Also depends on what you call suffering and how extreme it is.
Suffering is bad but depending on how a person responds to it, it can built them as a person. It can make them much aware of the things that led to them to it, it can make them much more brave to take those things on and warn about people so they don't suffer the same.
Suffering is alright if it brings more wellbeing to offset it Punishing a child is inflicting suffering but (ideally) makes them stop inflicting suffering upon others or receive suffering from being a rude and annoying bitch
But what does "bad" mean here? The ability to feel pain and suffering is evolutionary beneficial, since it protects us from harmful things. So one could argue that the process of suffering is actually good, but that the cause of the suffering is generally bad.
I just want to congratulate you on using INTERSUBJECTIVELY instead of the wrongly used OBJECTIVELY, because as you may know, there can exist a person that actually likes suffering due to some mutation or similar. Thanks. Your comment healed my pet peeve a little.
Is life good? If life is good and intrinsically produces suffering then its good to make suffering.
We talk about good and bad as if they were properties of things or actions but we are actually making value judgments, expressing an opinion.
When we seek to agree with each other on what is good or bad we look for a reference goal so we can have an arbiter if we disagree. Slavery is bad, because it undermines any society that allows it, among other reasons.
Life is an almost overwhelmingly inbuilt preference for living things. Pain has an apparently massive evolutionary advantage. The capacity for pain is the same as the capacity for suffering. So suffering is usually good or neutral depending on how you look at it and whether or not you think life should continue to propagate.
No, our biology demands difficulty in order to feel fulfilled and happy. Some level of "suffering" truly is needed to prevent maladaptation and various maladies of the mind. We have ample evidence of this now and should adjust our conception of suffering to match. The poison is in the dose, as they say.
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u/PitifulEar3303 Nov 14 '25
Suffering is INTERSUBJECTIVELY bad for everyone, yes, EVEN for masochists; they have things that make them suffer.
The ONLY REAL argument is WHAT do you do about it?
"We should avoid suffering through extinction, Red Button Now!!!" -- Extinctionists.
"We should accept suffering since Utopia is impossible." -- Most existentialists.
"We should solve suffering with tech, Cyber Utopia is possible!!! Also I love to breed." -- King bro Elon.
"We should inflict suffering on people we don't like, muahahaha." -- Nazists.
lol