(Imagine a world without suffering-not just human inflicted suffering. Imagine a world without tsunamis, childhood cancers and such.)
Question: Would you want to live in such a world?
Answer: First, go back and ask what is the good life’s purpose. There are bigger purposes than enjoying good food and watching movies and so on.
The most worthwhile & rewarding things people do are often when they’re involved with other people, helping other people (your friends) towards enjoyment. Take this as your purpose.
And if you are ready to involve yourself with somebody else, imbue them with your empathy, the way things go with that somebody else is very much up to you.
In this ‘friendship’ relationship with someone else, what responsibilities do you have?
You have responsibility for how things go for that person, good or bad. And you can’t live up to that responsibility:
-unless bad things happen to you to a certain extent
-unless you are hurt and you suffer sometimes – and that gives you the opportunity to be courageous or alternatively feel sorry for yourself;
-unless you have the opportunity to see that other people (your friends) are suffering and you can choose to either help them or not help them.
It is only in a world where there is suffering, of a limited duration and kind, that people are really responsible for things, that the rich extent of human empathy can be accessed. When there is suffering, people have the opportunities to learn to cope with them – for example..
- the individual himself may have to cope with his suffering
- helping others to cope with their suffering;
-helping forward scientific research so that it doesn’t happen again.
In this sort of world, people are really responsible for others (and yourself), and if we didn’t have this opportunity to shoulder such responsibility, we wouldn’t be accessing the extent of the human condition. It wouldn’t be a rich life at all.
This argument is often made by religious people as a justification for human suffering in the face of a seemingly apathetic God. Note how I followed the same trail of thought without any reference to an omnipotent being.
Christopher Hitchens offers this challenge: Name a moral standard stemming from religion to which is there no equivalent moral standard available to a secular person? Indeed, Hitchens says he has not yet found any such exclusive moral claim by religion.
The corollary question: To which heinous statement or act made by a religious person, is there no equivalent statement or act available to a secular person.
You’d only need a second to start listing here.
