There's been an interesting little discussion on the comments thread of a previous post about the nature of reality - specifically, why there has to be pain and suffering in the world. If there's a higher reality, and our earthly lives are part of a plan, then why does so much unpleasantness have to be part of the plan? Couldn't the higher-ups have worked it out better? Are they sadists? Are they indifferent? Or are there no higher-ups, only the random interplay of physical forces?
Needless to say, such questions are not new. Many learned books have been written on the subject, including one by C.S. Lewis whose title I've stolen for this post. I'm not sure any of these books have provided a completely satisfactory answer. And I certainly don't expect to do any better. I find it challenging just to balance my checkbook, so working out the ultimate meaning and hidden purposes of the universe is a bit beyond me. Nevertheless, I'll offer a few tidbits for thought.
First, it's possible to overstate the problem. There is a lot of suffering in the world, as recent events in Japan and the Middle East have reminded us. But it's not all suffering. Many people live rather pleasant lives. You can find some people who seem to breeze through life - people who've never been seriously ill, or desperately poor, or irreparably heartbroken. There may be more such people than we think. Remember that an airplane crash is news, but an on-time landing is not. Lives of quiet contentment don't get reported. They don't make good drama, so they're rarely the subject of books, movies, TV shows, or even popular songs. In many ways, people in the developed world today enjoy lives that are easier, safer, and materially better than ever before in history. An average middle-class person in an industrialized democracy takes for granted a standard of living that would have been inconceivable to Louis XIV or Nero or King Solomon. Suffering is real, but so is pleasure.
Second, much of the suffering that people do endure is a direct or indirect result of human vices. This is obvious in instances like the Holocaust, but there are more subtle examples as well. Take the problem of famine in the developing world. Though it is often glibly attributed to overpopulation, the truth is that a great deal of this famine is the result of autocratic political systems that have hampered economic development - or even, in some cases, of deliberate attempts by a government to starve some of its own people. A ruler aligned with one tribe may decide to exterminate a rival tribe by withholding food shipments to that region. This kind of thing is not uncommon, and it has cost millions of lives.
Governments are not the only culprits. We can add examples of capitalist malfeasance. Take the sorry lot of 19th-century coal miners, who were trapped in dangerous, low-paying jobs, unable to unionize because paid thugs would kill any union organizers; the miners were paid in company scrip which could be used only at the company store, where prices were artificially inflated to ensure that every dime they made went right back into the bosses' pockets. With no cash, they had no options, no way out; they were effectively stuck in a miserable, degrading existence, often dying in cave-ins or from black lung disease. Their suffering was the result of other people's greed and callousness.
And of course there are common criminals, who inflict pain on a smaller scale. How many people have lost loved ones to street violence?
Moreover, a not-insignificant portion of suffering comes from people's own vices or bad choices. There are people who seem to do everything possible to sabotage themselves - blowing their income on drink or drugs, choosing a life of crime that repeatedly puts them in prison, or simply alienating their family and friends so they end up alone. Their pain is real, but they themselves are responsible for it.
If we were to subtract all the pain in the world that results from human actions, the sum total of pain would be much smaller than it is. It may not be quite fair to blame the universe, or the powers that be, for consequences that stem from the failings of the human race itself.
Third, we ought to recognize that some kinds of suffering can come down to a matter of perspective. There are people who are cheerful and upbeat in almost any situation, and other people who never have a good word to say, no matter what their circumstances. One person remains happy and optimistic even in the case of grave financial setbacks, while another person continues to grouse and whine after winning the lottery. Some people are just temperamentally unsuited to happiness, or perhaps they are only happy when they are most convinced that they are unhappy!
Having said that, I can't deny that there is real suffering in the world that can't be wished away or explained as the result of human error. There may be less of it than the nightly news would suggest, but it's still there. Through no fault of their own, and through no fault of anyone else, some people end up in a world of hurt. It's probably these people who are foremost in our minds when we worry about the problem of pain. A typical tack - one I've taken myself - is to say, "Try telling someone at Auschwitz, or someone in the throes of a painful, untreatable disease, that it's all part of a larger plan." And of course there's a lot of truth in that. Nearly anyone in those circumstances would reject the supposed comfort that such "spiritual" pontification is meant to provide.
I wonder, though, if those are really the best examples. It seems to me that nothing - absolutely nothing - could be said to such people that would comfort them or alleviate their misery. This doesn't mean such words of comfort are therefore empty. It only means that people in extremis are in no position to listen.
Consider a woman in childbirth, racked by labor pains. If you said to her, "The pain you're experiencing is transient and will seem unimportant once your child is safely delivered," she would probably tell you to shut your cake hole. Nevertheless, your statement is true. As soon as the baby is born and she is cradling it in her arms, the pain of delivery will recede from memory like a bad dream, and the outcome will have made her suffering seem worthwhile. If this were not true, no woman would ever choose to have a second child, or a third, or a fourth.
I think it is also true, as a general rule, that in human life there is no gain without pain. Anyone who has labored on a long and difficult undertaking will tell you that the hardships he faced drove him to greater heights of creativity, endurance, or self-understanding; the struggle brought out the best in him. There's a reason why Irving Stone chose the title The Agony and the Ecstasy when telling the story of Michelangelo. Great achievements in art, literature, science, industry, and other fields are almost always midwifed by pain and suffering. The hack writer may bang out 10,000 words a day without strain, but the literary genius fights many battles - mostly internal and unrecognized by the world - to put his vision on the page. Look at the reams of notes and multiple drafts prepared by Dostoevsky when he was writing The Brothers Karamazov, or the tormented letters and diary notes penned by Tolstoy as he struggled with Anna Karenina.
Perhaps more important, spiritual development seems to require a certain amount of hardship. There may be a reason why ascetics starve themselves, take a vow of silence, or take a whip to their own backs. Less dramatically, a spiritual renewal can often be stimulated by a midlife crisis - a dawning sense that one's life is unsatisfactory, that one's worldview is incomplete, and that a new direction is required. There's nothing fun about a midlife crisis, but people often emerge from it with a greater sense of spiritual awareness. No pain, no gain.
All of this is obvious enough, but someone might still ask, "Why? Why does the world have to be this way? It may be true that pain often leads to spiritual growth or personal achievement, but why were things set up like that in the first place? Why couldn't life have been designed to be fun and easy? For that matter, why should we need to learn spiritual lessons at all? Why couldn't we be created with all of our spiritual understanding already in place? Or if our ultimate purpose is to become like God, why were we ever separated from God?"
Those are good questions. And as I said above, I don't have the answers. I don't know why things are the way they are. And frankly it would surprise me if I did know. Remember, I am challenged by the prospect of balancing my checkbook. Do I really think I have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the ultimate plan behind all of reality? If you take your dog to the vet, does he understand why he gets poked with needles? Could you explain it to him? And yet there is a purpose, a good reason, for the poking. The dog's mind simply can't grasp it. Well, in relation to the cosmic Mind that gives rise to physical reality, my own mind is not even equivalent to a dog's. Maybe, if I'm lucky, its equivalent to the mind of a flea. More likely, an amoeba.
It seems to me that expecting to understand the whole picture is simply asking too much of our limited human capacities. I would be skeptical of any theory that I or anyone else might come up with that claimed to explain "everything." Groucho Marx famously said he wouldn't join any club that would have him as a member. In a similar vein, I would say I wouldn't endorse any theory of ultimate reality that could be encapsulated by my intellect. The very fact that I could think of it or understand it would strongly suggest to me that it couldn't be true, or at least couldn't be the whole truth.
I guess I end up in the same position as the author of the Book of Job. After making the long-suffering Job hurl question after question at his deity, the author finally allows God to speak (at 38:1). But God doesn't really answer the questions. He simply tells Job that, as a puny mortal, Job cannot possibly understand the ultimate purposes and higher meaning of life. Though couched in beautiful poetry, this reply is intellectually unsatisfying. But it may be the only reply that's possible.
If you think about it, what else could God say?
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