Suffering Can Teach, or An Axiom For Hope
Recently I have been having difficulty converting thoughts into action. I've been having difficulty with moving from the understanding that I have to do certain things to feel better, to break my chain of anxiety and depression, to actually doing them. I just had a long think about it, about why this is the case for me, and provisionally I think I've provided myself with an answer.
The reason that I've found it so difficult to move from the understanding of what I need to do to actually doing it is that I lost faith in the idea that acting on my thoughts might produce desired results. I came to realise that sometimes you act on thoughts and what you receive as a result is far from satisfactory, if not downright depressing. I sought to avoid pain and maintain as much pleasure as possible, and on some subconscious plane of reasoning, this resulted in my developing anxiety about taking action on thoughts I had. Lessons became scary, practising the language became scary, trying to make friends became scary. In short, almost everything became scary, and my inability to do anything became sad, which paradoxically led to more pain.
So I reasoned that I need to regain the faith in the idea that acting on thoughts might produce desired results (I will call this idea 'hope' from now on). But how? Evidence shows it doesn't always. This is how I've gotten into this sad position in the first place. But faith, while not directly contradictory with evidence-based reasoning, is something parallel to it and is there to fill in a hole that cannot be filled by any amount of evidence-based reasoning you do.
Now I'm not a religious man, but I realised I need a foundation for my faith. The religious have a kind and loving god, but I am too secular and philosophical to believe in a personal god. I'm an atheist and need some other foundation for my faith in hope. So I continued to think and realised that I misled myself by implicitly upholding a hedonistic principle: that pain/suffering is bad and pleasure is good. This is a good starter theory in life, but it is naive at best. Suffering can teach, which means suffering can be good. This statement is what I've taken to be the new foundation of my faith in hope.
If pain can be helpful and suffering can teach, I have no reason to worry that my actions may lead to the unexpected, to suffering. Either taking action will lead to desired results or they will lead to suffering. In suffering I can learn. If I find some particular token of suffering that offers me no teaching, I won't let this shake my faith in the statement that suffering can teach. Suffering can teach; it doesn't always teach. It has the potential to teach. I only need one instance of this happening and my faith in the statement is infinitely justified.
I have faith in the thought that suffering can teach, which means I have nothing to be afraid of when it comes to taking action. Taking action results in one of two goods: a desired result, which is pleasurable, or suffering, which is painful, but teaching. They are both different shades of good.
What's more, this whole system justifies itself because I thought of it as a result of suffering. I learnt it from suffering. So suffering can teach. Now I know why I shouldn't be afraid to take action: because suffering can teach and I have been shown it with experience. Suffering or pain with the end of overall betterment is a good, and that is the kind of suffering that results from taking action. The element of faith lies in believing this even through the pain, even when it seems like in some particular token of suffering there seem to be no answers. So that's what I will do: I stomp my foot and declare, "Suffering can teach!" as the foundation for my faith in hope.
The reason that I've found it so difficult to move from the understanding of what I need to do to actually doing it is that I lost faith in the idea that acting on my thoughts might produce desired results. I came to realise that sometimes you act on thoughts and what you receive as a result is far from satisfactory, if not downright depressing. I sought to avoid pain and maintain as much pleasure as possible, and on some subconscious plane of reasoning, this resulted in my developing anxiety about taking action on thoughts I had. Lessons became scary, practising the language became scary, trying to make friends became scary. In short, almost everything became scary, and my inability to do anything became sad, which paradoxically led to more pain.
So I reasoned that I need to regain the faith in the idea that acting on thoughts might produce desired results (I will call this idea 'hope' from now on). But how? Evidence shows it doesn't always. This is how I've gotten into this sad position in the first place. But faith, while not directly contradictory with evidence-based reasoning, is something parallel to it and is there to fill in a hole that cannot be filled by any amount of evidence-based reasoning you do.
Now I'm not a religious man, but I realised I need a foundation for my faith. The religious have a kind and loving god, but I am too secular and philosophical to believe in a personal god. I'm an atheist and need some other foundation for my faith in hope. So I continued to think and realised that I misled myself by implicitly upholding a hedonistic principle: that pain/suffering is bad and pleasure is good. This is a good starter theory in life, but it is naive at best. Suffering can teach, which means suffering can be good. This statement is what I've taken to be the new foundation of my faith in hope.
If pain can be helpful and suffering can teach, I have no reason to worry that my actions may lead to the unexpected, to suffering. Either taking action will lead to desired results or they will lead to suffering. In suffering I can learn. If I find some particular token of suffering that offers me no teaching, I won't let this shake my faith in the statement that suffering can teach. Suffering can teach; it doesn't always teach. It has the potential to teach. I only need one instance of this happening and my faith in the statement is infinitely justified.
I have faith in the thought that suffering can teach, which means I have nothing to be afraid of when it comes to taking action. Taking action results in one of two goods: a desired result, which is pleasurable, or suffering, which is painful, but teaching. They are both different shades of good.
What's more, this whole system justifies itself because I thought of it as a result of suffering. I learnt it from suffering. So suffering can teach. Now I know why I shouldn't be afraid to take action: because suffering can teach and I have been shown it with experience. Suffering or pain with the end of overall betterment is a good, and that is the kind of suffering that results from taking action. The element of faith lies in believing this even through the pain, even when it seems like in some particular token of suffering there seem to be no answers. So that's what I will do: I stomp my foot and declare, "Suffering can teach!" as the foundation for my faith in hope.
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