I never claimed that all suffering is good, or that we should maximize suffering, only that eradicating all suffering would be highly undesirable, and even impossible, as lack of suffering would inevitably bring about new suffering.
This is true of being wrong, and problems, and lacking rationality - those are all incidental necessities in a world where we have something to do: otherwise we'd be like Q from Star Trek, stuck in his heaven at the end of time, with no remaining purpose except to mess with Picard's head.
But is it true of suffering? That seems possible, but not obvious. I think it implies that suffering evolves with culture. Like I got cake crumbs on my silk sheets! Such discomfort! How I suffer! ... in this way "suffering" just means viscerally-felt problems that we didn't choose, and it's plausibly an eternal part of existing in a physical world with problems to solve - if we can't manipulate all upcoming problems to be always fun.
Ensuring all problems are always fun probably entails seeing into the future, and wouldn't be possible. So, OK, I'll buy it, suffering is a side effect of living well.
Kind of raises the question of how much we can reduce suffering, though - if at all. Is there a particular percentage of the time that an average human spends suffering, whether in ancient times or today or in the future?
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I never claimed that all suffering is good, or that we should maximize suffering, only that eradicating all suffering would be highly undesirable, and even impossible, as lack of suffering would inevitably bring about new suffering.
This is true of being wrong, and problems, and lacking rationality - those are all incidental necessities in a world where we have something to do: otherwise we'd be like Q from Star Trek, stuck in his heaven at the end of time, with no remaining purpose except to mess with Picard's head.
But is it true of suffering? That seems possible, but not obvious. I think it implies that suffering evolves with culture. Like I got cake crumbs on my silk sheets! Such discomfort! How I suffer! ... in this way "suffering" just means viscerally-felt problems that we didn't choose, and it's plausibly an eternal part of existing in a physical world with problems to solve - if we can't manipulate all upcoming problems to be always fun.
Ensuring all problems are always fun probably entails seeing into the future, and wouldn't be possible. So, OK, I'll buy it, suffering is a side effect of living well.
Kind of raises the question of how much we can reduce suffering, though - if at all. Is there a particular percentage of the time that an average human spends suffering, whether in ancient times or today or in the future?