Suffering and Unhappiness

Bibliography pages 232-244 from Meanings of Life by Roy Baumeister

There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another(Alexandre Dumas). This is why in order to understand suffering and unhappiness first we have to understand what makes people happy and pleased with their lives. According to Baumeister happiness is a state full of meaning. Happy people have lives full of justified actions and they feel that these actions will have effects that fit standards and expectations coming from the outer world. On the other hand, suffering cries out for meaning. People become unhappier once a loss of meaning is produced in their lives. It is interesting that people seem to emphasize and reflect on their unhappiness rather than on their joys because the state of suffering is actually a relatively long period of search for meaning starting from the moment they experience relatively unpleasant events such as pathology, failure, victimization and misfortune, aspects that also psychologists are more concerned about. Furthermore, all these aspects were a source of inspiration and influenced art and culture. Suffering and unhappiness stimulate the four needs for meaning: purpose, value, efficacy and self-worth. Therefore, this state is caused by a loss of meaning but also through it another understanding of the world can be created. Some may think God shows them the way to happiness through suffering and others that something bad happens so they can value good ones more. They try to think that their unhappiness has a purpose. I agree with Baumeister when it comes to meaning, contexts and suffering. Identical sensations may be acceptable in some contexts and intolerable in others. For some people suffering can become a way to prove their strength, efficacy and self-control and obviously these are things full of meaning. In my opinion, besides the example given by the author of self-starvation, another good one would be giving up smoking. Smokers know it best that once you change your way of thinking about cigarettes and the need for them you can get more easily through the period of the need for one. Allen Carr, an accountant who invented The easy way to give up smoking tried to cure smokers by eliminating false beliefs which appeared in the persons way of thinking because of this addiction. Patients and readers who managed to convince themselves that smoking has no

advantages and truly accepted that by giving up smoking they prove their strength, not only that managed to recover easily from the apparent suffering but also started to pity and not envy smokers. Carr succeeded to change the context of a smokers suffering and turn his/her deprivation into increasing self-worth. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to apply this in the case of a trauma. Anyway, I think that the assumptive worlds, structure used by Ronnie Janoff-Bulman to refer to integrative views of the world, is very similar to the false beliefs in the case of smokers. People tend to induce generalizations like the world being benevolent, thinking of oneself as invulnerable and that they deserve individually to have good things happen to them because of their daily experiences. Suffering can contradict these assumptions. The first step in the process of unhappiness is usually the act of labeling some event as bad. Of course, Baumeisters reference to Folkmans explanation of potentially harmful events reflects that challenge can refer to an opportunity for growth, mastery or gain but what if someone interprets the risk taken in a challenge as threats? Thus, unhappiness begins with a high-level interpretation. In the framework of unhappiness and suffering, physical pain cannot be ignored. Pain seems to resist meaning and deconstructs the world, focusing attention on the exact moment of it and the self shrinks to the body. Pain can be useful in torture and when someone wants to escape from broader thinking like in masochism where it is a central feature. These examples reveal pains capacity to remove meanings from awareness and this can result in a mental vacuum, which opens the way for new meanings to be introduced. I think that this is opposite to the case of self-starving because here the pain is not suppressed and meaning is not changed but eliminated. Stress and boredom seem to have the same effects as pain, namely loss of meaning. They both focus attention on here and now. Therefore, all these three states can remove higher levels of meaning, but when the context provides meaning - as in the case of meditation which is very similar to boredom but it has other results - suffering is reduced and also lack of meaning may make the person receptive to new meanings and interpretations.

The aspects presented above are only sensations. The ones that cause misfortune and distress are unpleasant emotions. Specific forms of misfortune are: guilt, failure and harm and loss. Guilt is not necessarily the absence of meanings, but people usually try to deal with it by ceasing meaningful thought and I think this fact is somehow connected with the here and now of physical pain, because as Baumeister demonstrates with the example of Nazi murderers, individuals who do not feel guilt focus on the details when executing a harmful activity in that place and at that moment. They do not consider consequences which are imply reference to the future. They deny the broader meanings of their actions. Failure is an experience that makes you feel incompetent or inadequate and again escape to a less meaningful pattern of thought is an effective way of avoiding anxiety produced by it. When it comes to harm and loss the most frequent responses to suffering are denial which takes us back to Bulmans assumptive worlds, when people say This cannot be happening to me. or numbness specific to Why me? which do not help people resume to their normal life structured by everyday experience and search for meaning which does allow them to get out of this state. The suffering may be less intense if the person is prepared for the loss as when someone close to him/her has cancer. The process of finding meaning begins earlier. Ruminations are produced both by victimization and failure, although research has not yet explored the issue of rumination over failure. The initial result of suffering is a loss of meaning but this emptiness can always be filled with new meanings. Suffering may also provide meanings: bad ones when we talk about emotions and ones that fill the meaning vacuum produced in the case of sensations. Meaning will always be highly influenced by suffering and unhappiness because of the everyday experiences we are used to. Denial leaves the experience deconstructed and forgotten but search may integrate people effectively into their subsequent lives. The studies of people who have joined cults and other deviant religious organizations presents evidence of this impression. They usually leave the cults in two years after they join. It is very difficult for them to return in the society they were not accepted by and condemned so as a solution they return to the previous state and join another cult.