I am currently doing a study of this topic in my philosophy class at school. Any comments/info would be greatly appreciated.
what kind of suffering?
what do you mean by ‘really improve’?
improvement with regards to what?
I think the question should be can one learn the same things in the absence of suffering. By improve I assume you mean learn/appreciate ect. due to exprience with suffering. So the question is can one obtain this knowledge/intelligence without suffering? I don’t think one can.
More suffering doesn’t always equal more improvement.
More improvement doesn’t always equal more suffering.
But, in both cases, it is possible.
~After Death~
Take a look here.
It’s we that improve [the others’] suffering.
And, as far as everything is suffering - at least from a certain known perspective, - it is only through suffering that one can get rid of any suffering (nirvana) and reach the perfect state of a Buddha.
what do you mean by justice?
Before you can get a good mark you must define the topic at hand sufficient enough so as you are able to decifer its in clock work…
What do you mean by “improving ourselves”?
once again your childish attempts at asking a philosophical question fall on their ass…
bad luck mate you fail…
What the F#@k!!! Damn that sh#t is wacked! Say I am stuck in the woods and am forced to gnaw off my own arm, that may improve my appetite but how the hell do i explain that to the folks back at home? Mmmmmmm chooken. 
If you are striving to minimise/avoid suffering (which sounds like a good plan to me!), you’ve got to have a bit of it in the first place in order to know what it is you are trying to avoid. You burn your hand in a fire… you don’t do it again. (unless you enjoyed it!)
Also, where there is the desire for expansion (of any kind), there is the need for trial and error, which results in knowledge & wisdom.
Here is a simple example… a menu has lots of food stuff that you’ve never tried before and one thing that you have. Do you try a new dish or stick to what you know? If you want to expand your "taste bud comfort zone) then you should try a dish you haven’t tried before. If it’s horrible you will learn not to have that one again! (call it suffering, or an error) but it’s only really a lesson. If it’s nice then your taste-bud comfort zone has been expanded.
The old saying “Nothing ventured nothing gained”
So, IMO, where there is expansion, there is suffering.
DALE
Suffering is the main force in evolution. Evolution happens through suffering. Weaker individuals suffer and die and the most adopted stay alive. Humans aren’t no difference. Our suffering is coded in our DNA. There’s no other way. You have to suffer to live. You get hurt sometimes, you have to work to live, you have to suffer through diseases. The meaning of pain is evolution. And yes, it forces human being to find other ways to reduce suffering, to ease the life, but from what i see the tendency of nowadays man is to harden his life. People should wake up someday.
Suffering makes one great. It prepares one for life’s trials. Without suffering, displeasure, etc. there would be no motivation to do anything. hunger is an uncomfortable feeling, but creatures must have that in order to know to eat.
Suffering itself provides a motivation, the actual improvements are a choice made in the face of adversity.
Before i get rsp to this, I would just like to say that not everyone afflicted with suffering will even attempt to change it. There are those who, for whatever reason (and there are many), will remain stagnent while suffering.
true to some extent, I mean suffering in my view stirs motivation only in the case of physical activity, such as procuring food because of hunger etc. mental suffering does not work like that. if one is heartbroken,he/she is completely demotivated to act, to do anything, and it is only forgetfulness which helps one resume any action. suffering is there to signal the proximity of fatal danger, of death.
What about acts of reward to motivation rather then suffering. For example to motivate me to eat you could entice me with rich delicious delacacies rather then hunger being the great motivational force. You can train a dog using a whip or treats you know.
If delicious delacacies were given as reward to you, then after a while “suffering” (for you) would become the feeling of not having those delacacies.
So you would still “suffer” in some way (albeit a less physical “pain” suffering compared to hunger pains.)
Isn’t lack of suffering a reward in itself?
DALE
do we learn from suffering you ask? sometimes yes we do, other times no we dont. The only way we learn is if we want to learn. Our mind only works when we want it to. Suffering is the absence of happiness, when your not happy you say you are suffering, but suffering from what? Ive suffered alot in life, i may only be 15 but i know more about life than any of you ever will. Only our minds can suffer, not our bodies. Reasoning for this is we only feel what we want to feel, that is just how our minds work. So i come to conclusion, do we learn from suffering? yes we do learn from it but only when we want to. If you do something once and you have to pay the consequences are you going to do it again? It depends if that particular thing brings you pleasure of any sort
Does suffering really improve us?
Is it possible for ‘us’ to be improved: can we make progress, or is that an illusion? It certainly isn’t easy. But by ‘improve’ I assume you mean make us ‘better’ human beings, that is, make us morally ‘better.’ And this of course implies that we are somehow morally sick and that by calling in a certain ‘physician’ by the name of ‘suffering’ we can somehow be made more whole, or holier, as humans.
Well, certainly, ascetics would agree that suffering does make us more compassionate human beings. And to that end they will even go so far as to invent ways of inflicting pain upon themselves. Think of the anchorites, - oh there are scores of examples that jump to mind… rites of passage… even modern-day vegetarians indulge in ascetic practise… god it is everywhere! The Christian festival of Lent and Muslim festival of Ramadan are forms of ascetic denial… Then there is the sending of our boys into wars to make men of them… Suffering is part of the tri-fold way of the cross, more often spoken of in terms of abstinence or temperance…
We do prefer to choose our own suffering rather than have it inflicted upon us by some outside agency. When something befalls us out of the blue it is more difficult for us to handle but if we do get through the trauma of it there is a strong likelihood that we will end up stronger, kinder, more tolerant, more virtuous, gentlefolk… Something like the death or loss of a loved one…there are many broken hearts in the world… yes, I would say, provisionally, suffering, as a general rule, does really improve us.
I dont have any real posts or thesis’s on suffering, i think the world is full of examples. When we suffer we retreat in nothing as the world outside is disagreeable to us, in every way. Nothing meaning death, self-destruction, hate, purposelessness, death. Everything external when looked on in the best of lights, is sublime and alround good. Been earnest is both good and bad, suffering is both also.
Suffering is an external thing that gives us opportunities to practise virtue.
It is this practise of virtue that improves us. Suffering in itself is nothing. It is what you do with it that counts.
We can ourselves partly pre-empt suffering by deliberately choosing to adopt a more simple life-style. Asceticism in moderation, voluntary poverty, abstinence, temperance, endurance, chastity, obedience, etc., such are conducive to bringing about improvement.
So, if we are to make any headway or gains as moral beings, the next time we are in any sort of pain or suffering we would be wise to remind ourselves that suffering is neither good nor bad but the way we respond to it will either improve us or worsen us.
The Christians tell us that Jesus suffered on the cross. But I tell you that Jesus practised virtue on the cross. This is his moral example to us.
I would say it does because if we never suffered we wouldn’t know what suffering is. go figure. But if we were always happy we wouldn’t know we were happy. and most of all we would get used to this happiness and the happy feeling would eventually become normal and we would no longer be happy. We were built to suffer.