On Suffering

There are all sorts of beliefs that blame women, or the Jews, or desire, for the suffering in the world. In all cases they are completely wrong.

Suffering has two sets of causes. One is man-made; the other is non-man-made. In first case we see wrong decisions made by people; in second case we see at work forces that nobody can control.

Man-made suffering has two origins. One is evil; the other is ignorance. In the first case wrong is done while knowing of the consequences of the action; in the second case wrong is done without knowing the consequences. In the first case we see such things as slavery, colonialism and the Holocaust. In the second case we see pollution and natural destruction by people who do not realize what they are doing to the world.

With non-man-made suffering, there is nobody at fault. Nor is this suffering limited to humanity. Animals suffer from diseases, floods and hurricanes as well. And they did so long before there was humanity and long before there were women or Jews.

Man-made suffering, for its part, owes a lot more to men than it does to women. Suffering is worst in places such as Afghanistan, that do not have women's rights, than it is in places such as Sweden that do. Far more people were killed by men throughout history than by women. And men dominate the world's prison populations.

As for the Jews, they have made vast contributions to the Western civilization, and the Western civilization owes them gratitude not holocausts. When a tiny percentage of the population wins over 100 Nobel prizes, they should be respected for that. And failing to do so is an act of supreme ingratitude.

Desire, for its part, is only a minor cause of suffering compared to all others. Far fewer people die from desire than from hunger or war. There are wrong desires; there are also rightful desires. I see nothing wrong with desire for love or desire for comfort or desire for prosperity or desire for recognition. Desire turns wrong when one starts desiring wrong things, such as oppression over the next person. But in and of itself, desire is nowhere close to being the source of suffering.

Suffering can be man-made, or it can be non-man-made. The solution to the first is rightful decisions; the solution to the second is protecting people from non-man-made sources of suffering. Put together, these two have the possibility of actually ending suffering in the world. I fully believe that this is possible.