• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Why is life so Painful?

G

Glycerine

Guest
Sounds like something that Tony guy would say.

I want to meet this glorious Tony that you keep speaking of.

Look, I read your blog, and you depicted how you were having your leg hacked at with a chisel, for crying out loud, and then you went on to call it a humbling experience! Trust me, we all know what pain is, but if I had to sit through something like that, my already insatiable drive to bring the refiner's fire to this living simulation of hell would be so powerful, that my drive to achieve what the adversary could never accomplish would completely obliterate any remaining patience for being at peace. Buddha is an idiot, sitting naked under his tree and doing nothing while the world burns.
Chisel and a hammer. :devil: Well, that was already like my fifth time and each time it was humbling.... reminding me of my own frailty. The first time was when I was 4. :)
 

RaptorWizard

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 19, 2012
Messages
5,895
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
You know I'm not spiritual, but when I was younger someone told me a story once about a man who asked God why life was suffering and full of despair and sadness, apparently God replied "I could never figure out how to make one without the other, how can one be happy if there is no sadness?" or something along the lines of that.

Hey buddy, a government can't work without taxes right? I guess that's a great law of nature, stealing from us just so we can have the joy of getting it back. If you ask me, this whole law of "justice", or every action having a necessary reaction, much like with good needing evil is just a big prison, namely because it's a miserable place, and because we can't get our "goods" for free!

Personally, I believe that life is brutal because of the way our universe works, its mathematical, efficient, and unsympathetic. The universe is an algorithm trying to solve itself and reach net equilibrium, and it will do anything to achieve such efforts, be it the unfortunate and distasteful demise of one's life in a gruesome manner or the mere quarrel among friends. It's utterly beautiful and tragic.

Logic is such a terrible thing; it demands that things need to add up, or else the foundations of the universe will shatter asunder. But wait, could that actually be a good thing? Indeed, I think it would be, because then we could transcend the matrix control system and escape from all suffering! And then when we're in the position of the "chess player", we can checkmate the king (God).
 

Alea_iacta_est

New member
Joined
Dec 3, 2013
Messages
1,834
Hey buddy, a government can't work without taxes right? I guess that's a great law of nature, stealing from us just so we can have the joy of getting it back. If you ask me, this whole law of "justice", or every action having a necessary reaction, much like with good needing evil is just a big prison, namely because it's a miserable place, and because we can't get our "goods" for free!



Logic is such a terrible thing; it demands that things need to add up, or else the foundations of the universe will shatter asunder. But wait, could that actually be a good thing? Indeed, I think it would be, because then we could transcend the matrix control system and escape from all suffering! And then when we're in the position of the "chess player", we can checkmate the king (God).

(Let it be known that the servers really suck right now and that it deleted my response)

I'd prefer that we don't break the universe just in case there isn't something out there XD. On a more serious note, maybe the best way to checkmate whatever the fuck is out there (from hyper-dimensional beings to nothing at all) is to simply not play the game in the first place. There is a reason, after all, for the saying "ignorance is bliss". The ultimate, disturbing, nihilistic truth, while very enlightening to see, is a detriment to our minds, for we cannot resolve the problem because we are powerless in the grand scheme of the universe; it is probably best to focus on tangible realities and truths than to focus on the truth that will bequeath to us the infamous depression of nihilism.

On a lighter note, we should play chess sometime.
 

Firebird 8118

DJ Phoenix
Joined
Sep 22, 2012
Messages
3,134
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
279
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I think that life is painful because we make things so much more complicated than they probably should be. Like for example, why are so many of us two-faced or hide our true feelings about others? If we were all more honest and straightforward with each other, as well as more genuinely kind and loving, then maybe the world would be a much better place to live in...

Just a thought.
 
W

WhoCares

Guest
I am no sage. All that I know is that my life sucks far more often than it doesn't. Some friendly people have pointed out its all in my mind and I should put a happy sticker on it and call it a great day. That hell is of my own making. I'm not convinced especially after the last three days of being forced into a confined space with two other people I have nothing in common with. That was pretty hellish. Hell doesn't have to be some arsehole sticking a red hot poker in your eye. Social torture happens all the time, in fact it may just be the most common form of torture.

I prefer to think my suffering has no meaning at all. To ascribe meaning to it is to make it significant, its a meaningless randomness that I suffer from time to time. At least that way its not personal and I dont have to ask why. There is no why, there is just what is, and every person has to find their own peace with that by whatever method they can.
 
W

WhoCares

Guest
I am no sage. All that I know is that my life sucks far more often than it doesn't. Some friendly people have pointed out its all in my mind and I should put a happy sticker on it and call it a great day. That hell is of my own making. I'm not convinced especially after the last three days of being forced into a confined space with two other people I have nothing in common with. That was pretty hellish. Hell doesn't have to be some arsehole sticking a red hot poker in your eye. Social torture happens all the time, in fact it may just be the most common form of torture.

I prefer to think my suffering has no meaning at all. To ascribe meaning to it is to make it significant, its a meaningless randomness that I suffer from time to time. At least that way its not personal and I dont have to ask why. There is no why, there is just what is, and every person has to find their own peace with that by whatever method they can.
 

LonestarCowgirl

New member
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
482
Somewhere out there in the world, there's always problems causing much suffering and affliction. But many religious fools say that simply by our world being here, that it's because of God's good grace. My question is, why in hell, if this is supposed to be God's so-called "Grand Design" would he allow for so much evil to exist in our world? Heck, seeing how bad things can get, a better question might be, what kind of monster would create something like this? I think that this is a good case in favor of humility before the "wonders of creation" as foolishness and weakness.

So fellas, I'm wondering, why is life so painful?

Ebenezer Scrooge, have you tried a less attacking, less cantankerous approach with God? Anyway, before your painful life is through, I hear you break down and allow God to breathe new life into your weary soul. :)
 

Eruca

78% me
Joined
Nov 14, 2008
Messages
939
MBTI Type
INxx
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Because there is no God and life is suffering?

"A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten."

Schopenhauer

1. The majority of animals will be dead for the majority of time while being eaten and digested (Or is not a full stomach a pleasure?). Think of scavengers or of many small creatures eating a larger, the pleasure being multiplied by the addition of eating creature. "Eating" lasts longer than being eaten, even if it is a lesser pleasure.

2. If the domain is suffering and pleasure in "the world" let us, more fairly, take the entire animal kingdom. One herbivore could have hundreds of delicious meals on painless plants while being eaten only once. It might be replied that there are many sufferings that an animal can experience, such as cold and fear. Well, they can also experience cozy warmth and feelings of security. I'm sure we can imagine what it would be like to experience the simple pain and pleasures without all these human concerns floating around in our head. Most people desire as such, as they understand the fear of misfortune and pain in us is by far the greatest part of our suffering. I don't know about you, but I never really minded the cold as long as I felt alive during. We watch horror movies to experience the exhilaration of fear without fearing the consequences. I would say a rabbit fears the predator, not the consequences of being caught. It knows only run. That fear is pleasure and pain, like our fear of scary films.

3. As interesting as looking at pleasure and pain broadly is, a more specific focus might be less misleading. It might be tempting to take S's quote as representative of both human and wider animal lives. This would be a gross error. A humans life is an unnatural state in which we cater to our own pleasure and create measures for pain avoidance (pain killers being a literal example of this). We will experience thousands of meals created with pleasure in mind before our deaths. Pointing to the suffering of those in less fortunate areas of the world is not sufficient to disprove my general point--it being that life doesn't have to be and will not be defined by pain as long as basic physical means are met. Once these needs are met, which, I expect, is true for every member of this discussion, only the troubled human mind is pain-creating. This is the problem of the human as believer and it is what haunts the members of this thread. Granted, it isn't difficult to prove many human lives are defined by pain caused by this issue. What you cannot prove is that this is necessarily the case as long as a mind is rational, honest, sympathetic/empathetic and intelligent. I do think I am capable of defending my optimism as just as rational and aware, no less delusional, than your pessimism. (We would, of course, call both our points of view "realistic" amongst ourselves)

*edit* I would also include freedom as a basic human need. Vast quantities of human unhappiness has been caused by social norms that restrict freedom beyond the useful.
 

Abbey

New member
Joined
Nov 12, 2012
Messages
166
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
4w3
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Somewhere out there in the world, there's always problems causing much suffering and affliction. But many religious fools say that simply by our world being here, that it's because of God's good grace. My question is, why in hell, if this is supposed to be God's so-called "Grand Design" would he allow for so much evil to exist in our world? Heck, seeing how bad things can get, a better question might be, what kind of monster would create something like this? I think that this is a good case in favor of humility before the "wonders of creation" as foolishness and weakness.

So fellas, I'm wondering, why is life so painful?

God created people to be relational. People chose to go astray and brought sin into the world due to their pride and selfishness. God created something perfect and we went and ruined it.
 

Galena

Silver and Lead
Joined
Mar 12, 2013
Messages
3,786
Enneagram
4w5
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Nature is harsh, but we have more power than we imagine to counter its effects on ourselves and especially one another. It's easier to create civil/interpersonal systems in imitation of it because hope is hard to maintain long enough to carry a big plan into the implementation phase. It is not always harmful to delay actualization of an original idea, but the motivations for such a delay beg as close philosophical scrutiny as the idea does. Fatiguing feeling (Jungian feeling) out of existence isn't what bureaucracy is for.

Agree on expectation being pain, but solving the problem internally shouldn't be an excuse to keep that solving power to oneself. Not that anyone suggested that, but responding relationally to RW's thought about letting the world burn in inner peace.
 

RaptorWizard

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 19, 2012
Messages
5,895
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Agree on expectation being pain, but solving the problem internally shouldn't be an excuse to keep that solving power to oneself. Not that anyone suggested that, but responding relationally to RW's thought about letting the world burn in inner peace.

I don't have a problem with inner peace (in regards to meditative-states), but what I do have a problem with is inner peace in regards to the world at large and all of its problems. Internalize the solution first, and then unleash it.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
6,088
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
"Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings." Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

According to some, pain and suffering helps us grow spiritually. For example, if you suffer from physical pain or a major loss in your life, that'll help you develop compassion for others in a similar situation.
 

skylights

i love
Joined
Jul 6, 2010
Messages
7,756
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
Because without it we would not exist for long: pain is a biological mechanism to prevent us from dying or accidentally killing ourselves. It indicates where wounds are and alerts us that we need to take extra care of them.

Perhaps the world is much the same.
 

RaptorWizard

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 19, 2012
Messages
5,895
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Because without it we would not exist for long: pain is a biological mechanism to prevent us from dying or accidentally killing ourselves. It indicates where wounds are and alerts us that we need to take extra care of them.

Perhaps the world is much the same.

When the food's done cooking and the buzzer goes off, no pain is required. So why should life be?
 

Comeback Girl

Ratchet Ass Moon Fairy
Joined
Jul 30, 2013
Messages
570
MBTI Type
ESFP
Enneagram
2w3
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Maybe life is painful, because you focus on how painful it is. I don't focus on pain, so I don't see life as painful. Or maybe I'm just an insensitive bastard.
 

Qlip

Post Human Post
Joined
Jul 30, 2010
Messages
8,464
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
4w5
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
When the food's done cooking and the buzzer goes off, no pain is required. So why should life be?

When the food is done cooking, the buzzer goes off. The joy of anticipation of pleasure and the fear of the pain of hunger moves one to eat. No pain, no pleasure, no getting your ass off the couch to get your Hot Pocket. You starve and you don't care.
 

skylights

i love
Joined
Jul 6, 2010
Messages
7,756
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
When the food's done cooking and the buzzer goes off, no pain is required. So why should life be?

That's true, but that's a learned response. We know to associate buzzer with food being done because we've observed it many times and there is generally not a significantly deleterious consequence for not responding correctly. On the other hand, if you don't attend to your gashed leg quickly, you will die. It has to be unpleasant because you don't get a second chance.

I guess I just see it as something that evolved to help us survive more than something that was intentionally inflicted upon us, so I don't feel too much despair over it. It sucks but it wasn't something engineered to make my life unbearable.
 
Top