Thoughts Triggered by Tolstoy's A Confession

Ptolemy, I recently heard an interview of David Benetar, the author of "Better to Never Have Been Born."  His argument, as I understand it is: Once you are born you suffer and no matter how much joy you have the suffering is worse so it would have been better to not have been born."

Now my take on his argument is that he is attempting to quantify something that is unquantifiable except by the one experiencing it.  Perhaps in his life suffering outweighs (or better, he perceives it to outweigh) joy, but there is no way to measure the one second of joy I might have against a hundred years of pain and declare for me that it would have been better that I should not have been born.  Both joy and suffering are personal and only the one experiencing them is qualified to declare the suffering worth more than the joy (and thus one should sacrifice the joy to avoid the suffering).

A second thing occurs to me in that the joy and suffering I feel are personal, but my existence may be the catalyst of joy or suffering in others.  If I have a thousand years of suffering but, by my suffering, I give one person a moment of joy, only I can say if it was worth it. 

Thus, internal joy and suffering and the joy and suffering you bring to others may swing the balance, but only within the mind of the one experiencing the joy, the suffering and the giving of both to others.

I suppose it's bit like looking for the perfect wave.  You travel the globe, ride thousands, and am never satisfied...until that one perfect day when EVERYTHING is right.  Catching that thirty seconds of bliss, to most, makes the years of searching worth the effort.

AJ

I suspect you may be correct, but only if you are trying to tell another person that their suffering is "good."  That we choose to endure pain for ourselves and for others out of a desire for some goal we think worth the suffering, is normal. Athletes and visionaries do it all the time.  Most of us do it too.  What is saying "no" to a current pleasure in order to reach some future goal, but making suffering into something, in some way, joyful?

The categories of joy and suffering are not black and white and what may appear to be a great pain to one person may, in fact be something another likes.  I think of the runners high, the "no pain, no gain" philosophy, and other examples of suffering for a future goal.  Perhaps a truly altruistic person may endure a whole lifetime of pain for that one moment of realization that the suffering he or she endured put a smile on a child's face.  Who is to say that the suffering wasn't worth the price?

But maybe that's what you meant in the first place.  Maybe you mean that pleasure is not necessarily good and pain is not necessarily bad?   If so, how does a moral code develop with fuzzy measurements like that?

AJ

So, KillerPoodle, how does one pronounce "OMGWTFBBQ?"  LOL

AJ

Ptolemy wrote: Oh my god, what the ****, don't know the rest

which brings us to http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/language-and-abbreviations_topic6747.html.

It is the customary response upon being ambushed in an multiplayer game.

The expression of surprise, the realization of impending doom and then you are BBQ'd by your opponent.