Conclusion

My Experience with Suffering: A Revelation about Why We Endure transcendentphilos.wixsite.com/website/post/rising-from-the-ashes

TLDR: My Solution to the Problem of Suffering
In the depths of suffering, the mind becomes possessed by the extremely salient nature of that suffering. I have learned that the mind is easily confused into a myopic way of thinking that that which is currently salient (suffering) is the totality of existence. I was fooled into thinking that because I was suffering greatly, the totality of existence was suffering. An appreciation of the Daoist yingyang symbol is a potent reminder that there is usually a duality associated with any phenomenon. Because I was in the depths of suffering, I forgot about the potential for the existence of love and joy. I realized that suffering can be justified when either love or joy are in sufficient quantity to offset that suffering. In order for me to be able to accept my suffering, I realized that I needed to magnify my love for humanity. With this love for humanity, I could dedicate my life to the service of humanity. If my efforts are able to reduce the suffering of others in the world, then my willingness to endure my own suffering will be worth it.

Mythology
After coming to this solution to the problem of suffering, I realized that mythology is replete with examples of people voluntarily accepting suffering because of their love for others. Jesus voluntarily suffers because he loves humanity. Within Buddhism is an idea of a bodhisattva - someone who is enlightened enough to exit this cycle of suffering and achieve nirvana but chooses instead to remain in the world to help more people out of compassion. This brings out a very heroic idea that if the people in heaven (nirvana) are truly noble then they will be willing to give up their paradise and deign to descend into a universe based on entropy to risk suffering in order to help enlighten other mortals and reduce their suffering.

The Hero's Journey
Almost every hero faces the crisis where they must voluntarily choose to expose themselves to harm in order to benefit those they love. In a sense, every person in the world is a type of hero. We are all victims of philosophic "throwness" where we were summoned into the world into a certain situation, the details of which are out of our control. Yet, we can choose to accept this situation and try to make the world a better place out of our love for the good things in the world. Each person's courageous attempt to accept their lot and try to make things better is a hero, because they are embracing the potential suffering of life out of love for others.

Perhaps we all start in a state of naive happiness about the state of existence. Then we encounter great suffering, and we begin to question either ourselves or God. This process of questioning can lead us to feeling jaded and betrayed. This period of being jaded gives us additional wisdom that our naive self never had - we now understand how bad reality can be. I believe the next step in our hero's journey is to accept the state of the world as a place where bad things can happen, and courageously move forward in a way that makes the world a better place.

Conclusion
The story of Job is largely an example of how religious solutions to the problem of suffering involve debasement of the self rather than empowerment of the self. Instead of Job becoming a hero who tries to help others despite his suffering, he vacillates between either viewing himself as unworthy of dignity or becoming a complainer who insists that he doesn't deserve his suffering. Job's only way of accepting his suffering is to view himself as less than the dust of the earth. The dogma of God's perfection makes Job's obsequiousness the only proper response. Job learns to question God's perfection, but he ends up retreating back to his obsequiousness by the end of the story. All in all, he fails to develop a healthy solution to the problem of suffering.

Dedication
I dedicate this composition to Jordan B. Peterson. Jordan Peterson was the one who inspired me to understand how dangerous the path of resentment was. He was the one who persuaded me to continue my wrestle with God. He was the one who reminded me that the theological axiom of the Bible was that the universe is good, and that we need to have faith in that. He was the one who taught me that the greater the suffering, the greater the meaning you need to find in your life to offset that suffering. He was the one who helped me turn my perspective outward - to focus less on my suffering and more on what I can do in the world despite that. He was the one who reified the importance of the hero myth - that each life is a chance to be a hero that makes things better. He was the one who inspired me to have a deeper desire to reduce the suffering of others. He was the one who helped encourage me to think more deeply about the power we all have to impact the world for the better. He was the one who revealed to me the importance of beauty and art. He was the one who explained to me the Nietzschean call to define your own values. By combining his ideas, I was led me down a path of finding my values, representing those values in art, and then wrestling with those principles until I received my pinnacle revelation that cured me of my resentments - that love is the reason we endure suffering. Absent Jordan Peterson, there is no guarantee that I would be here today. If I was to follow the logically selfish path, I would have ended my life in 2020 to spare myself the unnecessary suffering that was to inevitably follow. But by recognizing my love for humanity, I found a new source of meaning to propel me forward. If I can play a small role in helping humanity steer clear of collective disaster and great suffering, then perhaps that is worth a bit of suffering. If I can help make the world a better place for my nephews and nieces to grow up in, then that might be worth some suffering. So, I consider 2020 the end of my life for the hedonic purpose of maximizing Seth's wellbeing, and every year I exist past 2020 is a bonus that I hope to devote to humanity in whatever feeble ways I can.

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