Joe said:
But from this perspective, we might wonder about the idea of what we should, or should not, do about suffering. If suffering is one of the major ways that we ignorant people actually learn important lessons, and that it even "turns on DNA", then should any of us be trying to reduce the suffering of others on a wholesale level? Might we not be contravening a kind of 'prime directive' of nature by doing that or wishing for suffering in general to end for all people?
I know Peterson sort of addresses this point by referring to "unnecessary suffering"as something that should be fought against, and he often cites the Soviet gulags as an example of this, but is there not even a problem there also? Could the suffering caused by the Soviet gulags not be part of this "prime directive" to offer millions of people the chance to suffer? The same could be said of the invasion of Iraq and the massive deaths and suffering caused there by the USA.
I don't see the suffering as a good thing in and of itself. It's value-neutral in my mind. If suffering in general were truly GOOD, then the more suffering the better. I think that implies a moral absurdity of sorts: "Suffering is good, and more suffering is better, therefore the more rape, torture, and murder in the world, the better. If I want to assist the universe in manifesting this good, I should therefore create more suffering in the world, thus giving other people the opportunity to learn and grow."
Rather, suffering can have value, or it can destroy a person. Some people don't suffer enough in the right ways, and lose out in the long run - they never grow. Others suffer too much in the wrong ways, and lose out in the long run - they become broken. That's the hazard of life in a free-will universe where nothing is certain.
Plus, I think Gurdjieff was right to differentiate between types of suffering. He wasn't saying that people should find themselves a good psychopath to torture their bodies and souls. In fact, he did his best to avoid certain types of suffering. He got himself and his students OUT of Russia, because he could see where it was going. So I'd say there is harmful suffering, which can break a person beyond repair, useless suffering, and valuable suffering. Sometimes others are needed to help heal the harmful suffering (like what Peterson and other psychologists do for their patients). Sometimes you need to get over your narcissistic useless suffering. And if you want to grow, you have to engage in conscious suffering to correct the errors installed in you by your biology, socializing, and all the compounded mistakes you've made throughout your life. No one can do
that for you.
Maybe there is another "prime directive" that says that, 'yes, to learn people must suffer' but they must also be allowed to learn not to suffer and have the opportunity to reduce and even end their suffering if they learn well enough how to do so, precisely through (if necessary) the experience of suffering'. If the entire population of this planet (and all future humans) were condemned to live on a sort of 'prison planet' where they were born into and lived and died in slavery, with no chance to learn and grow as a result and use that knowledge to change their situations, then maybe that would be a 'bridge too far' (mainly because it would be closed system that could not possible go anywhere, thereby violating some creative law).
Or, see suffering as a corrective mechanism, or a warning system. We're here to learn, to discover the truth. To roughly (probably poorly) paraphrase one of the things Peterson says: when you master something, you can tell because things turn out the way they should, but when you believe lies or are ignorant, reality lets you know through your own failure and the suffering that results. Suffering is the collision of illusion and reality, it's a sign you are not "in sync" with reality, not being true to your nature, individually or collectively. Some suffering is avoidable in theory, but the hazard of a free-will environment means you might confront an unacknowledged reality and learn the hard way. Like the examples in
Gift of Fear. But if you happen to read Gift of Fear BEFORE that experience, you might avoid getting raped or murdered.
Other suffering is consciously taken on. Using Peterson as an example again, he is exposing himself to one form of suffering (hate, slander, harm to his reputation and career) to avoid another type of suffering (sinning against his own soul), in pursuit of a higher value: truth. Then there's the conscious suffering of letting the truth expose you to your own illusions, admitting your faults and errors, struggling through the process of learning to master a new way of being, and failing repeatedly along the way.
But apart from that, maybe in the end the only thing that humans are really entitled to is access to the truth. And maybe that is the only "ideology" we should be consciously following: to make the truth, as best as we can discern it, as widely available as possible to other humans, and let each choose to learn now, or suffer first and then learn. Seems to me that most people tend to choose the later because, as the saying goes, 'a wise person learns from their mistakes, only a genius learns from the mistakes (or experiences) of others'.
Yeah. I think that's the only thing anyone is entitled to. And the universe is structured in such a way that the truth is always accessible (even if it may be near-impossible to see). But I think a secondary aspect is that while people are not entitled to having their suffering taken away from them, we have the duty to not only make the truth accessible, but also to afford some level of help to those who require it. And that's an individual or collective/societal choice. For example, if you see someone who has just been run over on the side of the street and whose leg has been severed, you should probably stop and help them instead of coming up with a list of reasons why it is their own fault and the suffering is good for them.
It's a very large and complex balancing act. On the individual level, it depends on context. Sometimes it is useful to let a kid hurt themselves so that they learn to avoid something. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes a "personal intervention" might be the best choice; sometimes it's better to leave the person on their own. And things only get more complex as you try to determine how to approach such things on the level of an entire society.