Virtues of suffering?

[sophiaserpentia]

Tonight I was discussing with lady_babalon the strange notion we have in our culture that suffering is somehow more virtuous than pleasure. Of course, few will actually come out and say it that way. But we have sayings like, "No pain, no gain," and in many aspects of our lives, most of us feel guilty for doing things that make us happy.

Many of us act as though taking on extra suffering somehow makes us better people, as if there is an invisible tally sheet in the sky where we are given demerits if we have more than our share of happiness, or if we suffer less than those around us.

On one level, I think there is an innate understanding that we perceive unfairness if those we consider our equals to have a much greater amount of happiness or pleasure than those around us -- and so, for the sake of social appeasement, we mutually cancel out our pleasures with burdens. Similarly, much of the time we develop unhealthy and compulsive habits, like addictions to sex, drugs, or alcohol, which ensure that any pleasure we feel is mingled with excuses for self-loathing. This pattern is also expressed as fear of success.

But I think that there is another, more primal level at work. As primates we sense that we have a natural place in a tribal heirarchy. Our place within the heirarchy determines how much pleasure we are allotted, and so claiming pleasure for ourselves is a way of challenging our position in the heirarchy. Our instincts interpret the feeling of pleasure as akin to direct challenge to authority.

The ultimate authority is God -- and so we find that theonomic or conservative religion is heavily concerned with what sorts of pleasure we experience, and what restrictions we place on our pleasure consumption. We are taught to feel that it is somehow sinful to feel pleasure, that pleasure somehow separates us from God.

But when I examined that notion tonight -- the supposed virtue of suffering, and the supposed sinfulness of pleasure, I realized that it doesn't match my experience. I can't think of any suffering which I have experienced that made me a better, more compassionate person. Indeed, it has been times of happiness, of calm, of increased access to sex, when I have been more inclined to be generous and compassionate. lady_babalon added to this that times of fear and suffering in our lives are generally when one is more inclined to be less concerned with the suffering of others, simply because when one must focus on one's immediate survival, there is less incentive to be selfless.

Comments

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

There is a theory that this is why people hate income tax but generally tolerate sales tax. Income tax punishes work (earning a living), while sales tax punishes spending money (pleasure).

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Good food for thought. Thank you.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I think there are some people, like yourself :), who have more empathy than others. Perhaps this is a natural trait or perhaps a trait taught by good parenting. But for everyone like you, there are several more people who will cling more tightly to what they have and say "I will not be poor again, so I will keep what I have to myself", or "I suffered and got through it okay, it would be good for them to suffer this as well."
A lot of it, I think , has more to do with things one has gone through in childhood and how one was raised. Children who are severely abused are more likely themselves to have a lack of empathy because they have poor examples. Perhaps things one suffers in adulthood affect one differently. Just musing, not sure...

[novasoy.livejournal.com]

I refer to my comment on your more recent thread regarding pleasure and stuff. So ditto those comments here, but again, I think this is a peculiarly American phenomenon. Even ravenously Protestant countries, like the Netherlands and to some extent England, are not as anti-body, anti-pleasure as we are. Of course, the more Catholic Latin-influenced countries like France, Italy, and the Spanish speaking world, are much more liberal about matters of pleasure. Of course the Protestant Reformation was in part caused by the Catholic Church's perceived sanctioning of drunkenness, fornication, and all sorts of bad things like that. Of course, I could be entirely wrong about all this.

So somewhere along the line, we got this meme handed down to us that pleasure was bad and suffering was ennobling. Go to any social gathering (at least among we squares) and you will never hear a conversation about the rollicking orgasm somebody had last night or the all-night jungle sex they had over the weekend. You will be more likely to hear about bad hips, sore backs, sinus trouble. People would rather hear and talk about the suffering than the pleasures and I cannot imagine why. SophiaSerpentia, I am always more interested in reading your "sex filter" posts than I am with the other entries on my Friends Page.

For some reason I am reminded of that Shakespeare quote from Julius Caesar: The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Excellent observation.

Europe is not an empire. My thought is that a heavy application of this "pleasure restriction mindset" is one of the things that is necessary to make an empire work. Without it, there would be too little willingness to go along with the American heirarchy, imperial machinery which is dedicated to more efficiently exploit (economically) the rest of the world.

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...as an offshoot of the concept of suffering=good, pleasure=bad, I've noticed I get really scared when I'm happy -- convinced my happiness will be snatched away from me anytime now. Whereas when I'm miserable I'm not wondering if my misery will be abruptly removed! Misery is normal, happiness is freakish and I should feel very guilty about being happy because there's so much suffering in this world and besides I don't deserve to be happy! (Yeah I know, old tapes playing in my head that need to be short-circuited!)

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

You hit the nail on the head -- these are tapes playing in your head... and in mine, and in everyone's. (In America at least; as novasoy pointed out, this phenomenon doesn't seem to be as deeply rooted in other cultures.)

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

Amen.