Suffering Well

 There is something comforting about suffering. Or, a particular kind of suffering. I suppose that suffering alongside others, particularly those for whom we care deeply, may entail a further suffering by way of feeling their pain - vicarious suffering should be avoided as much as vicarious redemption - but a silent suffering, alone and in a setting of low sensory stimulation, can take on the property of serenity when one fully submits.

This may sound awfully similar to self-pity. However, I think the fundamental difference between serene suffering and self-pity is that self-pity implies a favourable counter factual. When engaging in self-pity, the implicit desire is that the suffering is a necessary evil one must endure because one deserves it, and so one must take the great pain and soldier on through to the other side. Often this is only superficial, and a third party barely has to scratch the surface to reveal the desire for the suffering to end prematurely. However, when fully accepting a solitary and reflective period of intense psychological suffering, there comes an acceptance of the necessity of the process and a revelation that the only true suffering is the desire for it to end. To be constantly wishing for change is to be unsatisfied with the present, but to accept the present state is to decide to use the suffering as an opportunity rather than view it as an ordeal.

I am currently in a state of deep psychological suffering. I wake up heavy and I go to sleep heavy. I am weighed down by an enormous psychological mass pressing against my sense of self. There is a tumour of suffering obstructing the stream of conscious thought that usually flows freely and on which I, like all of us, identify with as ‘I’.

I’ve had depression. This isn’t depression. Depression comes first as sadness and then as numbness. Depression is an agony that causes panic and desperation, then forced submission and reluctant acceptance. This is a wilful acceptance of psychological suffering. Depression is being tortured. Depression is being held underwater but never drowning, constantly wishing to breath. This is discovering I’m underwater and refusing to panic.

When we are happy, we’re not just happy about the present, we’re happy because of a change in our potential futures. You’re happy in a relationship because you believe it will continue. If you know for a certainty it will end next week, this week you won’t be as happy in that relationship. You don’t enjoy it because it is now, you enjoy the idea that it will be. The first and consecutive bites of a cake are great, but that last bite is the worst. Even as you’re chewing, it doesn’t feel quite as good because you know it’ll be gone soon. Our thoughts of the future infect our present, because we are presently thinking of our future. We’re never actually present, because we’re always thinking ahead.

This suffering will likely end at some point, but I don’t know when. Whether it takes a day, a month or a year - I’m here now, so I might as well pay attention to it. Dread is an additional unnecessary suffering. All I need to do is deal with the present. This perspective will help in good times too. Next time I am blissful, I will be present in that moment of bliss rather than wondering when it will end. At its core, bliss and suffering are just states of consciousness, neither intrinsically harmful or desirable unless I decide to harm myself or identify with my desires. I will just be, and I will be in whatever state I happen to find myself. Right now I am suffering, and that is as good as any other mental state. I’m even starting to find the pleasure in the pain.

Experiences

Life is really all about experiences.

We can attest to this statement, we agree that life is about experiences because that is why we want to do things that make us happy. This is common knowledge. But what I mean when I talk about experiences is that not only do I think that experiences should be a motivator in life, but that they should be our only motivator.

We like to earn money so that we can buy things we think will improve our ongoing experiences in life. We try to spend time with people who will add positively to our experience, and avoid those who contribute negatively. We also do things that we would rather not experience, e.g. work, so that our overall experience will improve in the long run. Life is simply ongoing experience, and all we can do is try to improve this experience for us, and if we want to live in a world where others help improve our experience, we try to improve the experience of others.

Is there something you can think of, that is not beneficial to your ongoing experience of life now, in the future, or for other people? If so, why are you doing it?

Sometimes we forget that we are born, experience things in life as conscious beings, and then die. We are too consumed by the idea that life is a list of tasks that must be completed within certain timeframes. If that task in life is of no benefit to you, people around you or your society, why are you doing it?

In my life, I would like to be able to look back and think that in my long experience of life, I recall mostly good and happy times, with people who make me happy, and that the times when I had to work hard and went through bad experiences were all to better me experience in life overall. The idea that I might look back and think that there were some harsh experiences in life that I've been through with no benefit to me or anyone else, scares me. I would rather have the less successful job with a happy, loving family than be a financially successful single man who is constantly dissatisfied and never content.

The ratio of good times to bad in one's life should be as high as possible, and if there are bad times at all then they should be for the eventual gain of positive experiences. Even going through tough experiences for the benefit of someone else could be evaluated on the grounds that if that person is a loved one and your tribulations are directly beneficial to them, then that in turn becomes a good experience for you, because it was worthwhile and made you feel good at the end of it.

Accepting constant abuse from your boss at work does nothing to achieve optimum satisfaction in life, even if you figure that by taking all the abuse without retort, you avoid the possible ramifications for yourself if you did complain. However, look at the years of negative experience you have to come, and think of looking back on all those times you simply smiled and nodded as you were demeaned and subjected to verbal abuse. Was it worth it? Were you really happier because of your decision not to defend yourself? It soon becomes clear, that by standing up for yourself, even if times become immediately hard through angering your boss or even losing your job, you will undoubtedly feel better in the long run. Maybe you find a new job where you are not subjected to abuse, or maybe you change career paths completely, or maybe you fail to immediately find work and have some bad experiences before good comes of it, but the point is that you can look back and feel good about the decision you made. The more you willingly accept abuse in your life, the more often you will see abuse coming your way. Be a person who stands their ground on moral issues and instances of bullying, as you will eventually be better for it.

Would you rather be the charity worker in harsh conditions, knowing each day as you wake up that you are positively effecting the lives of other humans in need and go through each day with contentment and great satisfaction in the life that you lead, or the banker who accepts a large bonus knowing that people lower down in his company have lost jobs directly because of bad decisions he's made, and that ordinary people are going to be worse-off because of things he has done? You could accept the bonus and enjoy the reward, but out of the two lives, which would you rather look back on and feel proud of? Which can you say was most fulfilling? Which is a closer representation of the sort of person you wish to be remembered as after your death? Which life would make you happier looking back on as you leave this world? Yes, riches are good, but in the context of life and it's experiences as a whole, isn't the aim of life to be happy and satisfied with the one you're living?

We all want to be loved, to be appreciated, and to be able to be content and satisfied with the lives we lead. Yet which sort of a life shows a clearer path to this goal, a life spent chasing small pleasures in the hope that they add up to long-term satisfaction, or a life spent seeking experiences that are worth the effort you give them?

I love having money and I love small pleasures, but the money means nothing if the goal is simply to have lots of it, and the lavish and the luxury are only worth their price-tag if you are on the road to contentment.

Stand up to that bully, that bad friend, that mean boss, because shying away from confrontations and letting people see a person different from the real you, does nothing to better your life or those you love. Those have been bullied and stood up for themselves, no matter what their circumstances, will be better people for it. Those who were bullies and were stood up to, are better people because of those who stood up to them. Don't keep quiet to continue fake friendships out of ease, don't lie to your parents because it's easy. Seek the good experiences in life through good and righteous means, and only more good things can come of it. What appears as the easy route is often just the hard route in disguise, as we are lazy by result of our human psyche.

Life is simple if you want it to be. It starts with being genuine. You probably already think you're a genuine person, but if you've told even the whitest of lies recently, you're not. I'm not perfect, but I try.

Suicide. Are there sound, valid reasons for it? Can mental suffering be enough to justify ending one's life? For me it seems obvious: of course there are.

Is there a level of suffering where ending one's life become a rational, viable option? If we are talking about physical pain and discomfort and a diminished quality of life in which there is no evidence for potential improvement, or even evidence of further decline, then most people would say yes, in that case, ending one's life would only be a reasonable and rational option to explore. Cases resembling this sort of scenario could involve a person with a terminal illness with a bleak prognosis and the expectation of an extremely painful and undignified demise, or an ex-sportsman so severely injured in an accident that his only method of communication is through blinking, thereby losing all his livelihood and career prospects, ability to communicate effectively, engage socially, pursue aspirations, be healthy, has lost all quality of life etc. In such situations, the case for suicide, or even assisted suicide, can be made without too much objection.
There are still going to be controversial instances of assisted suicide and there will always be a fine line between what is treatable or curable, and what is not.
But surely the question should not be 'is this person's condition treatable?' but rather 'is this person suffering to a greater extent than they agree to take on? Is this person prepared to continue suffering to this extent for the potential gains that may come of it?'

My point is that it is irrelevant to point to the good that may come after the suffering a person endures, how 'good' those things may be, or how likely it may be that the person will experience good things after their suffering, the experience of suffering and the foreknowledge of suffering to come is all that is relevant, and all that should be relevant, to any person empathetic to the possible suffering of other human beings and to the conscious experience of undesirable pain.

This is why I firmly believe that a person's mental suffering and torment should, in principle, although difficult (but not implausible) in practice, be reasonable grounds for ending one's life, assisted or not.
Advances in the field of neuroscience tell us that pain, both physical and emotional, occur in the brain. You may think that your toe hurts when you stub it, but in reality there is no pain located physically in your foot, it is happening in your brain and you are being tricked into feeling that the pain is located in the same region where the incident occurred on the body. We know this to be true because the anaesthetics in hospitals do nothing to alter the skin or nerve endings around the incision of the surgeons blade, but instead make changes in the manifestation of the experience we label 'pain' occurring in the brain. Everything we experience is realised in the brain as an organ, we are simply tricked into believing that our toe literally 'feels' the pain of being stubbed. With appropriately advanced technology, one could link up an artificial limb to the nervous system and one would really 'feel' the same pain when the artificial toe is stubbed.
In this sense, there doesn't seem to be a clear difference between physical pain and emotional or mental pain, except that only the former is virtually mapped onto our body to trick us into assuming locations for the pain. Mental suffering occurs and is actualised in the brain, in a way much less tangible to us. We cannot pinpoint it's experienced location on the body, except to sometimes complain of the onset of a headache due to emotional or mental stress that day. There is no readily available medicine we can take that works in a similar way, the best we have are antidepressants and mood stabilisers that work over long periods of time to reduce undesired extremes in emotional suffering, but does nothing to cure the source of the problem, often it barely makes substantial difference in isolation.

Therefore, it follows that mental suffering should be regarded as no less pertinent or 'real' than physical pain. Both are located in the brain, and both should be taken seriously as valid and sound reasons for ending one's life.
I will now present what I see to be a fair analogy to the relationship between a person and his experience of suffering, and the link between that and reasonable suicidal desires.
Imagine being in a stereotypical torture chamber. There are all variety of despicable machines and devices around you, some of greater hideousness and callousness than others, but all inflict physical pain of some sort, to some extent.
You are trapped in a machine that inflicts an amount of pain that causes you to scream out every so often, and makes you wince as it slowly grinds and turns. It inflicts pain that illicits a bodily response, but not so much that you cry out in agony. Imagine any device or implement of torture to fit the bill as you wish.
You have been in this contraption for 5 minutes. The operator of this device says to you, 'You have a choice. Continue enduring this pain for the remainder of the hour, at which point all torture will immediately cease and you will receive a prize of 1 million pounds, or, stop proceedings now and walk away.'
It's a tempting offer. It hurts, but you know exactly when the pain will end, and you know how much it hurts as you have experienced it for 5 minutes.
You look around and realise that there are multiple people in the room, each entrapped in a contraption of their own, each being made the same offer, with the same cash prize. The only difference between each person is the machine with which they are being tortured. Each machine is different in construct, and each is better or worse than the other. Some only make the person entrapped squeak a little every so often, others have them screaming in agony, begging for an end to their living hell. Each is asked the same question after 5 minutes, whether to end or to endure the pain. Some withstand it and soldier on, some opt out and leave.
In this situation, the thing that matters most is not whether you should continue or fold, but whether it is your choice to do so.
The issue of whether you choose to endure the pain, knowing the prize at the end and knowing the experience of how much it hurts, is totally yours to make, but what if the rules changed and suddenly you were forced to continue with the process? This is equivalent to being preventing a person from committing suicide, or not allowing someone to have the assisted suicide they desire. Of course there will be those saying 'but it can get better for those with things like depression' but that isn't the point.
It could be argued whether it will get better, and by what means you attest to know this, but even if we just assume that the person will recover, why should this be a reason for them not to end the suffering they experience now? How is this different to your torture operator saying, 'but why would you want to end it now, when you'll win a million?' Because the pain you will have to endure is so much that you do not care for any prize at the end, even being better off than when you started, because it is the experience of suffering which you wish to cease. Even if he increased the prize to 2 million, or 10, or 100 million every year for the rest of your life, there is a level of suffering, in principle, to which you would wish to end no matter what the gains come its conclusion. It could be that there are possible gains that are worth a certain level of suffering, but that the gain is too small relative to the suffering you would have to endure, or it could simply be that you deem the suffering so great that no potential gain would be sufficient for its endurance. This would undoubtedly differ from person to person, but that would not matter, for it is the choice of the individual who has experienced and will continue to experience that level of suffering as to whether it be ended or not.

But what if they make the wrong decision, you say? Well, how would you know? No two torture devices are the same, and we cannot know the pain experienced of another. It may be that George in the corner, after 5 minutes of his machine, can stand no more and chooses to quit, while Ben chooses to endure the whole hour even though we may look at his machine and see that it is clearly more intense and wicked in its infliction of agony. We can judge that we may be able to withstand the torment of George's machine, we are free to make such a statement if we wish, but that does not mean that George should have to. George should be free to opt out, whatever the pain or the prize, because it is his body, his suffering, and his potential experiences in question.
'But there are people who have been forcefully prevented from committing suicide who have been grateful for people preventing them!'
Yes, and there are children who have been beaten who will recommend the practice as adults, so it can't always be bad, can it? There are people who have come to be conscious after years on life support, so we shouldn't switch anyone off, should we? There are babies that have been born prematurely at an age when abortion would be permitted, so we shouldn't abort at that precise number of weeks? There are people who say they choose to be straight after being gay, so it's a choice, right?
 It may be that some people are now thankful for intervention in their own attempted suicide, but there are also many people who are not thankful, and who's suffering is either prolonged or made worse because of such intervention. And we will never know about the suicides of whom are now grateful that they could take their own life, because they are dead and so cannot tell us. The only suicidal people alive are those who have either been prevented from committing suicide and are grateful, or those who still wish to end their lives and are simply 'still in the process of receiving treatment'. They will either continue such suicide attempts until they succeed, or eventually be convinced that life is worth living and will be the show-piece of 'treating' suicidal tendencies. A bit like pointing to the disproportionately low number of women raped in city centres while wearing burqas, and asserting that burqas are therefore an effective preventative measure against rape and empowers women, while ignoring the countless women forced into wearing burqas, and the oppression of women that the burqa symbolises and promotes.

 Should the possibility of people eventually being grateful for the intervention of suicide attempts, outweigh the prolonged suffering of those who wish to end their pain, or the possibility of increased suffering when suicide is prevented? If so, on what grounds? If you are to take away a persons human right to be in control of their own body and to end their own suffering if they choose to do so, then you must surely have reasonable grounds to take these sort of actions. People should be able to take their own life if they choose to do so, and if you force them to continue living - not 'help' - but force them into prolonged suffering, then you should have specific reasons relating either to that individual expressing a wish for intervention when suicide is to be attempted, or have grounds to believe that they are acting impulsively. However, if they discuss the issue with you and clearly express their desire to end their life, then to proceed to forcefully prevent the fulfilment of such a desire would be nothing less than selfish and unethical. It would show wilful disregard for the experience of suffering and a true lack of concern for the person's ultimate well-being in favour of ones own desires for that person.
The fact that there is a chance that some people may be thankful for being prevented from taking their own life, does not justify the prolonging of suffering of those who still wish to die and are forced to endure yet more suffering, nor does it justify the acts of intervention that have actually increased the suffering of individuals with suicidal desires.

To fail to recognise the validity of mental suffering as a reason for a person wishing to end their life, is to be wilfully ignorant of current scientific knowledge about the brain and the experience of suffering, and to callously ignore the desires of those most desperate to escape such suffering, and to instead be motivated by the selfish desires of the individual at the expense of another. To do this while claiming to be of benefit to the same individual is to fool oneself about what is truly of benefit to a person experiencing suffering, and to employ the tactic of 'guilt-tripping' i.e. to explain that family members would rather the person be alive and in a state of pain so as to avoid the loss of a loved one, is a grotesque act of emotionally kicking a person while he's down, where there is already barely further room to fall.

I invite those who disagree with my admittedly controversial view regarding allowing suicide for both mental reasons as well as physical, to state what their objections are and why, on any media platform they wish. I enjoy discussion and debate. As of writing I can see no flaws with my argument, but would be happy to be made aware of such flaws if they do indeed exist.

In the beginning, there was a blog.

And now it has its first post. Yes, that's right, this blog just lost its post virginity.

So, the purpose of this seemingly simple and possibly pointless blog? To be a place where I can voice the many frustrations, ponderations and contemplations that build-up inside my head, allowing me the relieving experience of knowing that someone, somewhere, may possibly agree somewhat with a few of the logical, reasonable yet apparently unorthodox views I often share. So basically a place where I can rant about how stupid things are, and assume that people give actually give a shit.

I often look at the way we do things in society and think 'that's just stupid, why do we do that?' and the response I often get, when I ask people, is 'because that's just what people do'. A pretty null statement, really. When I do explain my point of view and why I perceive a 'social norm' to in-fact be pointless and sometimes contradictory, people often agree with me, but only as an individual. They say something like, 'I see your point Dom, you're right it doesn't make sense really, I suppose it's just the done thing', which frustrates me even more. If each individual in a group of people think that something is pointless and doesn't make sense, why continue doing it? Because the assumption is that it is expected of them. A person can agree that in theory, a social norm is in fact ridiculous when analysed, yet because they think that others still expect them to conform, they do so. There may even be a scenario where every single person in a given situation can individually state that a social norm is silly, yet expected of them, then group together and perform that same action that they had all just stated was 'silly'. Isn't that just the definition of two-faced? Hypocritical? If only they knew that in-fact they all agreed upon it being a silly situation, they wouldn't have to then go through with it! How much simpler life would be.

For those of you completely lost, I don't blame you, this is no reflection on your intellect, apparently I often lose people with the way I think. So let me give you an example, in the hope that it will clear things up a bit.

Often, after eating at a restaurant with a person, whether that be a girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, family member or just a friend, there will be a perfect example of what I call one of these 'silly situations'. This could apply to any form of social event where food or beverages are bought and consumed, from fine-dining at a restaurant to having a take-away coffee at a music festival, and is one of my most favoured examples of absolutely nonsensical madness within today's society.
The paying of the bill.
It has always bewildered me how the same person who can look for bargains, complain about the prices of common supermarket items, and make cut-backs on household budgets, can then consistently offer to pay for other peoples' food/drink as well as their own! Why would a person do this? For what reason would you actually want to pay for their meal?! One reason, I've heard, is because 'it'd be rude not to'. That doesn't make sense in the slightest. If you finish a meal and the other person offers to pay (because it'd be rude not to), by social convention it would be rude of you to accept the offer, because then you wouldn't be paying for their meal as well, or your own, you'd be paying for nothing. Now that just has to be rude. Right? So you have to reverse the offer and say that you are willing to pay for their meal (it'd be rude not to), but wait a minute - isn't it rude of the other person to accept? Because from their point of view, if they now accept your offer, they're not paying for anything either, so that's just as bad. Basically, because of this rule, neither person can leave the situation without one of them being rude. Hence, a strange form of overly-polite yet passively-aggressive argument takes place, only ending when one person manages to force the other person into being rude. So that person has won, yay! He/she has not only succeeded in making the other person 'rude' by the rules of society, but also now has to pay for both their meals. Added to this, because this person has forced the other into being rude, they have now just paid for the meal of a person whom has just been rude to them, and should therefore leave the table proud of the fact that they have kept to the social norm and forced yet another fellow human being into being rude. Go society!

So next time a person says they can't stand 'rude people'. Politely enquire as to how many times that person has in fact forcibly made many of their own friends and family fit into that 'rude' section of society, by letting them get away without paying for their meals. The person who truly tries to avoid rude people, would let anyone pay for them and walk away thinking what a nice person they just ate with.

There is a second point of madness to this. Why are people still doing this in our current economic climate? Forget the complicated reorganisation of spreadsheets and budgets, or ridiculous new policies aimed at reducing the deficit, one great money-saving tip in these harsh financial times would be to stop buying food and drink for other people, and start accepting cash when offered to you as a gift. Its not like people are sitting looking at the rich man who doesn't buy for others yet always accepts gifts thinking 'I may be worse off, but I'm proud of my values', people actually complain about their situation and look upon the rich man with scorn and disgust!

I bet if everyone tallied up how much they spend per year on other peoples' food and drink, they'd actually get quite a shock. And realise how rude everyone else is for not paying it for them.
Maybe we should all print off these figures just to show how much we spend on other people, and use it as a way of calculating 'rudeness and manners' when it comes to social events. That way, it'd be easy to see who's the rudest of the bunch.