Suffering Judgement.
“The further we advance, the fewer are left do judge us.”
I wrote that phrase about progress, working on oneself, but after a discussion with @socraticmthd I wondered if this also applies for something that is very related to personal progress – suffering.
(Here’s the original post, it’s a bit more prose style than usually, but I’m quite content with it.)
I believe and express frequently that everyone suffers at their own level. What is excruciating to one, is barely a mosquito bite to the other, both physically and metaphysically. And that mostly depends on former experiences. On how much one has suffered before, and what one has suffered.
Now, just like with personal progress, personal suffering also has a scale. And especially in a world that is constantly driven towards comfort, there’s less and less suffering in comparison to decades ago. On one hand, that’s awesome, on the other, it bears some risks, as always when a balance is broken. That balance could be expressed in a scale. Let’s say 50 is average, considering the suffering of all humans. 0 is no suffering, 100 is “experienced all the suffering possible”.
Where are you at?
That's a very hard one to answer out of the blue. But given all the privileges I enjoy, I’m probably below 50. When I look at the people that surround me, with similar privileges, I’d say I’m around 40 maybe. And when I go out into the communities and see how some people live, I’m probably down to 30 – considering all 8.3 billion human beings in the world, and that a big part lives in areas where suffering is a whole different ballgame then what I know.
The average is quite high.
Everyone who has lost a child has suffered greater than I. Everyone who has been sexually abused has suffered greater than I. And just those two metric raise the average quite high, leaving me in the round of the fortunate. And there are many more. They’d look at my suffering and be like “Huh?”
Or not?
Probably not. If they’re empathetic. Empathy is not imagining being in the same situation, having to endure the exact same suffering. It’s not the famous “putting oneself in someone else’s shoes.” The latter is a rational exercise, the former is a truly emotional connection. You feel the pain the other person feels, but you don’t feel the pain that you would feel being in the same situation. And that is very important.
It would be a shock for me to suddenly feel all the pain and suffering between my 30 and let’s say a person that is at 80. All at once. Me, being me, with my experience, suddenly getting the whole dosage without any steps. On the other side, the person at 80 would not feel a thing at all considering my suffering. Empathy bridges that. And more importantly, it’s not egocentric. It’s not about me feeling the same extend of suffering, it’s about me feeling the suffering of the other.
I know you all hate math, but…
It’s useful as a metaphor here. If I went from 30 to 40, that would be a 33% increase. If the other person went from 80 to 90, that would only be a 12,5% increase. In my theory, those 10 points are hence a lot harder on me than on the other person. We were empathetic with each other (again following my definition and theory), they would perceive my suffering as greater than theirs.
Brains wrecked yet?
I hope I was able to explain this. It does make a lot of sense in my head, and I read through this text a couple of times and don’t find a better way to explain it.
What’s the point anyway?
Being able to understand each other better. To connect on a deeper level. Thinking this through made me personally more aware of others as individuals. I hope it can make me more considerate of them, of their unique situations. That it can reduce my judgmental side a little, which is something that I’m growing to despise increasingly:
People judging people, seeing specks of sawdust everywhere.
Yes, I'm paraphrasing the bible here. Maybe there's more to that Verse 41, Chapter 6, Luke. I feel like the less I judge them, the better I can help people for real. But that’s a whole different story that I’ll have to figure out in another thought.
Thank you for reading!
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI, as well as read your own experience and point of view, I love to learn!
I can't say I've ever thought to compare my degree of suffering to that of others. I suppose it's all tied up with this 'check your privilege' stuff you younger folk engage in:) Can't we all just agree that everyone suffers and therefore we should be considerate to all....as long as they're not complete assholes, in the which case we should poke them in the eye?
P.S. You also have a 'do' where you should have a 'to'!
Also a valid point. That's what compassion is about, right? Even assholes, we must seek to understand.
Oh, compassion. That's a nice word, too. Is it synonym to empathy? Or is there a difference? It didn't even come to my non-native-speaker mind, as it should have.
And yes, that's what I kept thinking about last night. If it's possible to separate judging the person from judging the actions. How much of the action is really the person and how much socialized. And so on, a really nice and deep rabbit hole to go down another day.
I don’t see the value in ranking people on a scale of suffering and assigning compassion accordingly. If we accept that everyone experiences pain in their own way, who are we to decide how much compassion each person deserves?
There is no value in it. At least in empathy. Either you can feel, or you can't. My argument wasn't to assign compassion or empathy according to a scale, I tried to use it as a metaphor to argue that it does not make any sense to measure suffering, that indeed everyone suffers at their own level. And that, the more that we have suffered, the more important empathy becomes - because from the view of the "more suffered", the rest is only complaining about nuisance.
Absolutely correct! It comes from the privilege discussion, at least that's what I think. Which is a valid discussion, I could write a whole post about how that has been perverted from something meaningful to a sledgehammer argument.
And I wish that more people were like you in this matter, which is what I describe as the truly empathetic here. "Doesn't matter the 'quality' of the suffering, I'm with you."
As for the complete douches, I kept thinking about that last night. Haven't really figured it out yet, as that is a judgement, too. But maybe there's a difference between judging the actions of someone and judging their self. But I'll have to keep thinking to come up with a theory.
I'm not convinced you can separate a man from his actions. Do actions not offer a window into the true substance of a person’s character? Is it not our choices, our everyday habits, and the impact we have on others that reveal who we really are, regardless of where we sit on the privilege and suffering scales?
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become". (Carl Jung)
Absolutely, but aren't those choices, habits and actions a result of all the things that weren't our choices? Genes, upbringing? What if we never got the chance to even want to break out and become selves in the sense of responsible for ourselves, if we never even learned that? If we never get the chance to choose because we don't know how to?
That doesn't mean that everyone is a saint. Actions matter. I will first help those that I can, and last those who I deem enforcers of what I define as evil. That is, indeed, a whole different and equally fascinating subject.
I swear my husband suffers at 250 when he smells something he doesn't like. Me, I don't mind smells. Sometimes I think he died in a latrine in a previous life. A cold one, since he also has an audibly strong reaction to cold water. I find myself more 'stoic' or at least non reactionary. I don't feel the need to loudly and viscerally express distaste.
I do have distaste for people going on about trivial things. Like, who died? Are you aware of your own fucking privilege? I, like you, have it. In many regards we are definitely well below 50. Even this chronic hip pain isn't as bad as, say, living in a war zone or having terminal cancer. We see people's resilience and smiles in such trauma as heroic, but we can't manage this ourselves, taking out our angst and frustration on our wives, children, husbands. Perhaps because we haven't had real trauma to give us perspective, perhaps because we haven't been taught to manage our emotional reactions, perhaps we haven't been TAUGHT empathy - and yes, whilst some people are naturally empathetic, others learn from reinforced instruction.
It's funny too that we can feel guilt for our own grief, sadness, suffering, as we know intelligently people have it worse. But then we do need to voice or validate how we feel or that shit gets quashed, shoved down into the ribcage, and turns into darkness. It's all relative. I hear that, we must say, I recognize how you feel.
Just - and heres my intolerance - just don't fucking go on about it if you have the power and privilege to change it
You really love your husband, don't you? Even when you 'complain' about him it's super sweet.
The idea to think about this came to life about my reaction towards all that suffering that seems trivial to me. I wasn't able to take much of it seriously, given the suffering I have seen (not so much the one I experienced myself, as explained above). Realizing that being aware of that does not ease the suffering I feel, but puts it into a healthier perspective and makes me complain less about it, or take it with more humor (also something I learned from those who suffer greater than I) was quite the epiphany.
And it helps me to look behind the complaining, which seems to be a favorite sport of the human race, and then get to the grain quicker and help the person somehow. Mom's "Children are starving in Africa!" usually doesn't help to stop the complaining 😅 As you correctly write, sometimes it need validation. And maybe that validation can come from someone really listening, not just hearing, something that is getting lost, too. Someone paying attention. Someone giving a true impulse, not just a platitude.
I like my privilege. I've come to the conclusion that I must not reject my privilege, but use it for the better. Use it to lift others up, not put myself down.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! Sparked a lot in me, as you can see 😅
People can't avoid being mean. That’s a fact as big as a house. That's why it's important to build a shell that separates our innner self from stupidity. As abundant as it is
Sure, but they should try. And even if others can't - maybe we can? I think I can. And I can definitely try, and work on being a better person. That itself can be a powerful shell.
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Thank you!
This really hit me. I love how you talk about empathy, not having to feel the same pain, but still understanding it. Makes a lot of sense.
Glad you found value in it!
I tend to be a bit hardcore and very unlikely to talk about things that register as suffering. You are right as there are some people in this world who really know what pain is, who have nothing, are being attacked, living in war zones or poverty.
People like our family are a rich tapestry, we’ve people who are well off and some not so. There’s no snobbery in our place. We are quite good at detecting who needs help.
Empathic where is really needed.
However we’ve some friends who always go on and on about how bad their lives are. They have every ability to alleviate their “suffering” and you can tell I’m not sympathetic!!!
We have had health battles of course, serious ones but we’re lucky to have a health service that can fix us, other countries don’t have that.
I had a kidney transplant and yes, I did suffer too a degree but I’ve recovered. There are people on this planet who will have died from the same illness because they had no backup.
I have the hope that this technique of validating the suffering of the complainers on a deeper level by paying attention and really listening, not just hearing, can help them overcome it. I haven't done it to a great extend yet, but this deeper comprehension achieved through empathy has helped me figure out where the real problem of those people lies, and how to help them realize it themselves. Which either is a step forward, or they'll stop complaining to you because you can point out their BS. And one can afterwards walk away with the satisfaction of having genuinely tried.
Here are few thoughts...
We tend to assume that physical suffering is worse, in an absolute way, than psychological suffering. But you and I both know a woman who is pretty poor (by our standards), but one of the happiest people we know. There are many narratives of people enduring terrible hardship physically, but without "suffering" in any deep sense. Now, that's a very high level of self-cultivation; very few of us can hope to reach that. But it shows, I think, how much of the suffering we experience is subjective, our opinions, as the Stoics would say.
I suffer a lot - and most is unnecessary. Levels of noise that most people wouldn't even notice are suffering to me. Part of that is the way I'm wired; part is training and habit. I don't know that I can change it - but I at least realize that it is my doing. The damned fireworks are data; my hating them is, on some level, my action.
Also, as you say, we live in a culture that tries to anesthetize everything. That's damned unhealthy. Because (as Buddhism teaches) suffering is one of the main reasons people look to grow.
Finally, while I believe it's important that I try to see how I increase my own suffering, I also need to try to realize that for anyone else, their suffering is absolutely and subjectively real. Not always easy; I have a friend who's a massive hypochondriac, that's a tough one for me. But I do believe we need to try cultivate compassion as we can, and that's based on empathy from our own suffering.
I honestly only thought about metaphysical suffering. Physical pain is a different game I'd say.
The part about our own influence on how much we suffer is very interesting. The raw data versus what we make of it. I will take that into account for the next level of this thought, thank you for bringing it in.
I absolutely agree on having to suffer in order to grow. The shielding and anesthesia as you so perfectly put it is inhibiting just that, destroying a valuable piece of what to be human means, at least to me - the metaphysical growth.
Hypochondriacs and people who exaggerate their suffering are the cases that I struggle with, too. I think that by accepting their suffering as such, not judging it, but feeling it, I have a way better connecting to them and can ignore the "noise" of what they say they suffer, and feel what is. Or at least I hope. We'll see, I'll definitely keep you updated on any shifts in data to that theory 😅