To Feel Is to Suffer, and Perhaps, That May Be the Point
Modern civilization increasingly treats suffering as a design flaw.
A flaw to be engineered away. Not just physical pain, but also, loneliness, failure, grief, uncertainty, conflict, risk, and regret.
Governments promise to legislate it away. Institutions promise to manage it. Technology, especially AI, promises to optimize it out entirely.
But what are the unintended consequences?
What happens when a society tries to engineer suffering itself out of existence.
This question sits at the center of my forthcoming novel, ‘Dreams and Dissension: Lullabies for Voltaire’:
“A structured society was established for the public good, and, for the public, the structure proclaimed to satisfy all the needs of a free people. Free from want, sadness, disillusionment, and despair, but also thought, happiness, individualism, inquisitiveness, creativity, and, most importantly, dissension. All was for the public good, and all, in spite of the public, for its own good; a framework arose…”
The paradox of this institutional thinking: ‘Freedom’ is defined as being ‘Free’ from suffering.
It seems fundamental that to retain agency in your life, you must be allowed to make choices and meaningful choice always carries the possibility of suffering. That is the price of freedom.
Remove the consequence, and choice itself becomes inconsequential. Why then, choose at all?
This is how many systems, corporate, institutional, governmental, and even socioeconomic models and programs, quietly erode agency. But what of a positive outcome of an uncomfortable choice: the parent who sacrifices for their child, the entrepreneur who mortgages everything, the first responder who willingly risks injury?
Be careful what disappears when suffering disappears.
Does compassion exist without suffering?
Is courage possible without fear?
Is forgiveness meaningful without injury?
Is sacrifice possible without loss?
Is freedom genuine if nothing is ever at stake?
So, it begs the question: What else disappears when suffering disappears?
Perhaps being human itself depends on the opportunity to experience suffering.
If civilization eventually becomes capable of optimizing away every hardship…
…would we still recognize ourselves as human?
