love the Peachtree streets in this city. We have about 30 of them, along with Peachtree Roads, Drives, Courts, Lanes, Squares, and every other combination - but there's the one Peachtree Street that runs through Midtown that is "the" Peachtree Street, and when you say something is "on Peachtree," we know that's where it is. It's one of the tests with which you can identify a native Atlantan. We can't drive worth a damn, but refuse to use public transit - we get snow once every 5-7 years, but we have the annual winter ritual of buying stores out of bread and milk like we're preparing for a nuclear holocaust when the weatherman says a snowflake might fall in north Georgia - and when you say "on Peachtree," we actually know where you're talking about.
Hmm. I have to think about this more.
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Thanks for this post. I definitely agree with what you are saying. I have been talking about this subject a lot lately with my brother so hopefully this will get him to see my point of view. Fingers crossed!
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