Suffering
These aspects may include the nature of suffering, its processes, its origin and causes, its meaning and significance, its related personal, social, and cultural behaviors,[5] its remedies, management, and uses.
"[6] Other current words that have a definition with some similarity to suffering include distress, unhappiness, misery, affliction, woe, ill, discomfort, displeasure, disagreeableness.
In Cynicism suffering is alleviated by achieving mental clarity or lucidity (ἁτυφια: atyphia), developing self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια: autarky), equanimity, arete, love of humanity, parrhesia, and indifference to the vicissitudes of life (adiaphora).
Suffering can be removed by developing epoche (suspension of judgment) regarding beliefs, which leads to ataraxia (mental tranquility).
Epicureanism's version of Hedonism, as an ethical theory, claims that good and bad consist ultimately in pleasure and pain.
For Stoicism, the greatest good lies in reason and virtue, but the soul best reaches it through a kind of indifference (apatheia) to pleasure and pain: as a consequence, this doctrine has become identified with stern self-control in regard to suffering.
David Pearce, for his part, advocates a utilitarianism that aims straightforwardly at the abolition of suffering through the use of biotechnology (see more details below in section Biology, neurology, psychology).
"[7] Pessimists hold this world to be mainly bad, or even the worst possible, plagued with, among other things, unbearable and unstoppable suffering.
Arthur Schopenhauer recommends us to take refuge in things like art, philosophy, loss of the will to live, and tolerance toward 'fellow-sufferers'.
Suffering plays an important role in a number of religions, regarding matters such as the following: consolation or relief; moral conduct (do no harm, help the afflicted, show compassion); spiritual advancement through life hardships or through self-imposed trials (mortification of the flesh, penance, asceticism); ultimate destiny (salvation, damnation, hell).
"[9] A quintessential form of evil, for many people, is extreme suffering, especially in innocent children, or in creatures destined to an eternity of torments (see problem of hell).
Buddhism considers liberation from dukkha and the practice of compassion (karuna) as basic for leading a holy life and attaining nirvana.
Suffering expunges the sins of human beings and cleanses their soul for the immense reward of the afterlife, and the avoidance of hell.
[20] Ralph Siu, an American author, urged in 1988 the "creation of a new and vigorous academic discipline, called panetics, to be devoted to the study of the infliction of suffering",[21] The International Society for Panetics was founded in 1991 to study and develop ways to reduce the infliction of human suffering by individuals acting through professions, corporations, governments, and other social groups.
In the Western world these are typically made by juries in a discretionary fashion and are regarded as subjective, variable, and difficult to predict, for instance in the US,[23] UK,[24] Australia and New Zealand.
In management and organization studies, drawing on the work of Eric Cassell, suffering has been defined as the distress a person experiences when they perceive a threat to any aspect of their continued existence, whether physical, psychological, or social.
[26] Suffering and pleasure are respectively the negative and positive affects, or hedonic tones, or valences that psychologists often identify as basic in our emotional lives.
[27] The evolutionary role of physical and mental suffering, through natural selection, is primordial: it warns of threats, motivates coping (fight or flight, escapism), and reinforces negatively certain behaviors (see punishment, aversives).
Many brain structures and physiological processes are involved in suffering (particularly the anterior insula and cingulate cortex, both implicated in nociceptive and empathic pain).
Pearce promotes replacing the biology of suffering with a robot-like response to noxious stimuli[31] or with information-sensitive gradients of bliss,[32] through genetic engineering and other technical scientific advances.
For example, suffering may be a feature of mental or physical illness[39] such as borderline personality disorder[40][41] and occasionally in advanced cancer.
In palliative care, for instance, pioneer Cicely Saunders created the concept of 'total pain' ('total suffering' say now the textbooks),[45] which encompasses the whole set of physical and mental distress, discomfort, symptoms, problems, or needs that a patient may experience hurtfully.
Farmers, for instance, may claim that they prevent famine, artists may say that they take our minds off our worries, and teachers may hold that they hand down tools for coping with life hazards.
"[49] People make use of suffering for specific social or personal purposes in many areas of human life, as can be seen in the following instances:
