To stop that circle of suffering we need to take into account the feelings of others as well as our own feelings. — leo

The majority of the time, other people don't make us suffer. We choose to suffer. The majority of the time, suffering is not a situation, but rather our relationship with a situation. This is actually very good news, but such good news is typically not welcomed, such is the complexity of the human condition.

Buddhism shares some of the most interesting insights in regards to suffering. Both of your comments echo those insights in that suffering is a choice and often self-perpetuating.

To stop that circle of suffering we need to take into account the feelings of others as well as our own feelings. — leo

Feelings and emotion, while they shouldn't be shunned, should always be treated with second thought. Misunderstanding our feelings is the primary reason we suffer, and not being honest to ourselves about the origin of such feelings.

True, but even if we have the power to not suffer, we still need to be aware of how what we do impact what others feel, otherwise this can become an excuse to make others endure anything and say "you're the one choosing to suffer, I can do whatever I please and don't have to take into account how you feel", and then we get wars and so on. By only focusing on changing our relationship with the situation rather than the situation itself, we might end up not suffering as we are driving our species into extinction, instead of changing course to live in peace while not suffering.

We don't have to suffer but we don't have to be complacent about what's going on around us. If I'm working on growing food for myself and the people I live with and someone comes up and beat me up and destroy all the food for no apparent reason, I can accept that as a fatality and not suffer about it, or I can suffer and tell to myself that there are bad people in the world and then live in fear, or I can suffer and try to eliminate the source of my suffering by beating him up, or I can suffer and try to understand what the hell it is that made him feel compelled to do that. If growing that food was a matter of life and death, not suffering in that situation would mean not caring about life.

I think that as long as we want to live and not want to die, we're gonna be suffering when faced with situations that threaten our survival. So we can choose to not care about life so as not to suffer, and probably drive ourselves to extinction, or we can choose to cherish life and attempt to resolve the situations that cause us suffering, by becoming aware of how we cause suffering to one another, by taking into account what others feel as well as what we feel.

True, but even if we have the power to not suffer, we still need to be aware of how what we do impact what others feel — leo

Ok, I'm not against such awareness, but I would also emphasize that we typically are not in a position to make anybody feel anything. This is especially true on the Internet, the new social environment. I will read your words, and I will decide how to experience them, just as is true for everyone else.

I think that as long as we want to live and not want to die — leo

That is our relationship with the situation of our existence. Of course this relationship is hard wired in to the organism so I'm not proposing we have full control over it.

It seems more useful to me to focus on the ordinary day to day situations, as that's where most of the suffering unfolds.

The problem with justice is we try to prevent people from causing suffering by making them suffer. — leo

I think there's a problem simply with hinging anything on suffering. Especially if we're defining it so broadly as "anything that makes someone feel bad." You can't formulate criminal justice, ethics, etc. on that. Any arbitrary thing could make any arbitrary person feel bad.

Feelings and emotion, while they shouldn't be shunned, should always be treated with second thought. Misunderstanding our feelings is the primary reason we suffer, and not being honest to ourselves about the origin of such feelings. — Tzeentch

Yes blindly following our feelings can cause a lot of suffering. By taking into account our feelings and that of others I didn't mean to blindly follow them, but to not dismiss them as irrelevant, to not be blind to the sufferings of others. It is also not an easy question to know what others feel, for what we believe someone feels is not always what they feel, appearances do not always say much about the underlying feelings. That's why back and forth communication is important, to attempt to understand what each other feels as best as we can.

But what we feel is a lot dependent on what we believe. If I believe some thing will help me attain what I desire, I will feel good about that thing, while if I believe it will prevent me from attaining what I desire I will feel bad about that thing. And we have a lot of false beliefs, there are a lot of things we expect that turn out not to be what we expected, we act in ways that we believe will help us feel good while they end up making us suffer, because we didn't have an accurate idea of how the situation was going to evolve.

So it's both not easy to know what others feel and to know what is going to happen depending on what we do. But I think that with an accurate picture of what we and others feel and of how what we do impact what others feel, we can have a much better idea of how feelings evolve and how we can prevent people from suffering. Fundamental science only focuses on getting an accurate picture of what we see with the eyes and how that correlates with what we hear/smell/touch/taste/..., but if we treated what we feel as a fundamental constituent of the reality we are trying to model and then looked for correlations involving feeling, then potentially we could come up with an efficient way to prevent people from suffering, or at least a much more efficient way than what we have now.

Additionally, the idea that no one should ever feel bad is flawed. Plenty of worthwhile things can only be had by feeling bad at some point in the process.

For example, working out at a gym. The end result of that is worthwhile. But it's going to make you feel bad, too, because you're going to be sore at times, you're not going to feel like going at times--you need to push yourself, etc.

So if we're going to formulate anything so that "suffering" is a consideration, we need to well-define just what suffering is in a way that doesn't quickly become ridiculous with any sort of challenging example.

Ok, I'm not against such awareness, but I would also emphasize that we typically are not in a position to make anybody feel anything. — Jake

I would say that we are in a position to make someone feel something if we have come to an understanding of what they desire, believe, and how what they experience impacts what they feel. While we might not know to perfection what they experience, we can come to have a more accurate idea by interacting with them and seeing how they react to what we do.

I think there's a problem simply with hinging anything on suffering. Especially if we're defining it so broadly as "anything that makes someone feel bad." You can't formulate criminal justice, ethics, etc. on that. Any arbitrary thing could make any arbitrary person feel bad. — Terrapin Station

While different things make different people suffer, we do all seem to have a common ground, that of desiring to live (except in cases where someone suffers so much that they want to die). And it seems also that we suffer when we interpret something as driving us away from what we desire. For instance if you want to live and you believe you're about to die you are gonna be suffering, or if you want to feel accepted by the people around you and they reject you you're gonna be suffering.

So based on that common ground, you can formulate a system where people suffer when they perceive something as threatening their survival. In fact many of the laws of our current judicial system are based on that principle, for instance it is forbidden to steal because those who are stolen from suffer when that happens, and as a community we don't want to suffer so we have enacted laws to prevent that from happening. But then in a contradictory move we make suffer the one who has stolen. Maybe he came to steal because he felt his survival was threatened and so he suffered, but there was no law in place that prevented him from suffering, no one cared about his suffering, and then we make him suffer more.

We treat him as a criminal and make him suffer more, reinforcing in him the impression that others are the source of his suffering. And if he does it again we interpret it as meaning he is a bad person that needs to be locked away for a long time so as to prevent him from making others suffer. But no one cares about his own suffering which led him to making others suffer.

We currently have a system where some sufferings are taken into account and not others, and people are forced to adapt to that system. If they suffer the problem is with them and not with the system. This enforcement is a source of suffering in itself, perceived as a threat to survival for some. Now I believe if we were more attuned to what others feel rather than to blindly abiding to a system imposed onto us, we could resolve much more suffering than we presently can.

Our current judicial system is based on the idea that we can prevent some sufferings. And I'm saying that we can do much better than what we have now.

While different things make different people suffer, we do all seem to have a common ground, that of desiring to live (except in cases where someone suffers so much that they want to die). And it seems also that we suffer when we interpret something as driving us away from what we desire. For instance if you want to live and you believe you're about to die you are gonna be suffering, or if you want to feel accepted by the people around you and they reject you you're gonna be suffering.

So based on that common ground, you can formulate a system where people suffer when they perceive something as threatening their survival. In fact many of the laws of our current judicial system are based on that principle, for instance it is forbidden to steal because those who are stolen from suffer when that happens, and as a community we don't want to suffer so we have enacted laws to prevent that from happening. But then in a contradictory move we make suffer the one who has stolen. Maybe he came to steal because he felt his survival was threatened and so he suffered, but there was no law in place that prevented him from suffering, no one cared about his suffering, and then we make him suffer more. — leo

You're all over the map here.

FIrst, you say "we all have a common ground," whereupon you (correctly) immediately note that we don't even all have that in common, and then you go on to talk about suffering far more broadly in a way that again makes the idea of basing anything on suffering absurd.

Even if we stick with "want to survive," as soon as we say "interpret something as driving us away from survival" that could be any arbitrary thing to any arbitrary person.

Additionally, the idea that no one should ever feel bad is flawed. Plenty of worthwhile things can only be had by feeling bad at some point in the process.

For example, working out at a gym. The end result of that is worthwhile. But it's going to make you feel bad, too, because you're going to be sore at times, you're not going to feel like going at times--you need to push yourself, etc. — Terrapin Station

It's not that no one should ever feel bad, but a bunch of people suffer a lot with nothing positive to make up for it. Working out can make you feel bad at times, but you wouldn't do it if it didn't make you feel good in any way, at some points you feel great.

You might say that beating someone up can be good for them, they will suffer temporarily but then it will make them stronger. But I'd say in most cases they just end up traumatized and living in fear, seeing other people as a source of suffering if that happens too much, become phobic or paranoid, maybe violent to others, causing suffering to others down the line.

There is the pain that pushes you forward and makes you feel good, and the suffering that leaves you behind and spreads suffering all around you.

Problem with understanding others is putting yourself in their position, (the other man's shoes, or woman's.) But to really understand what it's like to be that person you have to actually be that person, even then you may not really understand yourself.

FIrst, you say "we all have a common ground," whereupon you immediately note that we dont even all have that in common, and then you go on to talk about suffering far more broadly in a way that again makes the idea of basing anything on suffering absurd. — Terrapin Station

We have it in common at first, it's intense suffering that drives you away from it.

"It seems also that we suffer when we interpret something as driving us away from what we desire" is a common ground too.

Then I put both together to conclude that we have in common to suffer when we interpret something as a threat to our survival

You say the idea of basing anything on suffering is absurd, so are you then saying the current judicial system and the declaration of human rights and medicine are absurd?

You say the idea of basing anything on suffering is absurd, so are you then saying the current judicial system and the declaration of human rights and medicine are absurd? — leo

Insofar as anything would be based on suffering per se. A lot of it isn't, of course.

I have a lot of other problems with the standard approach to criminal justice, but that's another topic.

Well, criminal justice and medicine and the declaration of human rights are all there to prevent suffering, yet there is immense suffering in the world, if only you look at how many people die from suicide or hunger or conflicts, so there's something fundamental we're not doing right. I'm not of the belief that all this is inevitable.

Well, criminal justice and medicine and the declaration of human rights are all there to prevent suffering — leo

They're all there to prevent suffering, where the stated goal is to prevent suffering in some wholesale way, per what?