The Various Problems of Suffering

I’m trying to make sure I’ve grasped the significant possibilities when it comes to what our problem may be as a result of our suffering, or our experience of it.

i.e., our suffering may cause us to have this as a problem (requiring some kind of answer):

  1. Maybe we’ll have no problem at all. We’ll be absolutely fine with whatever happens.

  2. Maybe our problem will be the suffering itself, i.e., not a conceptual problem but more of a lament arising directly out of our existential anguish.

  3. Maybe our problem will be the reason for our suffering, i.e., not so much that we suffer but why we suffer. We want a conceptual response that explains things, for our not knowing is the real problem.

  4. Or maybe we have a good idea of why we suffer and our problem is our conclusion on the matter, i.e., maybe we come to believe that God is to blame, and so God becomes our problem.

(It is from here that the possibilities become harder to track…)

4i) As mentioned, maybe our suffering will cause us to have a problem with God, i.e., with God’s justice (maybe God is an asshole) or God’s value (maybe God is a weakling).

4ii) Maybe our suffering will cause us to have a problem with the world, i.e., maybe we’ll blame the world for our condition and curse the world excluding ourselves!

4iii) Maybe our suffering will cause us to curse ourselves/humankind, i.e., what we’ll conclude (and lament) is that we are insignificant things without a future.

Is there anything else that our suffering may lead us to think? Are there any other problems independent of these that could arise from our suffering, or from our experience of it?

I have a hard time following what you are actually trying to say, but it does seem that you have left out the most obvious, “we will blame each other” (hence divorces and wars).

Maybe you’ve followed pretty good! What I’m after are basic responses to suffering, or the various problems that suffering can result in (i.e., if we were to conceptualize a problem out of our suffering, what are the possibilities?)

So yes, one possibility is that our suffering will cause us to blame someone else. Our problem in this case becomes that person (or thing) that we blame. i.e., it is not our suffering per se that is our problem, but rather the one who causes it.

I’ve captured this possibility in various ways. i.e., perhaps in our suffering we blame God, and it is God, and not our suffering, that is our problem. Similarly perhaps we blame the world because we think it is a shitty place or perhaps we blame ourselves.

I don’t think there are any wrong answers. i.e., our suffering can rightfully cause a number of problems to arise in us. I’m more curious if I’ve grasped the basic options.

(Job expresses a problem and God responds and it is crucial to understanding the book of Job to understand what in fact Job’s problem is… Hence I’m after the options…)

MAYBE NO ONE IS TO BLAME…

Okay, so you are defining, “the problem” as “what we perceive as the cause of our suffering”.
And then asking what potential options are available for our perceptions/deductions for those causes.

Hmm…

  1. ignore the suffering
  2. directly remove the suffering
  3. seek knowledge of the source of suffering
  4. conclude a cause so as to have possible action to take.

Perhaps…

This gets us away from my question however which is not after a list of possibilities as to who is to blame, but a list of possible problems that could arise as a result of our suffering, one of which is that we blame someone and that person becomes a problem for us.

(i.e., maybe we blame God and God becomes our problem, and we need to hear some kind of defence of God if we are to be consoled.)

Not quite… I define “the problem” more as something that calls for an answer/consolation and that, while it may be what we perceive as the cause of our suffering it may be something else as well, such as the suffering itself.

Some people experience suffering and carry on without issue. Some people think God is the cause and so they curse God. Some people curse the world or individuals in the world. Some people don’t care what the cause of the suffering is but only that they suffer. Their problem is the suffering itself. Some people can abide the suffering but they just need to know why. They don’t know why and so their problem is finding out.

See? “The problem” is not always the cause of our suffering. That’s just one possibility (and yes, the one that opens up into a great diversity of possibilities…).

These are ways of responding to suffering, i.e., solutions. Indeed worth pursuing but distinct from the possible problems that could arise as a result of our suffering…

i.e., “ignorance” is a way of dealing with the problem, it is not the problem itself…

Problem #1–DEATH

So to put this into perspective, when you suffer is the problem that arises for you the fact that you will die? i.e., is it your mortality that you lament, and that you want an answer to?

That’s great. I would include that in 4iii) from my original list.

(I would also say that it gets at half of Job’s problem. (And therefore God’s answer…) i.e., Part of Job’s problem as humankind is that he will die. God responds by giving Job hope in the resurrection of the dead.)

Aly,

You have reflexes in your body which help you.
Muscle reflex prevents you from overextending your muscle and causing serious injury.
Gag reflex prevents you from accidentally obstructing your airway and dying.
Thermoception reflex allows you to react to something that can burn you and cause serious injury.

Existentially, you have a reflex called suffering, or emotional pain (sadness, stress, depression, etc…).

James had the best answer really:

That’s what reflexes are for.

As I put it, don’t try not to have things which can cause you suffering, and don’t try not to have suffering.
Embed yourself into everything of importance as much as possible, and when something is causing the negative, determine why and address that.

The more you do so, the more definitions you will have of yourself.

My question was probably not put well. I’m not looking for a way to understand suffering, or for a way to address it, but rather I’m wondering what kind of conceptual problems it could generate in the mind of the sufferer.

Imagine Job sitting on his ash heap. What on earth could be going through his mind? What problems would his suffering raise? What problem does his suffering raise? That’s what I’m after.

There’s no means to provide that here.
That is essentially a lifetime of working in psychology.

If you want to identify every possible species of problem that could arise, then yes. But I believe broad and fairly exhaustive categories can be easily determined.

For example, if it was me sitting on the ash heap I could be cursing God, the world, or myself. Or maybe I’m cursing none of these and simply asking why? Or maybe I don’t even care why? but am simply lamenting the fact that I suffer.

It seems to me that those are the 5 main possibilities. But indeed, the first three at least are open to (perhaps) endless variation.

The easiest method I can offer for something like that is:
The four relationships of being human:
You to yourself
You to others
You to inanimate objects
You to existing

The two fields of magnitude:
Positive
Negative

The two amplitudes of magnitudes:
Reflective
Active

Which could be conceived of by charting akin to the image in the tab, and over time would probably look something akin to a wave or line chart.
[tab]gauge.JPG[/tab]

To explain:
If you feel sad, let’s say, then that would be a negative reflection.
If you feel angry, then that would be a negative action.
If you feel happy, then that would be a positive reflection.
If you feel joy, then that would be a positive action.

There are a grand number of “amplitudes” and “field” magnitudes in between such ranges, and there are others further beyond these (such as euphoria or rage).

The more relationships that are interacted with at once in one emotion, the more complex and uncertain the sensation becomes; meaning, harder to place: specifically if it includes cardinal starting points at the relationship between you and yourself and you and existing and then compounds later emotional sensations between you and yourself and you and others intertwined.
Those are probably the most difficult to sift through because what appears to be the cause is a red herring of the first layers.

So, in a way, the relationships work like multipliers to the values of the magnitudes.
The difference of reflective versus active is a matter of time; shifting from reflection to action, as a transmission of digestion.
The question usually is which type of action will come from which reflection.
This entirely depends on the reflection process of the individual.

Say, Job.
Had he reflected differently, an entirely different response actively would have arose.

Grief, sadness, depression, and the lot, are tools of meditation.
They are only faults when they consume to the point of perpetual inaction; which appears to be the fear of Job’s colleagues - that Job has gone to the point of inaction; into the void of reflection from the negative.
However, Job, in the end, has not done such a thing and instead has simply deeply reflected on the negative as a means of meditating upon his god in gratitude.
Here, Job turns a negative into a form of a bitter sweet positive by attaching grief to gratitude by league of time.
The more meditation upon the negative Job seems to take, the greater his appreciation seems to rise and rise inwardly toward his god for even granting that which he has had the ability to even lose.

Counter example:
Buddha would be described as someone that reflected deeply from the negative until he was able to turn the reflection from the negative into a reflection from the positive.
In other words, he was able to use the reflection from the negative as a method to changing the perspective of what constitutes the negative, and in so doing opened up a wider band of what is positive to him (changed what constitutes the “0” mark between negative and positive).
After this, then the reflection into the positive deeply created his ability to positively act by sharing his insight.

By further example:
Jesus would be an example of someone taking the reflection of the negative and turning it around into a great magnitude of both negative and positive action.
Where Buddha and Job were pacifists in response, Jesus shows action and doing at rapid and radical means.
Keep in mind: “negative” does not mean “bad” in the sense of morally wrong.
It means emotional context; a negative sensation. For instance, Jesus’ outrage at the temple would be a negative action because it was an aggressive action of anger, which is a negative magnitude that caused immediate and responsive unrest.

Anger, as such, can be morally good just as easily as morally bad.
It depends on the ethical context of the situation to make that judgment.
As such, I leave that out of the above method.
Instead, only the impact of the emotion is described.

That would be my offer.
This is my way of determining human behavior in general context.

No doubt. But what did Job reflect, or what was the result of his reflection? What problem arose for Job that required the consolation of an answer?

That is what I am after, or believe is Job himself.

As a result of his suffering Job curses himself. It is this that God answers to and consoles Job about (see verse 42:6).

I don’t know. Unlike Buddha, Job didn’t activate a public response.

No? What about Job’s wife? She responds to Job. And the three friends. They all respond to him. And then there’s Elihu and not to forget God. They both respond to Job too.

It seems that Job activates quite the public response.

I meant in the sense that there isn’t a Jobism format of religion floating around.
You are unique in that endeavor.
You might be the first.

Gave some closer attention to this. It sounds like “the negative” or the suffering itself is the conceptual content of Job’s problem. I wonder about your estimate though of his resolution, i.e., that “Job turns a negative into a form of a bitter sweet positive by attaching grief to gratitude by league of time” though.

You know, I could accept this 100% if the book ended after chapter 2, where Job has once again declared his obstinate faith in God, but I wonder…

How do you translate 42:6, if I haven’t asked you before? I’m wondering what your reading here really means for Job in the end, or for his final resolution… Is Job consoled about his grief because God has helped him “attach it to gratitude”?..

Ha! True. Job didn’t inspire a religion. But nor do I want to be the father of Jobism! I don’t see anything in Job that I don’t see elsewhere in the Bible. It’s just so perfectly expressed there, you know? It’s one of those books/stories that could replace them all, you know? And you’d still have all that you need…

Every beating Job curses is himself.
He always wishes for his god to destroy him.
He compares his faults to being a wounded animal that kicks and whines, needing to be killed in mercy.
In 42, he summarizes previous comments made by his god about him.
Basically, it’s just a humility statement.
It sounds so drastic in English doesn’t it?
Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
Such a stark image.

Hebrew essentially comes out as:
On the account of this [the stuff previous to this line, which basically states how awesome god is], I then reject/retract [my earlier wishes of your actions] and repent upon the grounds of dust and ash.

There’s a couple Hebrew concepts in play.
One, dust and ash. Job would likely be covered in such in his morning.
But also, it is a double play in that man is dust and ash; it is what man is created from; earth.
This is the figurative.
Upon the grounds of what makes man, man, he repents.
And upon the grounds of being in grief; he repents.

Kind of all of the above are implied at once.

It, in short, is an apology for thinking he, as the wounded ox, knows when his master should slit his throat and when his master should nurse him back to health.

It was indeed written well.