Fate.

[mordant]

I lost four close family members to illness or misadventure, including a wife and child in separate incidents, and I have to say that I did not find anything Aeon said offensive or impertinent. He's sharing what worked for him, and I don't feel my own suffering is minimized or that I'm obligated to agree with him.

You're right that it can be a fine line of course. Lacking the input of Aeon's body language and tone of voice I'm just not willing to assume some sort of sanctimony or desire to self promote at my expense.

Obviously not at *your* expense, or anyone else in particular. I didn't even think it was malicious or consciously sanctimonious. I just find this type of generalised pontificating on suffering ultimately self-involved and often dismissive of what others have gone through (the platitudes certainly do not help. Like I said, the Buddhist profundity is on par with "she's with God now" which most people here find distasteful. To me both are equally distasteful, to others both are helpful).

That conversation with the woman in Brazil I mentioned - I am not sure if she actually told her friends they are being taught a lesson by watching their child die (I think she might have), but she did tell *me* that my mother has a serious autoimmune disease because of a choice she made in a previous life.

So yeah, everyone's mileage does vary, but I have a visceral distaste for people pontificating about suffering in general, especially when it involves suffering either teaching us a lesson or it all boiling down to how *we* look at it. To me that's a refusal or an inability to realise that people see and process things differently. Just because that lady in Brazil learnt something from her miscarriage does not give her the right to tell others they should be learning lessons or putting the blame for not coping as well as she has on the other person's attitude or reaction or, worst of all, blaming the person for their own suffering, either through "a choice in a previous life" or through not having the right attitude.

Just because someone has survived something and learnt something from it, doesn't mean the same thing won't break someone else and such talk comes dangerously close to claiming that it is that second person's fault for not having the right attitude.

I don't disagree. I have often interjected in conversations that talk about the necessity of suffering in order to appreciate or be able to define not-suffering, as that particularly chafes MY hide. A lot of the rationalizations around human suffering involve sort of accepting it as a regrettable necessity instead of working to actually reduce it, as reducing it is seen as somehow not a worthy goal, possibly even a bad goal. I don't buy that line of reasoning. So people being sanguine about suffering bother me almost more than people engaging in vicitim-blaming.

[mordant]

We're so inured to suffering that we can't imagine our existence without it. That's a failure of imagination though.

Being inured to suffering doesn't lessen the imagination of living without it. Acceptance is not necessarily surrender, the way I live it.

Acceptance of the intrinsic necessity of suffering is the problem. I can accept the things I don't control, but the notion that suffering is somehow a necessity or requirement I cannot abide. You are of course correct that one need not surrender to suffering and one can still imagine a world free of it. However, there is a thing I refer to as Christian suffering porn (particularly prevalent in Catholicism, but not confined to it; it just tends to be more overtly expressed visually by Catholic artists) that seems to elevate it in a weird sadomasochistic fashion as an actual blessing-in-disguise. It is my view however that suffering always diminishes the sufferer, is never a good thing, and we never devote enough resources to minimizing or, where possible, eliminating it. It is, to many, religiously and politically, acceptable collateral damage.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It is my view however that suffering always diminishes the sufferer, is never a good thing, and we never devote enough resources to minimizing or, where possible, eliminating it. It is, to many, religiously and politically, acceptable collateral damage.

My experience with my avascular necrosis over the last ten years has taught me otherwise, but that's okay.

You've got your opinion and I've got mine. Much of what suffering does to us, whether that's better or worse, is often determined by our outlook. That's my opinion.

[mordant]

It is my view however that suffering always diminishes the sufferer, is never a good thing, and we never devote enough resources to minimizing or, where possible, eliminating it. It is, to many, religiously and politically, acceptable collateral damage.

My experience with my avascular necrosis over the last ten years has taught me otherwise, but that's okay.

You've got your opinion and I've got mine. Much of what suffering does to us, whether that's better or worse, is often determined by our outlook. That's my opinion.

I am not saying people (myself included) don't make lemonade out of lemons, just to be clear. I'm not bitter, angry, or depressed. I just would rather not have expended the energy making the lemonade.

Sometimes people experience things that change their views, toughen them up, mature them, etc., in ways that they feel might not have otherwise happened, and they feel that, bad as it was, they are better off for it overall. And that's okay too -- so long as they don't automatically invalidate people who don't have that assessment for their own suffering. It's a lot like religion -- believe what you want, but don't tell me how to think, believe or feel. I think we are on the same page there, so no problemo.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My experience with my avascular necrosis over the last ten years has taught me otherwise, but that's okay.

You've got your opinion and I've got mine. Much of what suffering does to us, whether that's better or worse, is often determined by our outlook. That's my opinion.

I am not saying people (myself included) don't make lemonade out of lemons, just to be clear. I'm not bitter, angry, or depressed. I just would rather not have expended the energy making the lemonade.

Sometimes people experience things that change their views, toughen them up, mature them, etc., in ways that they feel might not have otherwise happened, and they feel that, bad as it was, they are better off for it overall. And that's okay too -- so long as they don't automatically invalidate people who don't have that assessment for their own suffering. It's a lot like religion -- believe what you want, but don't tell me how to think, believe or feel. I think we are on the same page there, so no problemo.

Yeah, I only know that my own disability has taught me a lot that I really needed to learn before it came about. So for me, even through what is a shit sandwich, I can still find something to glom onto that I can use as leverage for growth. I might perhaps have learnt this lesson with being hobbled, but I don't remember life sending me any customer-satisfaction surveys. I don't like being preachy and so won't say that my own approach is any better or worse, only that it works for me.