Philosophy Wire: Death. Beyond time and aeons…

Evidence of 'skeletal trauma' among over 300 individuals from three very different cemeteries reveals varying levels of physical hardship across the social spectrum of Cambridge, UK, between the 10th and 14th century. [1] Suffering never goes away. Beyond time and aeons. Beyond places and laughter. Suffering is still there. Haunting you as much as it did when you experienced it for the first time. Do not dismiss it. Hold it dear. It is not your friend nor your foe. It is you. Smiling from the other side with malice. Just smile back! "Why are you smiling?" it will ask. Do not answer. And it will know. That you were happy long before you smiled…

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Philosophy Wire: Pain. As a guide…

Using a brain-inspired approach, scientists have developed a way for robots to have the artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize pain and to self-repair when damaged. [1] Pain. As a guide. Can you live without a guide? Cowards. Constantly asking the wrong questions. Because the proper question terrifies you. (Could I guide others?)

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Philosophy Wire: Per ardua ad astra… (Women and Men)

Gender stereotypes can hurt children - quite literally. When asked to assess how much pain a child is experiencing based on the observation of identical reactions to a finger-stick, American adults believe boys to be in more pain than girls, according to a new study. [1] How deceived we are. Men are molded by fire. Only to protect the women. Not because women are weaker. But quite the opposite. Because women are that fire which molds them. We need the fire of chaos to create. And yet, we struggle every day to put that fire away. We are afraid of pain. We detest suffering. And yet a woman who suffered brought us to life. What more can you expect from a life which started in pain, than pain itself? Watch that brave knight storming in the field of battle. His brave cry. His courage. He is not a man. He is a woman. Sitting alone in a room. In grave pain. Suffering. Determined. Cold and blood. Shouts. Agony. And from all these. A baby. Crying. Storming to the enemy with his sword… Fire from fire! This will always be what life is! Per ardua ad astra, per ignem vincimus!

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Philosophy Wire: Life. Acting. Suffering.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-02-25]: He who acts will suffer. Pain is the only lesson of life. Logic despises antiphaseis (contradictions), however life is full of them. Logic is like a map for the cosmos. It can show it, but it has nothing to do with its reality. You cannot speak about logic. You can only show it. (Logicomix) Atheists believe in the “objective” reality. And yet they shout to others for dogmatism. Atheists believe in logic. And yet they deny the logic of others. We live in an era of logic. We live in an era when people try to remove any pain from their lives. And yet we are more dead than ever. The meaning of the cosmos lies outside it. (Wittgenstein) See the logic in the irrational. Only then will you be free to actually live. As part of the transrational (Gr. υπέρλογο) One. Acting. Suffering...

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Philosophy Wire: Pain, human, weakness…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-05-20]: Scientists could block the pain. [source: web news] But should we do that? Pain is part of Nature. It could convey an important message. That life is not the only thing in Life. Why hinder one of its basic weapons? On the other hand, I too would like my pain blocked if I suffered. Oh, nasty human nature of me! Why not let me enjoy the superiority of my Philosophy?!?

 

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Philosophy Wire: Christianism – Unhappiness – Atheism. A surprise relation

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-01-13]:

Most atheists tend to hit on Christianism after an earthquake or a tsunami. "Where is your God now?", they ask. "Why did your God killed all those people?", they shout. But besides that, they also do something else much more interesting. They are accusing Christianism (or religion in general) of taking advantage of peoples’ unhappiness, so as to keep them in its ranks. Religion exploits the misery of people and by suggesting that a good afterlife expects them, gains more followers.

However these atheistic arguments are not only illogical but also immoral.

Illogical because no one could ever BE MADE to believe JUST BECAUSE someone promises him happiness in another life, while at the same time he has NOTHING BUT in this life. People who experience bad situations and still remain religious are people who ALREADY believed before. No atheist is converted to religion after a BAD event, after a disaster! This is easy to understand even for a 10-year old kid. Religion – to which people ALREADY believe in – just helps them to overcome difficulties. And no, God is not responsible for the tsunami or the earthquakes. They are physical phenomena. Too hard to grasp? Your problem. If you wanted a God playing with Earth and its people like in an RPG, then you should go to the kindergarten.

Immoral because these arguments are usually used with a hidden agenda: in order to CONCEAL the REAL goal of these atheists. And what that might be? It is obvious, isn’t it? Atheists use these kind of arguments just because they want to conceal the fact that THEY are the ones who want to EXPLOIT the unhappiness of people! Yes, they are the ones who start preaching against God and in favour of atheism when hundreds of people die in a catastrophe. They are the ones who start mocking religion and faith when thousands of people are drowned. They are the ones who want to gain followers based on the misery of people. And what is the best way to cover up such a terrible plan, than to directly accuse your “opponent” of doing it?

Human suffering is not for hire.

Next time something bad happens, atheists and theists should work together to help. Even though we do not know why we live, being nice to each other just seems right…

> Check the new philosophy blog Philosophy Snapshots !

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Why do good people suffer?

This is one of the greatest problems that troubles philosophers around the world: Why do good people suffer?

I think the problem can be solved if we understand that it is not really a problem. Who are we to know that suffering is "bad"? Who are we to know that being "happy" in this short material life is our purpose on this planet?
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. 

C. S. Lewis

Are you so certain that you do not need any signposts? How "good" and philosophically beneficial is to never be sick or unhappy, in a life the meaning of which is to allow you a glipse at the eternity of nothingness one day? How "good" and philosophically "proper" is it to never have to think of death in a life which leads directly to it? How can you live without death?

Perhaps suffering is a reminder to turn to personal insight (ενόραση), as Hannah Arendt postulates, in contradiction to the pleasures we all seek in this life. Because these pleasures (e.g. a full plate of spaghetti) make us live through other things and take us away from the One which we all feel when alone. And we surely need more of that than spaghetti...

Denn das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen, und wir bewunderen es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht, uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. [1] ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

Beauty is the beginning of terror. Love is the beginning of loss. Great emotions are tangled up in our own dissolution or the loss of those we cherish. Life is a vale of sorrow. But sometimes our most sublime experiences happen just at the edge of tears. [1]

Pain makes everything more clear. Pain makes us see the things which are really valuable in life. (and guess what: life itself is not among them) Pain drives us to see into our self.

And no one likes that...

Perhaps pain reminds us of what is really important. Which are not the material joys but death itself. Everything in nature serves a purpose. We just have to accept it. The road of the devil is the easiest one. He who loved, felt pain at the same time. He who never loved anyone, is already dead. Feel sorry for people who have never experienced sorrow. Feel happy for every tear you have shed. Cry for every birth. Laugh for every death. Luminous beings we are. Trapped into existence. Tear after tear, the illusion will go away. Tear by tear, we will start laughing again..

Kierkegaard said that pain makes us drive our thought away from this world. And if pain gives true meaning to hapiness in the eternal, then he who is suffering will feel real joy for his pain. (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler)

Pain is an inherent integral part of the cosmos. It is connected to being itself. And so God says: There are places in the man's heart which do not yet exist. And then pain comes into the heart. So that these places can be.

"[...] in the (concentration) camp it was like this. You sit in a corner and you repeat inside yourself 'My Lord, I am but dist and ashes. O Lord, please take my soul'. And the Lord uplifts your spirits you again. In fact I would give my remaining life for ten more minutes in Dachau"

~ Nikolaj Velimirovic [source]

Think about it: Love is leading to Pain.
Sooner or later you will be separated from the person you love.
And not too many people want to go there.

But the only way to reach Resurrection is Crucifixion…

The sin of Man when he ate from the Tree of Knowledge is that he gained a false knowledge of the existence of Evil even though such thing does not exist. With “knowledge” we forgot that all we see is an illusion. Pain wants to remind us of this Truth. And the more we resist, the more we suffer…

The misfortune of existence makes us wonder.
But wonder we should not.
Ἀρκεῖ σοι ἡ χάρις μου· ἡ γὰρ δύναμίς μου ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελειοῦται...


Related articles
The Meaning of Pain in Our Lives
Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason

Heidegger, σκόλοπες and the road to accepting non-thinking...

Heidegger is one of the most controversial and one of the least understood philosophers. Whenever I am in a forest opening I cannot help it but think of his “Lichtung” (Gr. Αίθριο). Every time I say the word “is”, I cannot but think how he told again and again how we have been driven away our true mission is Beings. And as Ms. Grene said “It had to happen this way. It had to happen this way because we are fallen out of Being. We are more concerned with beings, from genes to space ships, than with our true calling, which is to be shepherds and watchers of Being. So it is that we are lost, and Being itself has become a haze and an error – nothing”…

Heidegger himself wrote to Jaspers expressing his own tragedy. “For loneliness is nearly perfect” he said. (Ott 42). He was alone trying to fight his two thorns. And as St. Paul in his letter called to God for help, Heidegger boldly claims in his last interview in Spiegel that “only a God can save us now”. The journalists insist on asking him again and again for advice, he keeps on telling them like a Zen master “I can’t help you. I don’t know”. It was like Socrates and his infamous “ Ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα ” was alive once more.

Our fall (Verfallen) to Beings is completed. Things technology offers us work, as the journalist from Spiegel pointed out. “But that is exactly what is scary – that they work”, replied the Professor. We have been dehumanized already. We do not need any nuclear war or a meteorite for that to happen. We have been away from out nature for too long. Away from Earth. We are already extinct in a way.

But we must not try to avoid our fate. The answer of Jesus to St. Paul was a surprise: “ἀρκεῖ σοι ἡ χάρις μου· ἡ γὰρ δύναμίς μου ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελειοῦται ” (My grace should suffice – My strength becomes perfect in sickness) (IB, 1-12), as Heracletus many years ago said “νοῦσος ὑγιείην ἐποίησεν ” or as Thomas Eliott said “our only health is the disease”. As Heidegger tried to remove his two thorns, we must continue to insist on defeating ours. We will not accomplish what we want. But our Thought will have become more genuine in turning itself against itself. Letting go becomes the only philosophy. Things take a “Kehre” (Gr. Τροπή) … 

Disease is required because this is was makes strength perfect.
Everyone must face his own «σκόλοπα», ἳνα μη ὑπεραίρηται…

Philosophy Wire: Pope, question about tsunami suffering and the arrogant beliefs of non-believers...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-04-23]: The Pope, in an unprecedented tv interview, answered to questions of the audience for the first time [web news 1, web news 2]. The first question he was asked was the most important one. A small Japanese girl who lived the recent earthquake and tsunami aksed why she has to be afraid so much. The head or the Roman Catholic Church answered that if she searched she will some day understand that "this suffering was not empty, it wasn't in vain, but behind it was a good plan, a plan of love. It is not chance". He said he had the same questions about why some people suffer so much while others live in ease. "And we do not have the answers but we know that Jesus suffered as you do, an innocent, and that the true God who is revealed in Jesus is by your side," he added. The reactions to the Pope's answers were rather interesting. Many atheistic sites referred to the interview with headlines like "The Pope stunned by question about tsunami", or "Pope could not answer girl's question about tsunami" and so on. What is really the explanation of "materialistic" science concerning suffering? Is the "everything is due to chance" an answer? Is the "tsunami happened because" an answer? Is the "suffering exists without any reason in the world" an answer? Is the "I do not know" an answer in front of a little girl who is asking for an answer now? When you laugh with the answers of someone you must have a better answer on your own. Otherwise it is you who is exposed...

PS. The "I do not know" is not an answer but rather a way out of a difficult position, a subterfuge. True science did not progress by being coward in front of difficult questions she "did not know". All great scientists proposed answers to question they "did not know" the answer of. If you do not propose answers to questions you do not know the answer of, then how are you going to move forward? "If you refuse to make a move, you cannot be checkmated", a philosopher once said... The world is full of mysteries that we do not know their answers and if no one proposes an answer, they will remain unsolved... (see Why you can't be an agnostic)

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