Would it be worth it?

[Astonished]

Rendering them impotent to give in to this baser impulse doesn't remove those motivations, they'd just have to find a more positive way to channel them. There's obviously still competition, sexual/romantic if nothing else given that all other basic needs would be met. So you wouldn't be removing suffering nor struggle, just the bits that enable them to harm others as a result.

[Silver]

I have always been more a fan of the dystopian society.

[Astonished]

I have always been more a fan of the dystopian society.

Well, your masochistic streak doesn't have to condemn everyone else, if I'm reading you correctly. I'm sure a portion of the earth could be cordoned off for anyone whose personality is such that they'd actually thrive under extreme and constant strife.

[Mister Agenda]

There's a concept of a 'hedonic treadmill' that we have a base level of happiness that we tend to return to. When good things happen to us, we're happier for a while and then go back to our normal level. When bad things happen to us, we're unhappier for a while, then we go back to our normal level. An example might be a big lottery win. Getting rich will usually make you happy, but a year later, with much more in the way of financial security and material luxuries, you'll likely have returned to your previous state of happiness.

The mark of a society with a lot of well-being isn't lack of complaint, but what there is to complain about. In my opinion, people complaining about how long their city is keeping Christmas decorations up is much more likely to have citizens who are better off than a community where people are complaining about how so many of their children are dying.

It's our nature to never be satisfied, and that's not going to change short of Brave New World measures. We'll always spot things that can be improved, because physics will never allow us truly perfect lives that can't possibly be improved, though those who construct virtual realities may come close.

[Silver]

The group census of utopia will always be someone's idea of dystopia.

Islam, for example. Certainly, Islam as a group thinks it is the utopia. Most of the rest of the world views Islam as the dystopia, however.

[Astonished]

The group census of utopia will always be someone's idea of dystopia.

Islam, for example.  Certainly, Islam as a group thinks it is the utopia.  Most of the rest of the world views Islam as the dystopia, however.

Well, considering the change would likely cause faith to vanish within a generation, I doubt that particular example would be valid.

[mordant]

There would be no personal growth if we lived in a utopia. While it seems like it would be an improvement, to remove suffering basically out of the human condition, it would actually create new problems, because you can't grow without adversity. (unfortunately)

I can't agree with you on this one, D.

Here's the current situation visualized as a spectrum of pain vs pleasure:

Abject misery <==== Mild negatives <=== Neither here or there ====> Niceness ===> Ecstasy

Here's the same thing without the suffering:

Neither here or there <==== Niceness ===> Ecstasy

There's still contrast, still "learning opportunities". But no suffering.

Besides, this assumes that the ONLY possible way to "grow" (learn, whatever) is via contrasting experiences of more or less pleasure (currently, with the extreme of suffering and want on the low end). It ignores that learning also comes by pursuing and integrating new knowledge / information / data.

The notion that suffering somehow provides regrettably necessary perspective to enable "growth" or to give meaning to pleasure, is in my view incorrect. I regard suffering as always diminishing the sufferer, in and of itself. Sure, you can make lemonade out of lemons, overcome, etc., but that still takes nonzero effort that could be better used for other things.

Your view is common, and may even be a majority view, at least in general terms, but I see it as a failure of imagination caused by us being so inured to human suffering as a "given".

We cannot afford to accept human suffering or take excuses not to work against it. In the extreme, the view of suffering as necessity does provoke some people to be unconcerned about it and even to take the extreme view (though I very much doubt you would personally) that suffering is as often as not, and maybe all the time, the fault of the sufferer. As such I also see it as a potentially dangerous ideation.

[*Deidre*]

There would be no personal growth if we lived in a utopia. While it seems like it would be an improvement, to remove suffering basically out of the human condition, it would actually create new problems, because you can't grow without adversity. (unfortunately)

I can't agree with you on this one, D.

Here's the current situation visualized as a spectrum of pain vs pleasure:

Abject misery <==== Mild negatives <=== Neither here or there ====> Niceness ===> Ecstasy

Here's the same thing without the suffering:

Neither here or there <==== Niceness ===> Ecstasy

There's still contrast, still "learning opportunities". But no suffering.

Besides, this assumes that the ONLY possible way to "grow" (learn, whatever) is via contrasting experiences of more or less pleasure (currently, with the extreme of suffering and want on the low end). It ignores that learning also comes by pursuing and integrating new knowledge / information / data.

The notion that suffering somehow provides regrettably necessary perspective to enable "growth" or to give meaning to pleasure, is in my view incorrect. I regard suffering as always diminishing the sufferer, in and of itself. Sure, you can make lemonade out of lemons, overcome, etc., but that still takes nonzero effort that could be better used for other things.

Your view is common, and may even be a majority view, at least in general terms, but I see it as a failure of imagination caused by us being so inured to human suffering as a "given".

Well, partially true. My thoughts were a little incomplete. I learned along the way of my ''journey'' since abandoning Christianity the first time, and explored Buddhism, that suffering is actually not inevitable. Pain is inevitable, life and its obstacles, sometimes brings pain. But, to suffer, is optional, and it's in that clinging to pain and wallowing in it, that we create suffering. It took me a while to get that, but finally I did. My grandmother's death is painful for me, but if I choose to think my life sucks because of it, is up to me. So suffering while it might seem out of our hands, is in very much in them.

I don't have a failure of imagination. Don't presume to know how I think, because you don't.

[mordant]

Anyone think this would be worth it to undo everything our war criminals and political crooks and religious charlatans have done? Or a step too far?

In my view the problem is always that you're allowing someone (or something) else to decide what is harmful or beneficial, which is always a relative and contextual judgment anyway. Also, the calculus of tradeoffs is very personal. For example I'm a type 2 diabetic, but I choose not to eat as strictly as I "should" because I'd rather live for a shorter time and maybe have some enjoyment during that time, than to live longer but with less to look forward to and enjoy. If my feet suddenly went numb or my retinas started to detach or something, that might provide me with a different set of tradeoffs to consider, but that is for me to decide.

I understand the feeling that the world is saturated with stupidity and idiocy, a fact that for me at least has been clarified since the 2016 US election cycle combined with Brexit and other nationalist hysterics going on or trying to gain purchase all over the world, and undo decades of human progress in the name of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As a theist, back in the 70s and 80s, I had a very pessimistic view of human nature because of the doctrine of utter depravity and the obvious fact that most people didn't accept the remedy I thought was appropriate (repentance and commitment to Christ). Also because the church taught that I was a member of the "tattered remnant" of the Faithful and I tended to wear this a badge of honor while I tsk-tsk'd about the world going to hell in a handbasket when it was all so unnecessary.

After I transitioned to atheism I developed the notion that most people, left to themselves, misguided though they at times are, mean well and try their best to do well.

After the US looked the gift horse of Bernie in the mouth and then elected his near-polar opposite, I am tempted to return to my pessimistic stance (which is natural for my personality, anyway), just for different reasons. I'm not sure how that's going to sort out yet but I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face by giving up my personal freedom to some allegedly benevolent and caring authority, even if (and maybe especially if) it's not human.

---

Well, partially true. My thoughts were a little incomplete. I learned along the way of my ''journey'' since abandoning Christianity the first time, and explored Buddhism, that suffering is actually not inevitable. Pain is inevitable, life and its obstacles, sometimes brings pain. But, to suffer, is optional, and it's in that clinging to pain and wallowing in it, that we create suffering. It took me a while to get that, but finally I did. My grandmother's death is painful for me, but if I choose to think my life sucks because of it, is up to me. So suffering while it might seem out of our hands, is in very much in them.

I don't have a failure of imagination. Don't presume to know how I think, because you don't.

I don't presume to know how you think nor was that statement an effort to insult you. I had the same failure to see what's possible for most of my life. It's not because I was stupid or unaware but because I just didn't know anything else but pain and the teaching that it's just inevitable. I do think that the fairly common notion that suffering is necessary for various reasons, generally represents an acceptance of suffering as a "given" such that we dare not imagine a better world or spend too much energy making that world a reality.

Semantically yes I agree with you, pain is inevitable and suffering is (kind of) a choice in the sense that you pointed out -- that we can impotently rail against our pain and thus transmute it into something worse than it is, so we shouldn't so that as it's pointless. In that sense suffering is self-created and can be let go of. I can even accept that transcending attachments, etc., represents one form of personal growth, even while believing that growth can be had in a number of other and ultimately more effective ways.

But suffering in the sense I'm talking about it is the existence of the copious amounts of grief, loss, deprivation, want, poverty, war, tribal and ideological conflicts, disease / mental illness, bigotry, cruelty, indifference, neglect and so on. These things objectively exist no matter how well or poorly we respond to them. And I don't consider any of these things desirable, even in the indirect sort of way that it provides growth opportunities. I've experienced a lot of pain and lost a lot in life, and I can't say it has made me a better man, only that I've done my best to not let it take me down, and have in some measure succeeded.

All I'm urging you to consider is not to consider these things a permanent fixture of the human condition. Just one example, up until someone stumbled on ether as an anesthetic, for all of human history people just bit rags when they had to have a surgeon cut them open or do an amputation or whatever. No one had the framing to even understand that it was possible to spare people that sort of agony. In fact, when the field of anesthesia first was invented, more than a few people, including doctors, saw it as interfering with the will of god, as depriving people of the privilege of developing a stiff upper lip. We now would consider such a view to be, by turns, ghastly and cruel.

My vision is that we will eventually look back on the present day in the same way: how could we have had such notions and tolerated such atrocities? One by one, we're eliminating sources of human suffering (which, BTW, is something devout Buddhists seek to do also, and I'm sure you're among them). I think the corollary to that is that we should never be accepting of the suffering that remains.

The open question of course, to the point of the OP, is, are we creating new forms of suffering faster than we're eliminating them as a species, because we just can't help ourselves? And would it be worth it to have some third party take care of us?

[*Deidre*]

But biting rags because humankind hadn't come up with a better invention at that time for example, is different than deliberate and willful war. This is why the pull and allure of religion is so powerful - it promises people who are in immense pain, that a paradise awaits them, and all the suffering will be gone. And in the meantime, God will help them endure the pain now of what it's like to be human, because without a god, humans can't endure it. That's why religion is powerful, even though we know better.