There's a gag in Death of the Reprobate where you come across two dudes in the forest arguing over whose wounds are worse and you have the option of telling them that suffering is relative, which is probably meant to be pretty tongue-in-cheek but is low key at least a little profound.
I think "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is only true in the sense that it can be valuable to learn from mistakes, but the closer it comes to literal the more obvious it seems that this is very much not true. Being physically maimed can incur continued hardship and may leave your health palpably worse off; being psychologically maimed, at least in my limited experience, never leaves one better off. There's a frequent need for suffering to -have meaning-, and I think that's very okay inasmuch as it motivates one to be more in tune with their inner turmoil, but I worry that it tends to go awry when we start to lionize suffering, to need others to have suffered as a character building exercise when it's prejudicial of the degree to which suffering is relative. Similarly, we can wisely see the unwise-ness of wishing away all suffering--in its absence we would rapidly find new things to find intolerable--and so we can keenly recognize it for the empty-calories-of-moral-philosophy that it is.
Thanks for this, so much of it rings true to me now but a year ago I would have found much to argue with!
> I worry that it tends to go awry when we start to lionize suffering, to need others to have suffered as a character building exercise when it's prejudicial of the degree to which suffering is relative.
For instance this—on the one hand, I simply didn’t believe anyone who said they didn’t really experience suffering or turmoil in their life. I think that was so inconceivable to me, growing up in a community where suffering was so rampant and unavoidable. In the rare instances that I became convinced that sure, maybe this person really didn’t experience suffering, I felt like there was no way they could have the wisdom or growth those that have experienced (and overcome) suffering did. So you can imagine the importance I attached to suffering!
Also thanks for sending your post, I’ll read! I saw that you linked me in the post but interestingly substack never notified me of that so I completely missed it.
I think it's fair and true that certain types of hardships (are more likely to) teach certain important life lessons but I also think this is tied less to the nature and magnitude of suffering versus how those experiences teach one to make "better" choices in reaction to them (one should also be wary how such hardships might also teach one to make worse choices). But since people and hardships have such variance there will never be a proscribed X trial to beget Y desirable characteristic, and IMO the better path here--and one of the most important yardsticks for parenting and governance--is to teach and encourage preparedness.
I so enjoyed this articulation of the perennially relevant and existential question of suffering, and reading about this untangling process!! Particularly loved the clarity with which you laid out how we form identities around defenses and its attached suffering, which then become how our reality is structured. Undoing suffering = undoing Identity = undoing our reality as we know it.
> But—and here’s the cruel paradox of identity—this search for wholeness is happening in service to the very identity that fractured us in the first place, which only reinforces that identity.
> Giving up an identity feels like a suicide mission [but] that’s because it is, “but only for the thought that creates the mess and struggle in the first place.” Importantly, the goal here is not to replace one’s problematic identity with a positive one: “The point of Identity work is to free a person, not to redefine them.”
This is such a doozy - that whole section is making me think about how there's a way where you have to experience a wholly different reality to even see that you're orienting towards something (like fish to water), and begin to believe that there's another possibility available!
Transformation here isn't a small, thinkable / imaginable shift, but one in which the axel around which your whole world pivots on changes. It's reminding me of what Vervaeke (drawing on LA Paul) talks about, how the you now to the you-as-vampire is a change where self 1 (you now) and self 2 (vampire) has a *non-logical* relationship. You can't infer self 2 in your head from self 1, you have to actually become self 2 to understand what self 2 is about.
Which, actually, reflecting more on how Identity work is to free a person rather than redefine them (great quote), reminds me (by the way of Peterson) of the notion of the phoenix, and how for Jung, his "Self" is that which persists across the transformations, like how the phoenix is that which persists across its deaths and rebirths. For this reason, Jung had Christ to be a symbol for the Self.
I'm curious where you're at with this now with suffering in relationship to meaning / beautiful art etc! Also curious about what (if anything!) you'd say to younger you to help her see what you do now about this.
(Also, sorry it took a whole year to finally get to this, and happy that my notes to you seemed helpful at the time!)
❤️🩹
There's a gag in Death of the Reprobate where you come across two dudes in the forest arguing over whose wounds are worse and you have the option of telling them that suffering is relative, which is probably meant to be pretty tongue-in-cheek but is low key at least a little profound.
I think "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is only true in the sense that it can be valuable to learn from mistakes, but the closer it comes to literal the more obvious it seems that this is very much not true. Being physically maimed can incur continued hardship and may leave your health palpably worse off; being psychologically maimed, at least in my limited experience, never leaves one better off. There's a frequent need for suffering to -have meaning-, and I think that's very okay inasmuch as it motivates one to be more in tune with their inner turmoil, but I worry that it tends to go awry when we start to lionize suffering, to need others to have suffered as a character building exercise when it's prejudicial of the degree to which suffering is relative. Similarly, we can wisely see the unwise-ness of wishing away all suffering--in its absence we would rapidly find new things to find intolerable--and so we can keenly recognize it for the empty-calories-of-moral-philosophy that it is.
Excellent work, your writing frequently pulls out some interesting thoughts. I wrote a longer reaction to the one a few posts back too: https://scpantera.substack.com/p/on-masculinity
Thanks for this, so much of it rings true to me now but a year ago I would have found much to argue with!
> I worry that it tends to go awry when we start to lionize suffering, to need others to have suffered as a character building exercise when it's prejudicial of the degree to which suffering is relative.
For instance this—on the one hand, I simply didn’t believe anyone who said they didn’t really experience suffering or turmoil in their life. I think that was so inconceivable to me, growing up in a community where suffering was so rampant and unavoidable. In the rare instances that I became convinced that sure, maybe this person really didn’t experience suffering, I felt like there was no way they could have the wisdom or growth those that have experienced (and overcome) suffering did. So you can imagine the importance I attached to suffering!
Also thanks for sending your post, I’ll read! I saw that you linked me in the post but interestingly substack never notified me of that so I completely missed it.
I think it's fair and true that certain types of hardships (are more likely to) teach certain important life lessons but I also think this is tied less to the nature and magnitude of suffering versus how those experiences teach one to make "better" choices in reaction to them (one should also be wary how such hardships might also teach one to make worse choices). But since people and hardships have such variance there will never be a proscribed X trial to beget Y desirable characteristic, and IMO the better path here--and one of the most important yardsticks for parenting and governance--is to teach and encourage preparedness.
There's also social/ritual dynamics here, this post is also pretty relevant to how I'm thinking here: https://scpantera.substack.com/p/anger-at-how-other-people-waste-their
(I wonder if the notifications not going through is a consequence of threading the links into the text, hmm)
Turned these comments into a post-long treatment here: https://scpantera.substack.com/p/against-suffering
This is great, thank you for sharing!
I so enjoyed this articulation of the perennially relevant and existential question of suffering, and reading about this untangling process!! Particularly loved the clarity with which you laid out how we form identities around defenses and its attached suffering, which then become how our reality is structured. Undoing suffering = undoing Identity = undoing our reality as we know it.
> But—and here’s the cruel paradox of identity—this search for wholeness is happening in service to the very identity that fractured us in the first place, which only reinforces that identity.
> Giving up an identity feels like a suicide mission [but] that’s because it is, “but only for the thought that creates the mess and struggle in the first place.” Importantly, the goal here is not to replace one’s problematic identity with a positive one: “The point of Identity work is to free a person, not to redefine them.”
This is such a doozy - that whole section is making me think about how there's a way where you have to experience a wholly different reality to even see that you're orienting towards something (like fish to water), and begin to believe that there's another possibility available!
Transformation here isn't a small, thinkable / imaginable shift, but one in which the axel around which your whole world pivots on changes. It's reminding me of what Vervaeke (drawing on LA Paul) talks about, how the you now to the you-as-vampire is a change where self 1 (you now) and self 2 (vampire) has a *non-logical* relationship. You can't infer self 2 in your head from self 1, you have to actually become self 2 to understand what self 2 is about.
Which, actually, reflecting more on how Identity work is to free a person rather than redefine them (great quote), reminds me (by the way of Peterson) of the notion of the phoenix, and how for Jung, his "Self" is that which persists across the transformations, like how the phoenix is that which persists across its deaths and rebirths. For this reason, Jung had Christ to be a symbol for the Self.
I'm curious where you're at with this now with suffering in relationship to meaning / beautiful art etc! Also curious about what (if anything!) you'd say to younger you to help her see what you do now about this.
(Also, sorry it took a whole year to finally get to this, and happy that my notes to you seemed helpful at the time!)