Thank all friends and colleagues for their valuable answers!
I agree with most of you, only want to mention that sometimes suffering although is not necessarily in the life , but It can help someone to grow and mature in unbelievable way and I personally have experienced it!
wish nobody needs to suffer from sth in order to grow of course!
Yes. The first man out of listening to the wife's voice, gave in to sin and its associated untold suffering. The adage through many years continue to be true 'No pain, no gain.' Suffering is part of the large societal cloth we are well adorned with.
No , it is not , the fact that we are humans => rationalize not suffer !
Why suffer when there are reasons not to !!
Thanks to technology and development , we can identify and avoid many many sources of pain .
suffering is often a part of human fate, but neither necessary nor condition of life. Religion let human beings suffer with the note: your nature is depraved, bad (because of Adam's fall, a pure myth and a bad myth which gives preachers power over believers), therefore you have to suffer, but we can redeem you. Without suffering no salvation, says religion - pure ideology, nobody is forced to believe such inhuman ideas. Man is not perfect, but many people with sufficient - modest - income and taking care for safety make a living - in a modest way but in dignity, responsible for the common good, perhaps disturbed sometimes by illness and accidents, but without suffering by religious ideologies and the false consciousness that such assumptions must be man's fate because religion claims this.
Not so but it would definitely come at one point in ones life. How we were able to cope with such a condition determines whether we get toughened by it or we are defeated.
Living beings strive against the environment - an essentially indeterminate concept. Suffering is part of the process of living, bit it is certainly not necessary. Joy, hope, playing, dreaming and mating, f.i., are what makes life possible. Living beings are social, cooperative.
No, man is to live, have offspring and later to die.
Vilemar Magalhães
Hein, true about the silly Adam myth. Appalling nonsense. Yes, it gives control especially over women and gives many men the right to make them suffer. Hide them away in layers of clothing, keep them indoors. Horrific. Make them slaves by enforcing family/mother tropes.
People are not meant to suffer but certain viewpoints (see above) have been developed to that end or convince people of it. The Abrahamic religions do that well by telling people they are naturally bad, disobedient, etc.
Using a generalized meaning of "suffering," to include such things as anxiety, I'd say yes. It is the direct result of awareness, and of thinking ahead. (I think that is the sum total of what the Adam and Eve story tells us. I think any notion of "sin of disobedience" is just plain wrong. and contrived.)
What would people who don't suffer be like? I'd say, psychopaths, or the profoundly clueless.
Is suffering a necessary part of the human condition?
Suffering is not by definition “necessary” - it is only when you add the additional requirement that you wish to create a human who is functional well adjusted caring and considerate that it becomes necessary.
What would someone who has not suffered be like?
I assume you mean that the person has had no obvious reason to suffer. It will vary: they may have a greater serenity, or they may be more carefree, or they may be restless. It will depend on what they choose to do with their relatively easy life. If their spirit chose that life for respite, they might be content for them to be idle, to enjoy life’s pleasures.
Anxiety isn't necessarily suffering. It can actually be enjoyed. Peter, look above concerning control. If people are told by the medical profession that anxiety is bad, and causes emotional pain, people have tended to believe that. The next step is drugs. People lived with anxiety in the distant past, understanding its cautionary value. Now, we don't. We fight it and try and deny it.
Hello,
One of the fundamental principles in all divine religions like Christianity and Islam is how man's true worth is manifested through his coping with different types of suffering. The story of Job has a universal basis and people's use of the expression "the patience of Job" is a common practice in daily conversations. The reason is that Job was confronted with severe health problems so that even his own family could not tolerate his dire conditions. However, he never forgot God and patiently and hopefully awaited the divine salvation. Therefore, I personally believe that suffering is a necessary part of human condition even though it it is not experienced indiscriminately by all people.
Best regards,
R. Biria
We have to define two types of suffering: Is our body or our soul suffering?
Comfort is laziness that take us to anxiety and then suffering of the soul because we can never be satisfied. We are always looking for more material because our soul is infinity. How can we satisfy it with limited material life?. On the other hand, challenges and discomfort in life are suffering of the body but only Wise people will find the inner happiness.
Suffering makes you a stronger person. Then you can overcome next strain that comes to you easier.
I think suffering and happiness are the part of the life
The question of suffering is highly dependent on a number of variables:
1. Is suffering dependent on the "bearer"?
2. Is suffering dependent on the "deliverer"?
3. Is suffering dependent on the lack of understanding of how to control the pain state?
4. Is suffering more than a pain state?
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
No! not necessarily!
Suffering is not necessary a part of the human condition.
I am not sure how necessary suffering is, but I agree with Carlos Eduardo's answer, it is part of human nature to strive against the environment. Somehow I notice that nations that suffered the wrath of war and natural disasters seems to bounce back stronger after their sufferings and the people are more determined, resilient and innovative especially in rebuilding their lives.
Yes definitely....
suffering is a necessary part of the human condition...
otherwise we don't value the value of life
The suffering begins from the day of birth for any individual...and continue till one dies.
Unless on e suffers one can not grow....truly
Thank all friends and colleagues for their valuable answers!
I agree with most of you, only want to mention that sometimes suffering although is not necessarily in the life , but It can help someone to grow and mature in unbelievable way and I personally have experienced it!
wish nobody needs to suffer from sth in order to grow of course!
I think sufferings are like the ebbs and tides of life which are very normal (and essential) for a human life. A piece of gold becomes pure after its severely burning. Likewise, a life gets its real taste after surviving well and woes . So, sufferings are the must requirements of life.
Sufferings as a whole include many many things. It depends on how a person deals with the hardships and pressures of life. Firstly in my opinion, any disease/infection makes even a strong person suffer even if mildly. Any human being cannot avoid sufferings all his/her life. Death is also the ultimate truth so a person is bound to lose his beloved during the course of his life. That also accounts for suffering. Be it rich or poor, intelligent or foolish, everybody has to deal with his/her share of sufferings. A human also learns many things from the sufferings coming across so they actually act as lessons for leading a good, disciplined life or at least an improved life in several cases.
There is an interesting conflation of pain and suffering in many of the responses. Pain, as a physiological response, provides the impetus to act. Suffering, as a psychological response, is the refusal or inability to act in accordance with pain. Suffering, through a refusal of action in response to pain, stunts growth. Thus pain can be understood as a necessary part of the human condition, while suffering would be seen as an unnecessary inability to respond to it.
In addition to Benjamin Cook's observation, I also note that a number of answers conflate the experience of suffering with questions related to meaning-making (e.g., does suffering have a purpose?). Cook's response appears to focus on the individual. I agree this perspective is important. However, I do not find the definition of suffering as "a refusal of action in response to pain" to be helpful when I consider ecological events such as the effects of a Typhoon or a forest fire on a population. Yes, the pain is palpable. But it is multi-faceted (e.g., loss of life, possessions, livelihood, etc). It seems to me that in these situations suffering could be said to be the result of the compounding effect of multiple losses along with a sense of powerless to effect meaningful change.
I do not know if suffering is a necessary condition for being human, but I do know that it is inevitable; and precisely suffering, is what makes us more human when we overcome, assimilate or sublimate certain suffering with spirituality, prayer; Amen of the love and friendship of loved ones and friends.
I don’t think there is a human being in the world not suffering from something during some period in his life.
You can definitely live and not suffer. Sometimes suffering triggers the worst instincts - for example, look at periods of persecution, wars.
It is a fact that many people suffer on earth - perhaps they are more than those who don't. But it would be a naturalistic fallacy to change the "is" (fact) in a "should be" (normative demand).
Dear Colleague, Kirk. You posed a great question. In my opinion suffering in life is inevitable in some way, intensity, shape or form. There are two major types of suffering: physiological and mental. The sub-types of the former would be physical and or disease related pain and of the later sociological (lack of social interactions, belonging, love, etc.) pain. Another fundamental type of suffering is exemplified in material suffering (lack of money, material possessions, etc.) Finally, human beings can have fulfilled all of the above listed requirements, and like the Rolling Stones' song stated, "Still get no Satisfaction". 2.) In my next post I would discuss the way(s) to manage human suffering, in order for the suffering not to manage us. Best Wishes, Colleague, Dr. Oggi-Management.
Interesting the reference to the Job story earlier, as the ending is rarely reflected on, in that god made a bet with Satan on how much could Job suffer without denying god, the outcome of which god won (if I remember correctly?). In the story, there is great emphasis on loss of material wealth and the connection between piety and material wealth. Although Job loses his family (a very strange thing for god to do just to make a point), the loss of material wealth is dwelt on even more. In those times, being wealthy was connected to goodness.
In the end, in response to Job's question of why he had to suffer so much, god tells him simply because he could. No ethics, there. The moral? Might is right. God had the power to do something incredibly mean, so he did it.
I don't think there is a human being in the world not suffering from something during the life
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