In Suffering, Truth?
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
Whether we are talking about the world debt crisis or entitlement programs, the Western world is engaged in an epic debate about fairness. On one side, we hear the general argument that it is government’s role to make life more fair. On the other side, there are cries that if the world economy collapses our governments won’t be able to pay for anything…and that will be much less fair.
The thing is that no matter what, life has an element of suffering and very little in life is fair. Understood correctly, this breeds a healthy sense of mortality, duty, and (one would hope)graciousness if not even empathy for our fellow-men. Plato summed it up perfectly in his famous line, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Since we are stuck with it, does suffering have any redeeming qualities? Sophocles and Aeschylus both overtly take on this question and create plays that portray what suffering produces.
Aeschylus’s Oresteia is a straightforward answer; Suffering produces truth. Remember how we followed Orestes’s excruciating enlightenment away from revenge and toward true justice?
Sophocles makes a different and much simpler point, that life exists at the cost of suffering. It isn’t so much that you will find anything, but to live is to suffer. Violation of natural law has consequences but by being noble and virtuous there can be redemption, but not necessarily truth.
So if you are a fan of Aeschylus, you can hope for truth in the midst of the troubles life throws your way. If you are a fan of Sophocles, hope for redemption by being your most noble self is your path.
Bringing this back around to the current political debate, I think the belief that government can make things fair is dangerous. Hyping government intervention as the way to “level all playing fields” can breed (and IS breeding) the corollary that “It is unfair for me to struggle in this life because it is the government’s job to alleviate my pain.” (Of course certain types of mental illness clearly preclude this argument.)
And that is life. Even if you have a government that will make life more fair, while also bankrupting the country, you are going to suffer. Period.
Might as well face those storms head on like Philoctetes learns to do.
