• Question: What is the main cause of suffering, and how should we approach coming to a conclusion on why we are suffering. Do we blame a higher power, our environment or our insufficiencies?

    Asked by anon-269714 on 16 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Madeleine Steeds

      Madeleine Steeds answered on 16 Nov 2020:

      This is a really interesting and deep question and I think there’s a lot of ways to look at it. My opinion is that the way society runs doesn’t benefit people because there are big inequalities and that causes unnecessary suffering. I think that if people work together to make sure everyone has what they need then we will reduce suffering but I think to an extent suffering is a part of life in terms of having to deal with loss. But overall I think that working to make society fairer can get rid of unnecessary suffering. Really interesting question though!!

    • Photo: Ella Svahn

      Ella Svahn answered on 16 Nov 2020:

      Interesting question! Results from neuroscience experiments show that any negative feeling (‘suffering’) could come from getting a result which is worse than what you thought or predicted beforehand. It is thought that the brain makes guesses about the future all the time, and we try to predict what actions will give us the most reward. That way, we can make decisions that have positive outcomes for us, for example feeling happy or improving a skill. When we have made a guess that something good is going to happen, and then it doesn’t, we instead have negative feelings. The feelings are caused by electrical signals in the ’emotion centers’ of our brain together with hormones in our body. This negative signal should then act as feedback to teach us that we guessed wrong, and we should not make the same mistake again. The same mechanism is in fact also used in artificial neural networks to try to teach a computer how to learn. They have shown us that reward and suffering is quite an effective motivation to learn things; so that’s maybe why we even have suffering in the first place.

      Even in old Buddhist texts they have a similar idea; saying that suffering comes from life not meeting our expectations, since we are always thinking about the future instead of living in the moment. In buddhism, the way to be free of suffering is to accept things that happen to you as they are, without trying to evaluate whether they are good or bad.

      Who we blame for out suffering is probably depending on who you are as a person. Some studies suggest that people in individualistic cultures (e.g Europe) take more responsibility themselves for both good and bad outcomes and feelings than people in collectivistic cultures (e.g Asia). So culture seem to have an effect on who or what we blame, but probably many other factors do as well, such as genes, gender role, upbringing/ environment, personality, previous experience and more. It could also depend on the situation that caused the suffering; perhaps in some cases it is easier to blame something else for you negative emotions than yourself.

    • Photo: Olga Luzon

      Olga Luzon answered on 16 Nov 2020:

      Suffering is caused by many different causes, some people have a greater genetic predisposition, others learn it at home, others are expose to difficult life circumstances including health, financial, emotional, social inequalities which impact our mental health and wellbeing. I think we need to be aware of the direct and indirect determinants of poor mental health and suffering, not to blame others but to contribute to changing those. Learning what part we all play is an important starting point for that change. Cognitive and behavioural science has shown that there are things we can do for ourselves to improve our mental health, but likewise, social psychology indicates we have to hold policy makers responsible too. Great question. Thanks!

    • Photo: Katie Lightfoot

      Katie Lightfoot answered on 19 Nov 2020:

      I think this is impossible to answer in a truly scientific way as there are so many competing influences and variables that are both measurable and immeasurable that would need to be considered. Agreement on what would need to be considered would also need to happen as well as how we define suffering. That would be difficult even in scientific communities; as you have seen with COVID, scientists don’t always agree with one another and theories differ very greatly in some cases. It would of course be great to strive for an answer somehow in order to reduce suffering as blame isn’t helpful. Perhaps solution finding in individual communities would be more beneficial (so looking at small jigsaw pieces rather than the big picture); there cannot be a single answer or solution.

    • Photo: Simona Skripkauskaite

      Simona Skripkauskaite answered on 19 Nov 2020:

      That is such a good and deep question. So much so that I do not thing there is a clear answer to it and psychologists and philosophers have spent years and years trying to answer that. You might enjoy reading “Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus (if you have not already).

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