Would a life without pain and suffering as such be a "better" life?

[Psyduck]

Of course, nobody wants to get cancer or get really sick. This seems very obvious.

But would a life devoid of all pain and suffering be a "better" life? Does the negative element of pain not constitute a "positive" element of human existence. Does resistance form a positive dimension of life? It seems that only when pain enters into a dialectic with its opposite (i.e. joy), both can be transgressed to something higher (i.e. the joy of overcoming one's finite condition).

A genius who never encounters resistance or failure in whatever he attempts probably slips into boredom very quickly. Likewise, a life where one would be hooked up 24/7 on drugs or hedonistic pleasure and never encounters a counter-balance for the pleasure-component, becomes "empty" as well.

* The term "pain/suffering" can be taken quite broadly as human finitude (all our failures, mistakes, unfulfilled dreams etc.)

 

[Edvard Munch]

The Hedonistic Imperative provides a great tool by which we can modulate ourselves into Bliss and negate the side effects of constant euphoria. Id like to find out!

 

[-=SS=-]

It is said that Philosophy comes through adversity. A life of joy and ecstacy would be awesome, like living in cosmic consciousness.. that would be mad.. but you wouldn't learn much about yourself. You'd be just as robotic/asleep as you are now, perhaps more so given there is no irritation of the mind to cause thinking.

 

[Quantum Perception]

I wrote a blog on this topic called, "The Transparency of Efficient Utilities: How problems keep us awake and why a perfect world would resemble deep sleep."

Here's the link: http://humanxparadox.blogspot.com/2012/01/transparency-of-efficient-utilities-how.html

 

[CrackAndScrabble]

I'm under the opinion that a life without pain, despair, anxiety would be quite boring. If you polarize anything they don't become mutually exclusive but mutually inseparable. If one wants to hold a view that pain and joy are opposites then you cannot have one without the other. Times of depression or pain will always be followed by times where you are painless or happy. I don't know if the joy will be about overcoming one's finite condition because that seems pretty fuckin' hard to do. Let me know though. I'd love to know how to do that.

Also, you won't find any bored geniuses. People of those breeds tend to keep themselves occupied quite well.

 

[panic in paradise]

this life couldnt exist with out the perception of pain and suffering, due to our physical senses.

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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Threads of Union
Translation by BonGiovanni

2.15 All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.

2.16 The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.

2.17 The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.

2.18 The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play. It is of the nature of cognition, activity and rest, and is for the purpose of experience and realization.


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If one wants to hold a view that pain and joy are opposites then you cannot have one without the other. Times of depression or pain will always be followed by times where you are painless or happy. I don't know if the joy will be about overcoming one's finite condition because that seems pretty fuckin' hard to do. Let me know though. I'd love to know how to do that.

Karma Yoga

 

[Lost Ego]

I'd have to agree with everyone here, if you didnt know what it is to suffer then you wouldnt know what it is to feel pleasure. While at work i do hard physical labor and i wanna quit so bad. But i keep telling myself, embrace the pain, without it you would be nothing, without pain you would never have grown this far.

On the other hand, someone has to argue with the OP to help him get his point across and so i'll volunteer to be a nooby socrates.

Well what is suffering? Can we define it? Google knows all. Suffering: to experience or be subject to something bad or unpleasant.

We're all made up of equal parts of good and bad though right? Buddhists believe in abolishing all suffering, everything that causes you to experience badness. Doing so is indeed possible and believe it or not you are still able to experience pleasure without feeling empty.

My philo-101 teacher once explained this whole duality thing to us. He said "a fish cannot know what it means to be wet because it has never been dry". If you haven't experienced suffering before, you wouldn't know pleasure. But we are comparing two lives objectively. One life which is filled with equal amounts of good and evil and one which is filled with nothing but good. Since we are the ones comparing the 2 lives and we have experienced suffering already, we can say for sure that a life without suffering would be "better", although that all comes down to what brings you joy. Most people get satisfaction out of overcoming hardships (adventures) and some people get joy out of pain (in bed) lol. What i'm saying is, in a world without hardship, there would be no need for suffering, we would have evolved without having to worry about dying off, otherwise there would have to be suffering. We would be living in a world where we would derive satisfaction out of something that i can't even imagine. An entirely different universe is impossible to imagine but i'd like to think that there would be another concept out there, a different concept of yin and yang. It would be yin and yin(2), yin 2 would also have to be negative but it would not cause pain, nor suffering, nor unpleasantness. I can imagine a universe where i'm entirely satisfied and there is no suffering, i can't tell you what the other variable emotion would be for i have never experienced it, my soul's wavelength feels no need to subject itself to this emotion in a universe that does not support it.

Another argument is you never said when the suffering would cease to exist. Would it be mid way into my life (right now) or at birth? If all of the suffering stopped right now then i would have something to compare it to(in the past) and i would feel good nonetheless. The other scenario is assuming you were talking about since since the beginning of time.

 

[panic in paradise]

^well, yes, wouldnt you agree we are to learn to over-come the physical senses dependent on the material world which causes pain and suffering ?

hence 'mind over matter'

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and the alleviation of "boredom"


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ohhh i thought you said you disagree with everyone
lol

We're all made up of equal parts of good and bad though right? Buddhists believe in abolishing all suffering, everything that causes you to experience badness. Doing so is indeed possible and believe it or not you are still able to experience pleasure without feeling empty.

from that empty nothing, something is, there is always something, and from that something anything is possible; when once what was believed as everything, or who was loved more then anything, is suddenly gone, all sensation felt externally, from with-out, may be realized as always existent, there with-in.

love always exists, joy happiness and contentment also, the pain and suffering that exists because of our attachment to the material, being in an animated form is by cause natural. what we depend on for entertainment for the senses, or convenience in all aspects of life, would be entirely different IMO and bare different results, results that would not have such negative consequences that cause further destruction. the process of desensitization of what it takes to entertain seems as result to escalate in parallel with the exposure of suffering that takes place in our common world.

it is our 'dead hand' that does it to us, the shadow of our lives choices that we are afraid to accept casting, thus taking the responsibility, which would eventually grant us control through knowledge of the choices we are making.

 

[Lost Ego]

love always exists, joy happiness and contentment also, the pain and suffering that exists because of our attachment to the material, being in an animated form is by cause natural.

in our universe they do. but love and fear and all other emotions are pivotal upon the chemical structures of the brain. without 1 emotion or neurotransmitter, it would throw all of the other chemicals off balance. For example, without dopamine there could not be seratonin, they work on a see-saw together. the emotion i would associate with seratonin would be relaxation or contentment and without any seratonin whatsoever there could not be relaxation, atleast not how it feels right now. there may be another chemical that makes you feel 'ok' but it will never be seratonin and we may call it relaxation but it will never be "relaxation" as we know it. I think it'd be the same if we got rid of suffering, another negative feeling would take its place in the grand scheme of things.

btw, none of my posts are linked, i'm not trying to convince you of one idea or another. Nor are these arguements supported by my beliefs, so it may not make complete sense at times . I'm just arguing against whatever is posted.

 

[panic in paradise]

i like endorphins

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it is difficult to feel a relation to others pain, to show compassion and feel motivation rather then personal detachment or more pain.

an understanding of each others reflection meets in the middle, and a sense of oneness is gained.

 

[Portillo]

Maybe not as much pain and suffering would be better.

 

[done juan]

i think so. of course pain and suffering helps us to learn and evolve.

 

[Lost Ego]

i think so. of course pain and suffering helps us to learn and evolve.

but if there were no pain and suffering, imagine the universe we would live in. since we would have no need for pain and suffering, we would either have to already be fully evolved orrrr (<-!) we would live in a universe in which there is no need to ingest other living beings in order to survive, a self sustaining organism which unlike a plant would not even need light or water. could you imagine the implications of this universe. it would be a universe in which good and bad do not exist (what i believe composes this universe at it's very foundation), every organism would be equal and it would be alot like a commune or perhaps we would all be part of one big entity and there would only be one, not to say that isn't the case already .

 

[Zulkifar]

^^^ damn... You beat me to it... I just deleted everything I was about to post...

 

[Jean-Paul]

i think the use of the word genius here was unwise, intelligence doesn't make anything easier and they are notoriously fucked up people.

anyway, i think it's like the mental illness thing. a certain amount of pain and suffering is to be expected. it is when it becomes abnormal that there is a real problem beyond what everyone must cope with. it is the same with circumstantial, man made suffering. there's so much needless suffering everywhere that wandering what a painless utopia might be like may be natural, but we need to focus on correcting what we can. as was said a painless life would be opting out of life entirely.

 

[!_MDMA_!]

can you have happiness without pain? if something exists, then doesnt it's opposite have to exist as well?

god - satan
light - darkness
etc

so if there was no pain or suffering, it's opposite wouldn't exist

wat we'd have is a mundane life

 

[Zulkifar]

if something exists, then doesnt it's opposite have to exist as well?

I don't know. Does it?

 

[qwe]

The Hedonistic Imperative provides a great tool by which we can modulate ourselves into Bliss and negate the side effects of constant euphoria. Id like to find out!

i think it's physically possible for humans to operate on gradients of bliss. or i guess i should say, transhumans.

that said, i wouldn't give up the feeling of pain, or any feeling, entirely.

 

[panic in paradise]

i think it's physically possible for humans to operate on gradients of bliss. or i guess i should say, transhumans.

there is nothing transhuman about it, lol, i can live in that state, if it werent so unacceptable.

the past week i have been in and out of it but have had to stop myself, and have been looking for an ashram too because it isnt right that it should be so taboo and shocking to others.

not speaking, that is just unheard of. if i were to mention that i am in my apartment meditating, that would be beyond weird.

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never mind appearing intoxicated

 

[chief ten beers]

I understand the fact that we need a little contrast, to experience some bad in order to know good. However, I don't know if it that is a pure reflection on reality. Take for instance the lives of children. Naive perhaps but do they really need to know that they live in an evil world to validate that they are experiencing a world of joy and happiness, albeit temporarily?