I've read countless (more or less) religious, spiritual, mystical, philosophical, and self-help books that basically take an optimistic approach to life.
Yes, life is difficult, as the Buddha said. But those books say that it's possible to turn suffering into well- being through a myriad of suggested ways, many of them contradictory.
Believe in God. Meditate. Find your true self. Flow with whatever happens. Have a positive attitude.
Nothing wrong with all that. Except when it is. Yesterday Amazon delivered into my eagerly awaiting hands a book that Sam Harris recommended on Twitter: "Life is Hard," by Kieran Setiya, a philosopher who teaches at MIT.
It's a breath of fresh air for me. And I've only read the introduction. Here's some excerpts from the introduction. I really like both Setiya's writing style and his clear thinking.
Life, friends, is hard -- and we must say so. It's harder for some than it is for others. Into each life some rain must fall, but while the lucky dry themselves beside the fire, others are drenched by storms and floods, both literal and figurative.
We live in the wake of a global pandemic and mass unemployment, amid the surging catastrophe of climate change and the revival of fascism. These calamities will disproportionately harm the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed.
...Since the age of twenty-seven, I have experienced chronic pain: persistent, fluctuating, strange, a constant drone of sensory distraction. It can be difficult to concentrate and, at times, impossible to sleep. Because it is invisible, my condition is isolating: almost no one knows.
...There is no cure for the human condition. But after twenty years teaching and studying moral philosophy, I believe that it can help. This book explains how.
...We should not turn away from hardship; and the best is often out of reach. Striving for it only brings dismay. This attitude may strike you as perverse or pessimistic. But we need not live our "best lives" in order to be more resilient; and we have to face the facts.
Here's an experience you may have had. You tell a friend about a problem you are coping with, maybe a blowup at work or in a close relationship, a health scare that has you rattled. They are quick to reassure you -- "Don't worry; it will all be fine!" -- or to offer you advice.
But their response is not consoling. Instead, it feels like disavowal: a refusal to acknowledge what you're going through. What we learn in moments like these is that assurance and advice can operate as denial.
Worse than denial, even, is the urge to justify human suffering. "Everything happens for a reason" -- except, of course, it doesn't. Philosophers have a word, "theodicy," for an argument that vindicates the ways of God to man.
Theodicies address the problem of evil: if God is omnipotent and benevolent, what accounts for the manifold evils of the world?
But theodicy has a life of its own, outside of narrowly theistic or doctrinal contexts. Religious or not, we conjure the problem of evil whenever we protest that something should not be; and we engage in something like theodicy when we say it's for the best.
The problem with theodicy is not just intellectual -- none of the arguments work -- but ethical, too. It's wrong to justify your own or others' suffering, to mute pity or protest in that way.
...So this is where we are: heirs to a tradition that urges us to focus on the best in life but painfully aware of the ways in which life is hard. To open our eyes is to come face-to-face with suffering -- with infirmity, loneliness, grief, failure, injustice, absurdity.
We should not blink; instead, we should look closer. What we need in our affliction is acknowledgement.
...Two insights light the way. The first is that being happy is not the same as living well. If you wish to be happy, dwelling on adversity may or may not be of use. But mere happiness should not be your goal. Happiness is a mood or feeling, a subjective state; you could be happy while living a lie.
...The truth is that we should not aim to be happy but to live as well as we can.
...I don't mean we should strive to be unhappy, or be indifferent to happiness, but there is more to life than how it feels. Our task is to face adversity as we should -- and here truth is the only means. We have to live in the world as it is, not the world as we wish it would be.
The second guiding light is that, in living well, we cannot extricate justice from self-interest or divide ourselves from others. It will emerge as the book goes on that even the most insular concerns -- with one's own suffering, one's loneliness, one's frustrations -- are implicitly moral.
They are entangled with compassion, with the value of human life, with ideologies of failure and success that obfuscate justice. Reflecting honestly on affliction in our own lives leads toward concern for others, not into narcissistic self-regard.
“Into each life some rain must fall, but while the lucky dry themselves beside the fire, others are drenched by storms and floods, both literal and figurative.”
..........That’s spot on! Getting drenched by storms and floods is always very trying; but is one thing to momentary have to go through that sort of thing, while assured of a comforting fire by which to afterwards dry oneself at and drift off to sleep by, if only one can find the strength to weather the present crisis out; and an entirely different matter altogether to have to battle those storms and floods, knowing that even if one wins through the present crisis, but all that awaits one are days and months and years of scarcity and discord and other crises of other, perhaps harsher, sorts.
Haha, the cynic in me pipes up to laughingly point out that the solutions to crises that pampered princes come out with, no matter how lofty the genius of said prince, are perhaps not very relevant to the crises that less fortunate souls deal with, even if said prince deigns to slum it out with and like the peasants for eight or ten or whatever many years it was! (Not the cynicism is necessarily synonymous with wisdom, and so I take my cynicism, as well, with a pinch of salt!)
----------
“The problem with theodicy is not just intellectual -- none of the arguments work -- but ethical, too. It's wrong to justify your own or others' suffering, to mute pity or protest in that way.”
……….If ever there was a concept devised, a thought, or rather a line of thought, that is the foulest and most offensive, then that is theodicy. Every time some pompous religious POS holds forth with some theodical bromide, whether Christian, or Karmic, or whatever other flavor, when faced with someone else’s suffering, then they should be beaten to an inch from death right there right then, or better still all of their near and dear ones beaten to a painful death right in front of their eyes, and then the guy who delivered the beating should scream that same theodical “comfort” loudly, deafeningly, right into their ears.
Which, of course, if no different than --- or at least, a rather savage version of --- Samuel Johnson’s earthy refutation of Berkeley. Truth to tell that counter-argument, in either context, is no more than a logical fallacy, the sort of thing woo-peddlers tend to resort to, and not those who value reason! That is, while theodical arguments are, one and all, patently nonsensical, and easily refuted; but neither Samuel Johnson’s witticism, nor my attempted savagery, is a truly valid refutation of it. But, as KS points out, the problem with theodical arguments is not just intellectual but ethical as well; and this line of “argument”, if one may call it that, does directly address the ethical enormity of theodical arguments. That is, given the supremely offensive nature of theodical constructions (offensive precisely because they’re all about defending the indefensible), and specifically because they’re nonsensical and often deliberately and dishonestly obscurantist, I believe even the savagery of my riff off of Samuel Johnson is entirely well deserved. (In its figurative form, I mean to say, and not literally, obviously!)
----------
“in living well, we cannot extricate justice from self-interest”
……….All the rest of what he says makes a great deal of sense, although I don’t comment on all of those individual parts specifically. But this part I don’t think I get. I should have thought that justice is, or should be, independent of self-interest. Maybe I’m misunderstanding him here, but as far as I can make out he seems to be suggesting the exact opposite here!
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | October 09, 2022 at 08:18 AM
[Kieran Setiya: - “...So this is where we are: heirs to a tradition that urges us to focus on the best in life but painfully aware of the ways in which life is hard. To open our eyes is to come face-to-face with suffering -- with infirmity, loneliness, grief, failure, injustice, absurdity.”]
I see two perspectives on this problem of suffering. Firstly, I have little or no concept of how some people seem to bravely cope and even flourish with a life of pain and disability. Perhaps it is something that one adjusts to. Having had a reasonably fit and healthy life for most of my life, I can't imagine being infirm or how to cope with it.
Secondly, I do accept that for the average reasonably fit and healthy individual, suffering can also takes on a certain state of mind, a sort of a discontent, a desire for life to be different than it is. This type of quite common suffering I feel to be connected with the mind, with how we think. There seems to be a constant stream of mental chatter (see previous blog) that often takes the form of imagined scenarios, worry or plain old ramblings that have little relevance to present realities.
Constant thinking and dwelling on such thoughts is what meditation is supposed to address. It is a habit that is hard (if not impossible) to deal with particularly for those who have busy working and family lives – there is always some issue or problem that the mind continually conjures up via (often) self protective thinking.
It will be interesting to see what else 'Chatter' and 'Life is Hard',comes up with.
Posted by: Ron E. | October 09, 2022 at 08:53 AM