On Suffering (Part 3)
How to reconcile with it
In the first two parts of this series, I talked a lot about Suffering (with a big S), taking a really abstract and general kind of view. And then there were two interludes where I talked about suffering on an individual, visceral level. Here, I want to look at it from an individual, cerebral level. This is for the long haul, for answering questions like “why is the world like this?” and “how can I cope with me and everyone I know being murderers and manslaughterers?”. I want to be clear: I can’t exactly be of much help in dealing with most forms of one’s own suffering, especially physical suffering. What I aim to do here is to help to mitigate any suffering caused by the realization of ideas such as the ones I’ve discussed so far. I don’t think there’s any silver bullet, just like there isn’t any silver bullet for suffering in general, but there are things that can help.
The Dialectic
“Dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argumentation”
— Wikipedia
The Dialectic has been, without a doubt, one of the most useful concepts in my life. I think many of us use dialectics to some extent in an unconscious manner, and I think there’s so much we could gain from utilizing them to their fullest extent (this sentence is something of a dialectic). The dialectic technique I’d like to use, which I’ll refer to as synthesis dialecticism, is different both from classical logic and from naive dialecticism. Classical logic does not allow for middle positions and doesn’t provide a good framework for evolving dialogue, while naive dialecticism tends to blindly take the average of competing positions and/or to ignore seeming contradictions altogether. There are many cases in which another tool is needed to make sense of seeming contradictions that may be very difficult to resolve with classical logic and which may go unnoticed by naive dialecticism.
An example of how synthesis dialecticism can be helpful is in the case of veganism. Someone coming from a framework of classical logic might reason:
Consumption of any amount of animal products contributes to slaughter and exploitation of animals
Contributing to slaughter and exploitation makes a person a killer
Killers should be shamed, punished, and even attacked
All people who are not strictly vegan should be shamed, punished, and even attacked
This sort of reasoning, I think, can lead to outcomes that are not good (or not as good as they could be) from a larger perspective. Indeed, it’s possible that applying a framework of classical logic may result in counterproductive or even dangerous fanaticism because of its focus on elimination of seeming contradictions.
At the other extreme, a person who uses a naive dialectical framework may simply try to average the two viewpoints, or to accept both of them. So, for example, one might say that both a vegan diet and a non-vegan diet are equally okay. And while it may be pragmatic to say this to defuse tensions at the dinner table, it’s dangerously complacent to hold too sincerely to this attitude. The analogue of 200 years ago is a person who sincerely believes that slavery is an issue of state’s rights, not individual ones.
For me, the synthesis of these attitudes is to recognize that factory farming is perhaps the largest injustice we have ever directly perpetrated and that the most effective methods to combat it may be ones that we don’t feel would be most authentic or just. That many people do things that have bad consequences which we should not be complacent about and that they are not horrible people with the intention to do harm. We ought to make compromises where it is pragmatic to do so and continue to work towards animal liberation wherever we can.
Here are a few that I think have been really useful to me:
You’ve made mistakes and you are not a bad person
“I don't like the terms "good person" or "bad person" because it is impossible to be entirely good to everyone.”
— Armin Arlert, Attack on Titan
I believe that very few people are capable of thinking they are bad people.
For if one placed any significant level of importance on being a good person, as many of us do, and if one defined the goodness or badness of one’s person by the acts they engaged in, then it would be impossible for one to appraise one’s actions as bad, because that would be in contradiction to one’s belief that one was good.
Even for those of us who can recognize mistakes, we tend to distance them from ourselves. What we did was actually something our past self did, and we criticize that person, who we are no longer. By shunting our sins onto our past selves, we remain clean. Think about it: when was the last time that, while you were doing something, you decided resolutely it was immoral and then continued to do it anyway? I don’t know if I can come up with anything recent. The closest most of us can come is that we have some moral struggle with ourselves, some doubt about what is permissible. Only later do we condemn ourselves as having done wrong.
Maybe something that contributes to this is how we internalize our actions. My belief is that, when we take some action of great consequence and define ourselves with it, it can be both difficult to deal with and counterproductive. Feelings of guilt and shame can be overwhelming, and shaming oneself and others can backfire (because of the possibility that one will distance oneself from the thing that provoked shame rather than changing behavior; see page 11). I think it’s more accurate to recognize that our actions were bad, or that they had bad consequences, or that there were better actions that could have been taken. Not only that, but at least in theory, this framing is more helpful because it leaves open the possibility of change. To define oneself as a bad person implies somewhat that there is an inability to change, that one will be tainted by this mark of badness no matter what one does. And that is counterproductive, because the point is to change what one does in the future, not to change an inaccessible past. To say that one has done bad things or acted in ways that had bad outcomes not only leaves open the possibility for future actions to be better, but implies that they will be.
Silver bullets don’t exist and you can do good without them
“There is no single, simple answer to the question of how we can best reduce suffering”
— Magnus Vinding
Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat during WWII, used his position to save at least hundreds to thousands of Jews in Hungary, and may have been instrumental to a plot that saved the lives of an estimated 70,000 Hungarian Jews. Whatever the case may be, neither he nor anyone else saved all the Jews in Hungary, let alone all the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. And it would have been highly unrealistic to expect them to do so. Even for a single train of Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz, there was only so much he could do.
After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.
Undoubtedly many more dozens of Jews were not able to get a passport, and were deported to Auschwitz. And it must have been terrible if one were on that train, seeing the passports handed through but not being able to get one. Wallenberg himself may have felt regret that he could not have printed more passports, that he could not offer one to every person on that train, that he could not have saved them all.
I’ve personally gone through periods where I implicitly felt that there were silver bullets, and more than that, that I had one. I definitely held martyr and savior complexes, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one, as these phenomena already have names. Maybe these things never completely go away, though I’ve begun to recognize them for what they are. It was personally painful to recognize that there was really so little I, or anyone else for that matter, could do on the scale of trillions. At the same time, to (relatively) concretely rather than abstractly grasp the idea that I could probably work for the benefit of thousands, and possibly even for the benefit of millions, is something that’s been incredibly motivating.
Humans tend to engage in binary, black-and-white thinking. One is either good or bad. One is either effective or not. One can either save everyone or fail everyone. The reality is, of course, different. Though we cannot save everyone, we can save some. Many, even. And that’s important. Each one of those people who received a passport must have been overjoyed. And perhaps, even if a parent did not receive a passport, they were overjoyed that their child received one. Each one of these people who was saved was one person who was spared the torments of Auschwitz. So even though Wallenberg and others could not save everyone, they still did an enormous amount of good, and are rightly celebrated for their actions.
You have more than one goal, and that’s fine good
“...if you just ease off a little bit on the maximising, then you’ve got a strategy that’s much more robust”
— Toby Ord
Perhaps because Effective Altruists (and activists more broadly) have high goals and lofty standards, it can be disillusioning to learn that they (we) are also homo sapiens. There are internal and external pressures to live up to ideals and defer to common wisdom (or more cynically, dogma).
Many EAs (and activists more broadly) are so deeply convinced (and rightly so) of the importance of their work that they strive for the minimum of self-care, which is dangerous. This ends up compromising your ability to be productive and effective in the long-run (and this is long-run enough that even if you have pretty short TAI timelines, this should still be a concern!). Even just calculating from expected value, it would be better for one to err on the side of caution and accept some loss of potential productivity than to push to the absolute limit and risk long-lasting or permanent loss of potential productivity. How much buffer one should give oneself is something each individual must decide for themselves; I think this worksheet is helpful in providing a framework for individuals to improve effective self-caring. In this way, what appears at first to be merely irrational or wasteful—when inspected more carefully—might be an important protective factor (like how charities with low overhead are sometimes less effective).
I think this may apply even more broadly. Even if you are a moral realist and you subscribe to one moral system (and even if that system is utilitarianism), what the most moral thing is for you to do is more complicated than you are able to represent to yourself. If you’re a hard-core utilitarian, for example, you might believe that all people in Effective Altruism (EA) ought to work to solve the alignment problem, work as hard as possible, donate all their money to MIRI, and always aim for maximization in everything they do. Thinking through such a world, we can imagine a situation in which everyone in EA working on the alignment problem creates a technical solution, and the world is still destroyed by superintelligent AI because no one was creating policies and institutional changes to properly implement the technical solution. It would have been better had even a few EAs who were interested and competent in policy gone into the policy and institutional work rather than focusing on solving alignment. This is a pretty strawman example, and unfortunately I think models of similar naive simplicity are held by some people out there. I think more complex/less naive optimization models are still brittle in that they likely have unforeseen failure modes and these failure modes could be disastrous.
The Four Brahmaviharas
“In the same way, in this kind of time, you can let this equanimity to grow; compassion to grow. First, you will have a fraction of compassion, let it grow. A fraction of unconditional friendliness. Let it grow. A fraction of compassion. Maybe you are just having a small action. Just one action. Let it grow.”
Perhaps some who read this will know of the concept of loving-kindness, or metta. And of course, people are aware of the concept of compassion, though they may not have the same understanding of compassion or karuna as how I would define it here. Likely less well-known are the concepts of sympathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity (upekkha). The path to developing a dialectical understanding of these four abodes has been immensely helpful to me, so I hope it can be helpful to you, too.
Loving Kindness (Metta)
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Loving kindness can be described as an opening of the heart and the radiating of a warm and light feeling, and can be defined as the wish to bring happiness and well-being to oneself and others. It’s most readily felt towards people close to us, especially those such as young children and animal companions. The point of practicing metta is to take that affection that we naturally feel to the ones close to us and let it blossom. We learn to love acquaintances, then strangers, and even villains. This may seem strange; how could one love Hitler, for example? And why would we want to love someone who has done so much harm and injustice?
The far enemy of love is hatred or ill-will. Hatred is an integral part of human nature and of our moralities (indeed, people regularly rank “villains” such as Hitler as being outside their moral circles, as far as or further out than plants). It is natural to hate those who have done evil or those who are callous or sadistic. In some cases, it may even be adaptive (in a limited sense) to do so; for example, the honor culture of the American South likely arose due to a need to protect one’s herds (which could be easily stolen) and to protect oneself (as law enforcement was weak). At the same time, the risks and harms that can come from hateful acts are enormous. In a culture of honor, even single slights can quickly escalate into massive feuds, such as the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud; in a world of billions of people and weapons of mass destruction, such feuding is simply not an option. As John Green once said, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world monocular.
The near enemy of love is conditional love. True love is not conditional on traits, actions, or familial relations. Hitler did terrible things, and it would’ve been better had he drowned in a river when he was a kid (assuming, of course, no one worse took his place). We can readily acknowledge that many of his desires, intentions, and actions were incredibly wrong. At the same time, we can recognize the once-living being behind the name, and wish he had had the upbringing and environment (and even the innate dispositions) that would’ve allowed him to self-actualize in a benevolent and peaceful way.
We can extend this notion of unconditional love to ourselves and our relations. Even if one is not a utilitarian, it is hard to deny the argument that we fall short of the moral standards we set for ourselves. I think the ideal response is not to deny this or rationalize it away, nor is it to modify our ethical standards to fit the status quo; rather, it is to hold the fact that we cause suffering and death in our minds while also holding that by virtue of existing we are worthy of love, just as any other being is.
Though it’s not listed as a near enemy, I think another near enemy of love is indulgence, by which I mean fulfilling another’s superficial desires. Loving Hitler would not mean allowing him to kill all the Jews in the world. Instead, we might wish that he might be freed from the burdens of hatred and narrow-mindedness, and that he might become a better person. Similarly, loving ourselves and our relations does not equate to indulgence; we want to continue to challenge ourselves to do better; to become the people we truly are.
Practicing loving-kindness is not always easy, and it may be that you are not yet at a place where you can love Hitler. I don’t think I am. The principle is to simply allow our love to grow by not smothering it with feelings of judgment or ill-will. By giving the proper conditions and focus to loving kindness, we can let it sprout from a tiny seed into a beautiful flower. The result is that we feel lighter in our hearts and we are more effective in our interactions with others.
Compassion (Karuna)
“No matter who the organism is or what he/she has done, his/her happiness and suffering still count just the same”
— Brian Tomasik
Compassion, from my perspective, is very similar to loving kindness. The main difference is that loving kindness can be defined as focusing on increasing happiness and well-being, while compassion can be defined as focusing on alleviating suffering. Compassion may be the trickiest brahmavihara to define, and the most consequential to understand.
Part of the difficulty of defining compassion is the word itself and the cultural context it is in. Compassion is from the Latin com + passion, which literally means “to suffer with”. The word that actually has this definition in modern English is empathy, and more specifically visceral/emotional empathy. The distinction between compassion and empathy is unclear but very important (important enough that there’s an entire book written about it).
So what is the definition of compassion, and how is it different from empathy? Fortunately, some people are doing scientific research on compassion, which requires a (relatively) rigorous definition. One definition is that compassion is composed of five factors:
Recognizing suffering
Understanding the universality of suffering
Feeling empathy for the sufferer (emotional resonance)
Tolerating uncomfortable feelings aroused in response to the suffering and remaining open to and accepting of the sufferer
Motivation to act/acting to alleviate suffering.
The important parts of this definition to me are recognizing suffering, understanding its universality, and being motivated to act to alleviate the suffering in whatever way is possible.
The far enemy of compassion is cruelty, and this is something we are very capable of. Even for someone like me, who is high in agreeableness and low in dark traits, there have been times where I have felt the urge to be cruel. When we see cruelty, and see its victims, the first thought that should come to our mind is compassion for the sufferer. So often in social movements, we become caught up in who we are fighting against; we feel hatred towards those who perpetrate cruelty. For whatever reason, we rarely stop to feel compassion for the actual ones who suffer. The degree to which we hold compassion for the ones we seek to help in our minds and hearts is precisely the degree to which we stay true to the mission of doing good.
The second thought should be this: there but for the Grace of God go I. For it is as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared: “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart”. To some extent, all of us have caused great suffering, and all of us have suffered. We can be grateful that we have not caused or received as much suffering as many others have.
The near enemy of compassion is pity. Pity is the recognition of suffering without the connection provided by common being/universality of suffering. This results in a feeling of “standing above” or condescension which makes pity irritating to the one pitied.
Though it’s not often defined as a near enemy of compassion, I think an even more important one is despair which arises from empathy. Empathy has its part to play in compassion, for without an understanding of the suffering that is occurring, and without an understanding of the badness of suffering, compassionate action is not possible. At the same time, empathy alone is insufficient because while there is an understanding of the suffering, there is no action to alleviate it. I think, especially for EAs, confusion of compassion and empathy is the larger problem and can lead to more dangerous outcomes.
Emotions might be usefully thought of as measurement devices that detect certain stimuli across a range of situations. (Visceral) empathy might then be thought of as one’s “care-o-meter”; an indicator of how much one ought to care in a certain situation. In many ordinary situations in life, the care-o-meter is useful and functions well enough. If we see a little duckling struggling to move because their feathers are saturated with crude oil, our care-o-meters (hopefully for most of us, at least) register that and in a way we suffer with them (our mirror neurons may literally make it so we actually feel some of what we conceive their suffering to be).
The problem arises when we try to use our care-o-meter to gauge situations it was not built for. Increasing the number of individuals we’re trying to care about from one to several paradoxically decreases our care rather than increasing it. And when we reach scales of thousands, millions, or billions of individuals, our care-o-meters cease to be able to reliably tell the difference (see this example, section 5.2 or page 66). It’s like trying to measure the circumference of the Earth with a standard ruler; impossible, because it’s the wrong tool. The implication is that we cannot rely on empathy alone to tell us what we ought to do on a large scale, and that visceral empathy may even lead us in the wrong direction (i.e. by driving us to focus on smaller and more catchy causes, like preserving giant pandas, at the expense of larger and less glamorous causes, like distributing anti-malaria nets). I claim that this holds true for any philosophy of ethics, potentially with the exception of ethics of care.
In addition to its unreliability on large scales, empathy can be dangerous to the empath. I know this from personal experience. After reading an article by Brian Tomasik one night, I became viscerally aware of the massive amount of suffering that was happening all around me. I felt more than I’d ever felt before the suffering of people and animals and wild animals around the world, from the battery-caged chicken many miles away to the worker ant right outside my window. It felt like I was a vessel for molten fire, and I prayed to God to make all the suffering go away. It was the most painful experience of my life. And I knew that even then, what I felt was a hopelessly small fraction of the suffering my mind was trying to represent. I’m sure many others in helping professions (such as activists and healthcare workers) have similar experiences. And logically, it can be no other way. Imagine someone who is probably already high in empathy being exposed (to one degree or another) to thousands, millions, or billions of beings in massive suffering. To proportionally feel even a “normal” amount of empathy for each individual would be unbearable. Again, our care-o-meters just aren’t built for that. Trying to empathize with the suffering of the world is like trying to use one’s body to put out a volcano. All you’ll succeed in doing is destroying yourself.
I’m glad that Effective Altruism has shined a spotlight on effectiveness, and that utilitarianism has motivated people to increase their impartial impact. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that tying your care-o-meter to proportional radical empathy is literally impossible, and that trying to achieve this will leave you miserable and incapacitated while also impairing your decision-making. The mistake we make when we learn about effectiveness is to try to tie what we rationally believe to be true to our care-o-meters. Using them to get ourselves to care at all might be a useful first step, but it’s important that we don’t let ourselves become beholden to them.
So then, what’s the solution? Well, you can probably guess that I think it’s compassion as I’ve defined it here. One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet is that compassion is the lightly joyful wish to alleviate suffering. This may seem strange and even sacrilegious. At the same time, it’s the recognition and intention that count. Consider this: what might one feel when an infant is crying in distress? The empathetic response would be to get on the ground and start bawling with them, or perhaps more realistically, to feel anger in response to their anger. We know this is not helpful. A more helpful response is the heartfelt and joyful wish to soothe the suffering of the infant, to smile compassionately and say “shhhhh, it’s alright, I’m here now”. This light and beautiful feeling is compassion, and it is my belief that compassion can guide and protect us through the inferno of suffering.
Sympathetic Joy (Mudita)
“To help his friends, Frederick shared what he collected. Frederick told the field mice about the yellow corn, the green leaves, and the blue and purple flowers. Frederick warmed and cheered his friends with his words”
— Frederick, by Leo Lionni
I love children and non-human animal companions
.
And yes, I know I’m falling right into the idealization of them as angels and cherubs. I know they’re capable of uncaring selfishness and vicious cruelty as well. At the same time, there’s something about them that is irreplaceable; a glimpse of gold in a world of green. Because a child or animal companion whose material, relational, and spiritual needs are taken care of has a joy that is unmatched in this world. It’s the joy of bright eyes and big smiles, of feet pattering on the sidewalk, of a new discovery in every moment. It’s the joy of innocence, both in the spiritual and in the moral sense.
I always smile when I see children, because I see this joy. Even when they must be quiet and well-behaved, I can see it hiding just below the surface, waiting for a chance to come out. And I feel joy for their joy. I feel sympathetic joy.
I also feel great joy when I see farm animals cared for in sanctuaries. Knowing that they will never be hurt (again), and knowing that they’ll spend their lives happy and loved, and knowing that THIS IS WHAT I’M FIGHTING FOR is what makes the fight worth it.
It is important to know that there is suffering, and that this may even predominate in the world. It is also vitally important to keep in mind that there is still joy and good in the world. This joy is like a candle that illuminates the darkness, for this joy is the joy we aim for in all sentient beings. We need causes we can fight for. We need something to remind us that hope—in the sense of not giving up in trying to do better—is always rational, no matter how dire the circumstances.
The far enemy of joy is envy. It’s very easy to feel envious; I know I’ve felt envious of people ranging from my friends to complete strangers. It’s also very difficult to feel envious, both because of the unpleasantness of the feeling and because of the judgment we bring upon ourselves for feeling envy. We may want to feel happy at someone else’s joy, and we may not be able to bring ourselves to that in that moment, and that’s okay. I think the best response to envy is self-compassion; once one validates and attends to one’s own suffering, one has the capability to turn outward and naturally feel joy for joy.
The near enemy of joy is intoxication or greed; in essence, it is craving. I believe this to be a subtler version of suffering, especially when considering the craving alone (and not the fulfillment of what is craved, though that could be argued to simply be a temporary release from the craving). Where joy is relaxed and contented, craving tends to be tight, tense, and seeking. This also gives an answer to the question of why one ought not to feel joy towards sadistic joy, for this is not joy but craving; compassion should be felt instead.
Personally, I also feel joy towards my own joy, in particular towards the joy I had in my younger years. I was very fortunate to have had a life that, up until the beginning of middle school, was relatively pleasant and which had many good experiences. Of course, it wasn’t all good, and I have many happy memories from that time. I’m happy I had that time of innocence, and I’m happy others can have it, too.
Equanimity (Upekkha)
“The Oak stood proudly and fought against the storm, while the yielding Reeds bowed low. The wind redoubled in fury, and all at once the great tree fell…”
— The Oak and the Reed
Equanimity is a sense of relaxed acceptance of what is. It is the ceasing of all resistance, as one might see in some in the moments before a death they know is coming.
The far enemy of equanimity is exertion and rigidity. Life appears to require exertion; when we are faced with threats, we become tense. We feel we must adhere to strict rules and schedules. When we are faced with a problem, our first instinct is to push back directly against it. We glorify this straining, this stretching of the self to the limit. Both the need for and the efficacy of this exertion are questionable. One might have had the experience of choking in a sport, where either overthinking or stress/tension resulted in poor performance in crucial moments. The grasping for control leaves us powerless, and the quest for strength leaves us fragile. Only when we surrender control can we perform at our peak. In general, forcing is going to be less effective because it’s pitting two opposing forces against one another, destroying or weakening both of them. You can strike a rock, and it will break, but strike water with the same force, and soon it will be as if nothing had happened.
The near enemy of equanimity is indifference. Indifference is why it’s infuriating when someone tries to console you by saying that “this was part of God’s plan” or “everything happens for a reason”. My perspective is that indifference is itself a form of exertion, because it is the resistance against connection with self and others, and a denial of what is true. When someone you love is dying, and you’ve made peace with it, that doesn’t equate to being indifferent to their plight. It doesn’t mean that, if a doctor suddenly came in with a miracle cure, you would refuse. It simply means that, when all is said and done, you will bear what must be borne. Perhaps it is well-expressed in the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.
To fully unpack the concept of equanimity, and such rich philosophical concepts as radical acceptance, Kierkegaard’s despair, Camus’s defiance, and Nietzsche’s amor fati, will require a lot more writing than I can fit here. So… sorry for the cliffhanger. Hopefully you can accept it ;)
You can rest assured that I’ll come back to this topic.
Conclusion
I know I’m not the most qualified to speak on these things, and I’ve only really seriously engaged with suffering-focused ideas for around a year. Nevertheless, I think it’s worth putting out there because I believe that it’s really important to maintain stability and to have the correct motivations. I also hope these reflections will be helpful to some people, if only because they’ll know someone else other than themselves is thinking about these things. Knowing about massive suffering, in addition to being immensely burdensome in itself, can also be incredibly isolating. For one, because many others either cannot or will not understand it. And for another, because it’s easier to react to suffering by isolating ourselves. And then there’s the personal motivation; I know that it can be really difficult and depressing to bear with anything approximating the reality of this world, so I wanted to try my best to give people the tools to bear with that rather than just slapping them with the truth and leaving them to deal with it on their own. I wish only the very best for you, and I hope together we can alleviate the sufferings of many many sentient beings.