# Will people ever not Suffer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 8, 2005, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937 "2005-02-08T03:23:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ninetypercent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@ninetypercent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninetypercent)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/61 "2005-02-09T12:45:45Z")
I guess the real question is: is pain and pleasure two sides of the same coin? I don’t think so. Take for example a drug; this drug achieves the same effects as MDMA, but replenishes the chemicals it releases so that the effect never wears off. Novelty could just as easily be maintained by the same drug. Smelling roses is wonderful, on MDMA smelling roses is profoundly fantastic. Life itself would be constantly awe-inspiring. How would that cause society to fall apart, turn everyone into a psychopath, or any other such negativity? It would be the reverse. Of course, there would be degrees of happiness. Just no suffering. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/62 "2005-02-09T20:19:54Z")
> [@ninetypercent](#): > > I guess the real question is: is pain and pleasure two sides of the same coin? I don’t think so. Take for example a drug; this drug achieves the same effects as MDMA, but replenishes the chemicals it releases so that the effect never wears off. Novelty could just as easily be maintained by the same drug. Smelling roses is wonderful, on MDMA smelling roses is profoundly fantastic. Life itself would be constantly awe-inspiring. How would that cause society to fall apart, turn everyone into a psychopath, or any other such negativity? It would be the reverse. > > Of course, there would be degrees of happiness. Just no suffering. What if people couldn’t feel shame or fear? Taking away suffering isn’t the same as MDMA, MDMA is adding good emotions and a totally different field than taking away bad emotions. Taking away suffering is like being high on alcohol or PCP or some other drug where you are indifferent to the negative consequences of your actions. ---
**Author:** ![ninetypercent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@ninetypercent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninetypercent)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/63 "2005-02-09T21:05:00Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > What if people couldn’t feel shame or fear? Taking away suffering isn’t the same as MDMA, MDMA is adding good emotions and a totally different field than taking away bad emotions. Taking away suffering is like being high on alcohol or PCP or some other drug where you are indifferent to the negative consequences of your actions. That is a vindictive point of view. What would be the point of shame if no one suffered? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/64 "2005-02-09T22:03:08Z")
> [@ninetypercent](#): > > That is a vindictive point of view. What would be the point of shame if no one suffered? Hmm. I do not support suffering the way we have it but we need some kind of control to keep people functioning as a society. If we had no social glue things like language, art, culture & technology would break down and we’d resort to a feral life. Even though I am strongly in favor of using biotech to control suffering I do not think eliminating suffering and reverting to a feral life is worth it. Suffering should be replaced with something humane, or methods of making it manageable should be created. Cellular organisms can work together and function as a unit and due to the fact that they lack central nervous systems they do not suffer the way we do (since suffering is dependent on having a CNS). Something like that (organization w/o pain) that would still allow a functioning society but in a humane way would be good. But even if we figured it out I doubt we’d implement it. ---
**Author:** ![EvanS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/59ef9b/32.png) [@EvanS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvanS)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/65 "2005-02-09T23:47:03Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > From a philosophical viewpoint mental suffering is a side effect of being unable to be the person you deep down inside desire to be. An event that causes suffering can permanently alter the ability to do this, leading to permanent suffering. There may be no way to rectify this kind of situation. That’s a bit simplistic. Mental suffering can come from many other causes as well. And, I disagree: there are ways to rectify that situation, ranging among reprogramming, therapy, self-realization, and a slew of others. > [@Wesley Clark](#): > > Physical pain is a sign you are hurting yourself biologically. When you do things that threaten your physical life you suffer. Mental pain is more or less the same but with a mental image of yourself, your relationships, your society, etc. Unless a person radically transforms their views they may be stuck suffering for the rest of their lives, and radical transformations are easier said than done. Mostly everything worthwhile requires some effort, but the point is that it can be done. One problem is that there is significant competition among modalities, with each discounting the other (to some degree), to the detriment of sufferers. Therapy takes years and is prohibatively expensive. Self reprogramming is easily learned, works relatively quickly, is effective and is inexpensive. If you limit your modalities, transformation is easier said than done. Lots of difficulty comes from individual resistance; people have been enculturated to believe that in some instances they must suffer, and resist rectification. This, too, responds to reprogramming. Suffering is unnecessary – at least in the long term. Pain is a signal that something is wrong. When something is wrong, you fix it. When it’s been fixed, the pain is no longer necessary, and should be eliminated. ---
**Author:** ![jeffh3000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@jeffh3000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jeffh3000)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/66 "2005-02-10T07:56:05Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > Many, if not most, of the values that human societies hold dear, are the evolutionary response of the constraints that have bounded us. If suffering is eliminated, people won’t, indeed can’t, be distressed by the resulting side-effects that you regard as deleterious. That is a good angle. It is commonly believed that war, pain, and suffering motivate growth and change within society. Within this concept, one could say that it helps us evolve both socially (technology etc) and physically. Without the need to survive, would we have developed more sophisticated brains than other animals or even discovered fire? What effects would this have on human evolution now? ---
**Author:** ![EvanS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/59ef9b/32.png) [@EvanS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvanS)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/67 "2005-02-10T22:32:29Z")
> [@jeffh3000](#): > > That is a good angle. It is commonly believed that war, pain, and suffering motivate growth and change within society. Within this concept, one could say that it helps us evolve both socially (technology etc) and physically. Without the need to survive, would we have developed more sophisticated brains than other animals or even discovered fire? > > What effects would this have on human evolution now? It’d probably make us content, which may tend to make many of us lazy and unproductive. Kinda like people with inherited wealth, y’know? Many of them go on to live empty, useless lives, seeking self-gratification. I don’t think it would be good for us as a species. ---
**Author:** ![jeffh3000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@jeffh3000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jeffh3000)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2005, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/68 "2005-02-11T07:01:03Z")
> [@EvanS](#): > > It’d probably make us content, which may tend to make many of us lazy and unproductive. > Kinda like people with inherited wealth, y’know? Many of them go on to live empty, useless lives, seeking self-gratification. I don’t think it would be good for us as a species. > [@Thrasymachus](#): > > This is a fascinating question, one that I’ve wondered about sometimes myself. > > Suppose for a moment that all problems in the world are solved through the effort of previous generations. Would we then suffer from boredom? Most certainly as society continues to advance and be more developed we find more and more past times to keep ourselves occupied. We have freetime and pure survival is no longer a daily struggle. As society continues to develop, one could assume if the ills of the world are gone, then the need to entertain ourselves will continue to grow as we have nothing to struggle against. We could end up finding that the ultimate struggle of a “perfect” society is preventing boredom and entertaining ourselves. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937.md?page=3)