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May 24, 2005Painless life, painless death, painless civilizationA reader emailed this to me. A blog I have never seen before, called Ambivablog, “The swing state of the religious and political blogosphere.” My reader thought I would find this interesting, and indeed, I do find it VERY interesting: See what I mean about this Morioka dude? From the beginning of another book of his, Painless Civilization: I wonder if contemporary society might now be being swallowed up by a pathology, the pathology of “painless civilization.” I would like to deliver this book to those who are in the midst of anxiety covered over with pleasure, in the midst of repetition without any joy, and in the midst of an endless labyrinth without exit, but are nevertheless willing to live their lives without regret in a corner of their minds. . . . He describes a beautifully cared-for comatose patient in intensive care, then muses: Aren’t the activities of contemporary civilization nothing but to create, on a social scale, this kind of human being sleeping peacefully in intensive care units? Isn’t contemporary civilization systematically trying to create humans, in the intensive care units named cities, the humans who look at first sight to be working cheerfully and playing merrily, but in fact just sleeping peacefully in the deep layer of their life? If that should be the case, then, who set the trap? Why has civilization progressed in this direction? Yes, this sounds like reading that is right up my alley. The blogger also mentions the thoughtful Richard Lawrence Cohen, who is on my blogroll. I think the whole question of how we view illness, suffering and death is a terribly important one, particularly living as we do, in an age where everyone wants to be free of any discomfort or inconvenience. We lose our humanity that way, as we see happening all around us, and more aggresively, elsewhere. http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/05/24/painless-life-painless-death-painless-civilization/trackback/ 20 Responses to “Painless life, painless death, painless civilization” |
May 24th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Yes, I remember reading somewhere that if we level all the mountains we won’t be able to climb higher than where we are.
I think part of the reason why we have this idea is because secularists have nothing else to look forward to. They don’t believe in God, so there is no heaven. There is nothing beyond the here and now so they are trying to create Utopia on earth, trying to make things perfect right here.
It’s also an ignorance of human nature - somehow thinking that social engineering will solve all of mankind’s problems by changing his circumstance - yet ignoring his soul.
May 24th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
God gives us suffering for His own reasons. I believe that it is more about “us” than the sufferer. We are tested and, even more, we have the opportunity to grow in character. How trivial so much of the world seems to us afterwards. I don’t say this well but I wanted to try to share it with you because I find myself in such agreement with you about almost everything.
May 24th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
I understand what you are saying, Florence. I think JPII tried to
teach it to us in his last few years, as he suffered so greatly but
did not allow himself to be pushed into retirement because he was hard
to look at or because he required a bit of help.
May 24th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
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May 24th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
I have been thinking along those lines as well. It occurs to me that a lot of the society change we have been seeing can be the result of the misguided, but likely well-meaning, effort to remove all pain and discomfort from our lives. That would explain things like bumper stickers that say “Every child is an honor student at …” and codes against “offensive” speech. It’s like we all want to live in cocoons where everything is safe and all the edges are rounded. To see where this kind of society is headed one must only watch “Logan’s Run”.
Life is hard. Life is also good, but first it is hard.
May 24th, 2005 at 7:25 pm
–I must say I find this post bewildering and the comments even more so. I commented below about living in a completely different mental world from my friends here, and being just a visitor, but a post like this makes me feel like a visitor who has left his hotel without his pocket street guide.
–In my world there is plenty of pain to be found and plenty of people not living in cocoons. My world is far from utopia.
–My companion has been dealing with chronic pain for 25 years, the sort of pain that requires that requires Hydrocodone at its worst and most acute, and Tramadol, Methotrexate, and Cymbalta in multiple doses daily.
–There is absolutely nothing “joyful” or “spiritually uplifting” about this. It merely hurts, hurts every minute of the day, sometimes hurts unbearably, and, by all odds, is going to hurt for the next twenty-five years.
–My companion and I spend a lot of time in the waiting areas of the Social Security office (she is SSDI) the Medicaid office (with $2500 in Rx retail costs every month, she simply would not survive without Medicaid), and about two doctor’s offices a week (at last count she had about eight different doctors).
–We meet lots of people there and my companion would talk to a statue if that was all that was available, so I get to hear incidentally about lots of pain and suffering.
–My Dharma Center is in a part of town where people of modest means can collectively buy a broken down church. Every time I go to group meditation practice I get to see or meet the homeless, the souses piling in and out of the dangerous bars, the workman’s comp disabled, the single mothers in project housing, and the small time crack and meth dealers operating out of the trunks of their cars.
–One of the tasks at one of my jobs is to translate handwritten letters of complaint about treatment, by people who are almost completely delusional, to try to figure out if they are actually being abused. They often are. And this is not the most harrowing thing I deal with.
–I used to pay medical and dental insurance claims and the incident that sticks in my mind most was that of the dentist who interupted the drilling of a patient’s teeth and forced HER to call me to confirm her coverage. Apparently his receptionist was busy.
–My world also contains people like Paris Hilton about whom it can hardly be said that her life is hard first and good later.
–I spent some time teaching in prep schools and the little liberal arts colleges that are the Pocket Ivy League for the C-students in prep schools. I saw lots of Paris Hiltons there.
–In my world the most spiritual and religious people are those who fall in between these two extremes of unending luxury and unending misery.
–The “utopia” that my politics desires is where everyone is free enough from the distractions of both pain and pleasure to have the time to even think about being religious.
–This is hardly the world of Logan’s Run.
May 24th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
The Master did not hesitate to relieve suffering. His message was one of compassion. He was not JUDGEMENTAL and taught forgiveness. Above all else he commanded us to love one another. Hypocrite is the name of one who would look upon another with “love” and tell them their suffering was necessary. If we are to call ourselves Christians, it is our DUTY to alleviate suffering whenever and wherever we can.
Anyone with the temerity and audacity to pose as a person of faith and justify suffering as God’s will is lacking in heart as well as soul. They do not tread in the footsteps of the Master, they carve their own twisted path. Jesus warned us of those like you!
May 24th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
I think, Joe, perhaps you’re not quite getting what it is I’m saying.
And you’ve read me enough that I should think you would!
I don’t think I ever said “pain is a joy! Suffering is wonderful.”
Only that it has value, spiritual value, that enlarges our humanity,
depending, of course on how you receive and respond to the suffering.
It’s a very LARGE subject and not one that can really be reduced to
politics, because it is profoundly spiritual.
But yes, the political does enter in to it…particularly when you
have a situation where moral and ethical considerations which must be
weighed, when attempting to alleviate suffering, are picked up and
transformed into political issues. I’m thinking of John Edwards
saying if he and Kerry were elected, Chris Reeve would get up from his
wheelchair and walk because they support embryonic stem cell research.
With no acknowledgement of the facts that non-embryonic stem cell
research is showing much more promise. I’m talking about the
demonization of we on the right who object to ESC research and
subjected to as the lie is repeated over and over, that we don’t
support ANY SC research.
It’s a big, big subject. And maybe tonight I will try to write more
on it, more lucidly.
May 24th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
#7 - for someone who is so obsessed with how “unjudgemental” Jesus was, you’re AWFULLY quick to throw accusations and judgements of hypocrisy.
Jesus suffered. Not only on the cross, but upon hearing of the death of Lazarus, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus didn’t say, “nope, suffering is BAD and therefore I won’t do it.” Rather he taught us a very great lesson about the value of making suffering meaningful, not just in our own lives and the lives of others.
Jesus was “judgemental” enough to call a spade a spade. He was “judgemental enough” not merely to heal to but council, “Go and sin no more.” He was “judgemental” enough to council the apostles to “shake the dust off your sandles” when towns were not amenable to the message.
Jesus is merciful. He is also Just. Jesus alleviated Suffering. He also Suffered, and embraced the suffering, so that it might transcend mere suffering.
He also taught us this truth: EVERYONE suffers. No one escapes from suffering. It is a part of the human experience, meant to be lived, because the fullness of our human experience cannot be learned if we are busy shutting ourselves down. Feeling is better than not feeling.
Everyone suffers. There is not a person commenting on these boards who has not suffered, either in body or spirit, or because of the suffering of a loved one.
It is not an occasion of joy. But as I learned when I lost my own beloved brother…joy can be found in the middle of it. If you are open to the Lord, and ready to look for it.
May 24th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
The idea that religion is something for which we do not yet have time, that it must be reserved for some indistinct future in which there will be neither pain nor pleasure in excess, assumes that religion is something less than or dependent upon history–that it is merely a final garnish on a completed and motionless life.
But religion is not a trophy or a reward at the end–you can never declare yourself ‘finished’ as a religious person–it is a neverending process within oneself that endures the tests of actuality but must not be shaken by them. It is, as Kierkegaard would say, not standing out on dry land but swimming out on the ocean with 70,000 fathoms below you–and the trick is not to find your way to land but to head out towards the deep–to suffer and yet feel religious joy.
And the worst (also the most universal) suffering is that suffering within oneself, the suffering in possibility which cannot be escaped like the suffering in actuality: the religious person who found himself in a (finite or earthly) utopian actuality would still be tormented in his own soul by the possibility of suffering, the possibility of sin–since the inner is always more important than the outer to the religious person. (Kierkegaard speaks, for example, of having himself once been terrified of the possibility of being buried alive–it was impossible for him to find any rational reason why this could never possibly happen to him or any truly infallible precaution against it–the only solution was to dwell on the terrors rather than fleeing them and to decide that even should he himself suffer and die in this way, his faith in God would and must remain unchanged.)
Indeed, the essential qualification of the religious in Kierkegaard’s philosophy is that it comes after actuality, is higher than actuality–and thus no specific accident which happens by chance to one person rather than another can essentially mean that one religious person has suffered a greater trial than another. Through this also comes the idea that no religious person stands higher than another–in the eyes of God all are equal and through the religious there is absolute democracy.
By suffering alone you do not become a religious person–you become so by choosing suffering of your own free will. The point is not that there is no suffering in our age, but that because we prefer to escape suffering at all costs if we can, suffering has become unfree and thus meaningless to those who do suffer.
May 24th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
N.B.–not only does everyone suffer, but everyone who is not intellectually dead also judges; as indeed one may judge that another person is being ‘judgmental’.
May 24th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Sometimes the joy doesn’t become apparent until much later. Thirty-three years ago, when my first child was brain damaged at birth there was only pain. There was anger and disappointment and frustration. “How could this happen to me?” “Where is the perfect life I expected?”
But, we learned to live the life we were given day by day. My daughter died at age nine. I struggled for a while trying to understand what coul possibly have been accomplished by this. And gradually I realized how I had changed. I remembered all special ed teachers and medical professionals we had met over the years who were growing as they witnessed the pain of the families of their students and patients. There was a purpose to that life even though I could not see it at the time.
And now there’s joy. I am so priveleged to have been entrusted with that experience. I am so grateful to my daughter for giving me the gift of sharing that life with her. And, I am so humbled by a God who said, “You can do this. Give it a try.”
May 24th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
-Well, perhaps I misunderstood. The original post didn’t really seem pointed toward such moral dilemmas as stem cell research. They are real and I don’t claim to have an easy answer to them.
-It seems to me that wanting to be free of any discomfort or inconvenience has never been confined to here and now. The difference between here and there, and now and then, is that large numbers of us here and now can actually come pretty close.
-I also think that the spiritual problems of those whose lives are comfortable, and can come pretty close to being free from any discomfort, are far different than for most of the people I encounter on my travels.
-Mr. Morioka is really only talking about the first set of people and not the second. His writing essentially implies that the second group doesn’t exist. As such, his writing is part of the spiritual problem of the comfortable, as I see it.
-Part of avoiding all discomfort is to arrange your life so that you don’t have much contact with the people whom I routinely encounter.
-Without such contact you can think about them anything you please, including, if you are so inclined, that they are not really there.
-As a matter of politics, my view, at least, is not that all suffering can or should be relieved by “social engineering”, but that the public policies undertaken ONLY in the interest of the comfortable can (and have) made life steadily worse for the rest of us.
-Now maybe my judgment is wrong, but it is based on direct observation of people who rountinely don’t even come close to avoiding all discomfort.
-As for their spiritual problems, they basicly consist of avoiding the trap of a rock-hard despair that tempts them to many different types of immoral actions.
-And the problems of the comfortable is the trap of boredom and indifference to others that leads them to a great many immoral inactions.
-The most compelling thing about Christ was not that he healed the sick when he went among the poor and the sinful to spread his message, but that he was there at all.
May 24th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
“The idea that religion…must be reserved for some indistinct future in which there will be neither pain nor pleasure in excess”
-I’m not absolutely sure that this was pointed at the end of my first comment, but if it was, I don’t think it was what I said and it certainly wasn’t what I meant. I meant something far more practical.
-How many of us even think of religion when in the Emergency Room Triage with a broken bone? Or in the middle of sex? Our minds have to be relatively free of distraction to even think about it at all. Free from distraction right here and right now, not in some nebulous future.
-Now I know that one of the differences between being a Buddhist and being a Christian is that we Buddhists are not troubled with the “when bad things happen to good people” dilemma of any monotheism.
-Part and parcel of that dilemma is the notion that there is some sort of special “religious person” who is different from other people.
-In my view, and my teachers’ view, there is no special religious person, particularly, but there is a religious problem, and it’s everybody’s problem, even if they are too distracted to think about it, or even if they refuse to think about it at all.
-The problem is “Why is there suffering? and What can we do about it?”
-The greatest teachers of my tradition say that you should wear your suffering like an ornament, but that you can do that only if, among other things, you learn how to tame your mind so you won’t be distracted by it.
May 24th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
:There is no such thing as an essentially religious or an essentially non-religious person–there is, however, a non trivial choice available to all people by which one may or may not decide to become religious.
:From what little I know of Buddhism, I understand that it is very centered on the good works by which one alleviates the physical sufferings of others in this world. The idea of Christianity with regards to suffering, is I would say that one chooses one’s suffering and does not shrink back from looking at it; one resigns oneself to it. Suffering is the task of religion, but not the reason for religion–religion has and needs no reason; it has its teleology in itself.
:To again reference Kierkegaard (I’m afraid I just finished ‘Stages on Life’s Way’ and will probably be talking in multiply compound sentences for weeks :)) with regards to the sufferings of others, he believes that it is not in the power of any one person, essentially, to help another person. That means, certainly, that (Christian) faith and redemption in the most important–the eternal and spiritual–sense, are found only on one’s own, and it is to one’s own spiritual development that one’s primary responsibility lies, since it is only within the realm of one’s self that one has any real power to create change. But furthermore, while one may seem to harm or to help another person by one’s own works, the workings of the external world are, by this estimation of Christianity at least, largely if not entirely up to Governance or Providence to direct. The individual’s responsibility or guilt for the actions of his ‘world-historical self’ is something which he chooses to bear, as a part of ‘choosing himself’ as the existentialists say, but in the final analysis (according to Kierkegaard at least) free will has its arena primarily or entirely in the individual’s inner life and in the value which that individual attaches after the fact to his actions in the world. Actuality, whether pleasure or pain, is a test of the individual soul, who while he may enter into eternal and loving relationships with other such souls, is essentially alone and powerless to help them however their sufferings may redouble his own anxieties and make him feel that he is swimming above not just 70,000 but 140,000 fathoms of water.
:But indeed, in Kierkegaard’s view, it is not only not possible or scarcely possible for actuality to be affected by the individual’s own will, but it is undesirable for one individual to attempt to directly cause another to choose to become religious, for fear of actually doing that person spiritual harm. A large part of the responsibility which the preacher or pastor has–since he cannot essentially effect a spiritual change for the better in his listeners–is to speak earnestly to them as though to himself, but to avoid as far as possible exerting any aesthetic spell or charisma over his audience, by which they may come to believe in him and in his authority rather than in God and God’s authority. Notably, Kierkegaard also says that, just as an individual person cannot cause another to become religious (and should not try to), a state or a king certainly cannot cause his subjects to be religious or introduce religion in the same way that he might introduce a new breed of cow.
:I think it’s fair to say of Kierkegaard that as a man of privileged upbringing, racked though he may have been by private suicidal depression, he was also perhaps insufficiently moved by or familiar with the actual, physical suffering which other less fortunate people than himself endured–he would, I suspect, have said that the suffering of any person as compared with the suffering of another person differs only in ‘quantity not quality’ and is thus essentially no different, religiously considered. Either may become a path to God, but both individuals, should they choose these different paths, reach the same God in the end.
:The difference, I suppose, is that suffering is the task for both religions, but while one has a goal in mind in this world–the eradication of suffering–the other regards the goal of suffering as the infinite next world; suffering is not itself considered a problem to be wiped out. The one stands opposed to suffering, the other submits to it as a just punishment.
May 24th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
Dude–that SO didn’t look nearly that long in the comment box.
May 25th, 2005 at 12:06 am
“From what little I know of Buddhism, I understand that it is very centered on the good works by which one alleviates the physical sufferings of others in this world.”
-More precisely, it seeks to eradicate the primary causes of suffering for each individual. The Dharma states that the root cause of any suffering has to do with our misperception of the world as something solid, permanent, and ultimately real, which is opposed to a “self” which is also definite, permanent, and ultimately real.
-The actual dynamics of our immediate suffering are far more complex than this primary root cause. They are like a tangled granny knot in a string. But the specific practices of Buddhism are designed to unravel that knot loop by loop in order to finally percieve the world properly and cease to suffer.
-Cultivating generosity (”good works”) is part of this series of practices and it functions not only to relieve the immediate suffering of others, but also to erode the illusion that the world is something real and independent from who we “really are”. There are many other practices which exist as well, with equally precise functions from the vantage point of the Buddhist goal.
May 25th, 2005 at 11:42 am
This is an exceedingly interesting discussion - so much so that I believe I will begin another post with some excerpts from here, and my own thoughts. Watch for it.
May 25th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
OOH, that would be great Anchoress! Joe, I like your point about there being plenty of people who don’t live in “cocoons”. I also like the points made about suffering being an essential part of life. There’s a difference, though. Some suffering can be alleviated- some can’t. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”.
May 25th, 2005 at 2:05 pm
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