What Can Virtual Reality Do That Books Can't?

Upon watching “Crossing the Line: Untold Stories of Refugees”, I was particularly drawn to the story of two women who had come to America to seek asylum from the rampant gang violence in Mexico; but when night fell at the border, they told by a border agent to go to Mexican immigration that night and come back the next day. After fruitless pleading, they returned to Mexican immigration. The people there called the two women a taxi which, they discovered upon boarding, was affiliated with The Gulf Cartel. That same night the two women were kidnapped. One recalls being held hostage for 18 days. She has been held in an immigration detention for over a year and her case is still pending.

Something I have heard this year more than ever is students claiming they don’t enjoy reading because they can’t form pictures in their heads. That the words aren’t enough. I think virtual reality is a sufficient response to this growing mentality. Especially in “Crossing the Line”, hearing a story directly from the source’s mouth and seeing it illustrated all around you eliminates the need for excess imagination or brain power. It is a somewhat sad ideation, but if someone truly can’t enjoy literature due to the inability to imagine, then virtual reality might be a feasible solution.

Does Meursault have Emotions or is He a Sociopath??

A sociopath is a person with a personality disorder that manifests itself as extreme anxiety and a lack of conscience. Throughout The Stranger, Meursault consistently shows little emotion towards the things around him. In the most recent chapters when Meursault goes to prison for murder, he does not seem to feel emotion about it and just wants to pass the time in whatever way he can. Even though he has a serious girlfriend, when she comes to visit, he is happy to see her, but after she is gone, rarely thinks about her. This shows that even though he has these relationships he only sees life as something that he has to get through. Furthermore, unlike the other prisoners, he is able to get used to prison life and almost doesn't understand how bad it is supposed to be. He does not feel extreme misery towards everything and instead thinks that everything is basically normal. He doesn't miss the people in his life outside of prison and seems to leave everything behind, rarely thinking about them. Relating to the definition of sociopath, Meursault has not shown any sadness about being in prison and does not even begin to feel guilt about the murder that he committed. A sociopath shares similar thoughts, almost seeing the world as a black and white place where nothing truly matters.

Suffering

When you google suffer they tell you that it is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. No human wants to experience suffering. People respond to unjust or random suffering very differently. People cope with suffering in three ways, they can choose to get rid/hide their feelings, talk about their feelings, or they can take their feelings and grow from them. When people take suffering head on it helps shape them. By accepting the suffering and dealing with it, it can help you become a stronger person. They do say what doesn't "Kill you makes you stronger". Besides making you a stronger person suffering can provide you with a deeper appreciation a life. Realizing that life does not last forever makes you appreciate the small moments in life and cherish those moments. Another way people cope with suffering is they see it as a way they can strengthen their spiritual relationship with God. A stronger sense of spirituality can help provide people with comfort, stronger intimacy with God, and it can also help people gain a sense of control over situations. With having control over situations it will help you endure suffering in many ways. To endure suffering you have to remember why you are suffering and what happened to you. When you accept why you are suffering you can also endure suffering by realizing to keep doing what God has called you to do. People endure suffering based on their emotions and ways they feel they can handle it. Suffering is not easy to accept and it also is not easy to keep going in life. We survive with suffering by trying to keep pushing and realizing that life does go on. People pick themselves up differently, people have their own ways of pushing through suffering.

Lesser suffering fits into this discussion because all suffering hurts and all suffering takes time for someone to heal. Going through suffering from a relationship can hurt someone very deeply. Relationships allow you to put your time, effort, and trust into someone. When you end a relationship with someone you almost feel as if a piece of you goes with that person. That can take a lot of emotion from a person, and that can cause suffering. When people go through a bad breakup they choose to delete everything from that person or go out. Some people choose to be around family and friends to help them cope with suffering. When others see people suffering we choose to either help them head on or we choose to ignore it. 

Suffering

I believe suffering is caused by emotional, physical, and mental pain. Suffering can have several different effects on a vast number of people. In King Lear, his suffering had to do with his own blood betraying him and leaving him (literally) in the cold. Suffering in this case is in the form of betrayal. King Lear is known to be a honorable man and very respected. He believes he holds a lot of power, but it causes him to use his power for the wrong reasons. King Lear finds it almost impossible to recover from what his daughters did to him, which causes him to feel pity for himself. I think the fact that King Lear is suffering shows that just about anyone can suffer or experience some type of betrayal regardless of the amount of power you hold. King Lear was well respected and well taken care of, but he still was blindsided. I think in reality, everyone will experience some type of suffering during their lifetime. Some suffering with be worse than others, but in general we all face problems that we sometimes don't think we can handle. I think its how you recover from your suffering, and how you react to it. Suffering is inevitable.

Charity should be a matter of personal choice, not a pseudo-scientific dogma

Donating money to those who are less fortunate is a noble endeavor. However, questions of charity should be left entirely to personal choice, and not dictated by a pseudo-scientific branch of philosophy.

Utilitarianism is based on the notion that "happiness" is the universal "good", and that the moral duty of humanity is to maximize this "good". This, to me, is already problematic, because there could hardly exist a single definition of "good" or "happiness" on which every culture or individual could agree. Often, utilitarian philosophers like Singer speak about "happiness" in quantifiable terms, emphasizing the practical application of their thought experiments in calculating choices that will produce the greatest amount of "good". Singer even somehow calculates the morally satisfactory amount of money that should be donated to charities down to a cent. He claims to base his calculations on a certain standard of need. However, who is to define where on Maslow's pyramid of needs the line should be drawn? Is it the need for safety, esteem, or self-actualization? If it is the latter, I doubt that $30,000 per household will suffice.

However, if Singer claims to, unlike most of us, know the one-size-fits-all level of human need, it would be more logical for him to advocate for a totalitarian rule of experts who could dictate the wealth limit, leading the misguided public that erroneously refuses to live on the poverty line. After all, from a purely utilitarian perspective, redistribution of wealth seems like a much more effective measure to create maximum happiness than sporadic and limited personal charity contributions. In Singer's logic, those who would be forced to give up their surplus capital should not feel unhappy, because they would still have the money to cover their basic needs, and those, who would receive their money, would become happier. So until Singer proves his commitment to the poor naked wretches of the world by staging a communist coup, his approach to utilitarianism will remain half-hearted and unconvincing.

You Can't Always Guilt What You Want

In a 1999 New York Times article, Peter Singer details a bold solution to world poverty: every person with surplus must give to charity or else risk moral turmoil. In an ideal world, this system would work. Everyone would be generous and selfless, and soon poverty would be abolished and people could co-exist peacefully in a Socialist-type environment of equality. However, this world is far from perfect, meaning Singer's solution is too. The main issue with his approach is that Singer attempts to guilt trip the reader. While they may feel moved in the moment of reading, humans tend to respond to feelings of guilt with defensiveness.

"Oh, so I'm expected to give until I starve to death?"

"He doesn't know what my life is like!"

"He's purposefully trying to make me feel bad, I'm not buying into that."

"I can be a perfectly nice person without giving anything to charity, thank you very much!"

We feel it in ourselves, we see it on this blog, we hear it on the news: nobody wants to be a bad person, and people will do anything to remove blame from themselves. That's why Singer's plan will never work: it relies on people responding to guilt in the way he wants them to. In actuality, many people will respond the exact opposite way out of pure spite. We see the same phenomenon in King Lear - the more Lear attempts to guilt Goneril and Regan into loving him, the more they disrespect him. Guilt breeds anger as much as it breeds compassion.

I'm not trying to say people will never feel guilty about not giving to charity, it's perfectly reasonable to experience remorse at one's prospering when another is not. But Singer expects everyone to feel the way he does, and to react in the same vein. Not a lot of people will. Perhaps he knew this when he wrote the article, hoping to be more provocative than to actually affect mass change. Perhaps he did not. No matter his intent, Singer's hopes for a more charitable planet contains one fatal flaw: you cannot reliably guilt your way into getting what you want.

To Be Superflous Is to Be Charitable

Peter Singer wants to make the world better place, and he thinks that the best way to do that is to have people spend their excess money on charities as opposed to useless commodities that we really don't need. This idea seems nice at first glance, but as you look closer at it, the more things fall apart. One specific example used was why not spend money you were going to spend on a new TV on a charity? He extends the question to why avoid eating out and give to more charities? Both of these examples have something in common. They both involve you spending money. Now I will pose a question. Where do you get money from? Depending on your age, you could get if from parents, or family. But in the end, money winds up coming from jobs. Why do we have jobs? We have jobs because there is demand for jobs. Who creates the demand for jobs? People with money who want to spend it. So what happens when people stop wanting to spend money? Jobs begin to disappear. What happens then? People become impoverished and now no one can spend money. By spending money on "useless luxuries," you are contributing to the economy, and therefore the welfare of the whole country. That being said, you still need to spend money. In order to keep people happy and in a good position, money must continue to move. That means that rich people also need to spend money instead of just squirreling it away somewhere where they can feel comfortable. In reality, most of the need to be charitable should fall on the wealthiest in the country. After a certain point, the amount of money that you make is far greater than anything you could hope to spend, so giving money away is really the best option. When those in the top 1% sit on their money, they just suck funds away from those who need it. So they must redistribute their wealth either through higher taxes (which won't happen), or through donations (which also probably won't happen). When money ceases to be an issue for people, then I think it's fair to talk about cutting the fat out of your purchases and focusing on improving the world.

To wrap things up nicely, spending on "useless" things is a necessity for maintaining the health of the economy. Sitting on money isn't great, and neither is selflessly throwing it away unless you can't feasibly spend it properly. So I think that it's ok not to get guilt tripped too hard about not spending the $200 on charity that you just spent on a few months of Netflix. But on the off chance you are raking in millions of dollars every year, do the world a favor and be a bit generous. The responsibility does fall to you.

Suffering

Frankl’s poignant memoir revealed the anguishing yet vital aspects of suffering. Suffering, in itself, is universal, yet also exclusive. What I mean by this is that everyone suffers, it is inevitable. Suffering, however, takes on a different form and demands a different ailment from person to person. Because suffering is unique in every person, it only makes sense that it plays a different role in people’s life.

Throughout time, suffering has obtained a dominant negative connotation. This makes sense because if one suffers, they are going through a lot of pain. The act of suffering is bad but the aftermath does not always have to be. As this differs from person to person, I believe that out of suffering can sprout personal growth. In order to live a happy life, people must learn how to deal with suffering since it is an essential part of life. Just as joys shape people, so does suffering. And many times, in moments of suffering people find themselves. This is because when suffering, many people are left or feel as if they are left with nothing. Thus, they must build themselves back up. The person who they are afterwards is usually not the person who they were before, and this is because after one has suffered, it is like they acquired glasses that show the world in another light. In the case of Gloucester, suffering allowing him to see beyond Edmund’s facade (ironically, he lost his vision) and was, thus, released from living in the lie that Edmund built. While he was left with pain for betraying Edgar, suffering allowed him to see the truth and soon led him in the arms of Edgar.

Persevering from suffering, however, is another story. I was very intrigued when reading how Frankl dealt with some of the hardships in the camps. I agree with Frankl that love can help one through suffering. Suffering, as I said before, can make the world seem desolate but love can fill an empty room. This is the case with Frankl when he talked to his wife in his head. Although she was not there, the love they shared for one another was present and this emotion combatted the ones produced by his suffering. Recently, I read a book titled Hideaway by Dean Koontz. While one of the characters, Regina, was in the captivity of a wicked serial killer in his dungeon like hideaway filled with corpses (I know, quite gruesome), she (ironically) escapes into her own mental hideaway that could not be more different than her captors’. Her hideaway, similar to Frankl’s, was filled with things she loves: her bedroom, the fragrant smell of roses, and more. While in her mental hideaway, not a single part of her was in reality. This allowed her to survive the moment. Thus, I think that in order to survive suffering, one must hold on to love. One way that love is important in moments of suffering is that it is a distractor. When Frankl was at the camp working in below freezing levels on a stomach that has been empty for countless months, the image of his wife takes him away from his suffering and transports him to a time marked with love. While love cannot help everyone when suffering, and sometimes even causes more pain, I think that love is a great escape from suffering.

The Failure of Singer

Peter Singer is not human. Now wait, that isn't an insult, it's simply the driving force behind his argument in Animal Liberation and his ridiculous essay on giving. You wouldn't call your cat cat, you wouldn't say, Tiger is cat. No, you would say Tiger is a cat and in that same way Peter Singer is a human, but still not human. He is human only in the way that human is a species of animal not in the fact that is a core part of his self.

Why is this distinction important? Because it reveals the true flaw in his argument on giving. Peter Singer said in Animal Liberation that we all need to stop eating meat because animals are on the same moral plane as us. But wait, have you ever seen a bear eat a piece of fruit instead of a grub because it wanted to alleviate the suffering of said grub? Or have you seen a horse care for another dying horse? No, you haven't. Why is that? Because humans are the only species that gives to those of their species in need. And why is that? Because they are on a higher moral plane.

At this point we have reached an impasse between Singer's two arguments. One is that human and animals are on the same moral plane and the other is that humans need to give more because their moral plane dictates it. These don't mesh. Either we need to be able to freely hoard our money spending it only on vegetarian delicacies or we need to be able to eat meat while giving all we can. Either we are better than animals because we give and can feel justified in eating them or we should accept our lower place among them, creatures that don't give, and eat only plants. 

Singer forgets that a philosopher such as himself needs to make sure his theories mesh and in this case they clearly don't. 

Grounded

Long story short, my parents grounded me this past Wednesday. I am not allowed out, and I don't have my phone or the car for quite awhile. Some of you may have just gasped or shook your head, as you have experienced a similar type of "cruel" punishment from your parents. Yes..I appreciate the empathetic thoughts because at first I was DEVASTATED as well… then I read Frankl's memoir Thursday night.

"Perhaps it can be understood, then, that even the strongest of us was longing for the time when he would have fairly good food again, not for the sake of good food itself, but for the sake of knowing that the sub-human existence, which had made us unable to think of anything other than food, would at last cease" (Frankl, 43).

While this was not his intention, I read this excerpt from Frankl's memoir and ended up feeling frustrated with myself for being so upset by my minute problems. The guilt I had with myself was overwhelming.

It is undeniable that people in our community suffer great grievances. However, I feel we believe little petty grievances commends suffering. Many of us can get caught living in our own bubble, especially in Oak Park and River Forest; we have a roof over our heads, and attend a well known school. I believe we get held up by small annoyances, because we are more or less used to suffering being in the form of smaller grievances. I honestly thought I was having a rough time without my phone, but in the grand scheme of life, that is not suffering at all. It is simply a disadvantage or little challenge in the road. However, due to our society and privilege, many think losing your phone, not getting enough likes on instagram, not dressing cute enough for school, etc. are all what seems like the end of the world.

While Frankl's memoir was intended to inform, I read this excerpt in a timely coincidence, and am now reflecting on how I reacted earlier. I believe many of us could use a daily reminder of the bigger picture of the way we live to keep from overreacting to minute problems.

Lear's Lesson

Throughout the play, the characters show a range of emotions. Lear, specifically, is characterized as the senile old man is who not to be taken seriously or respected. But, in his monologue in Act III Scene IV with Kent and the fool, I believe that Lear professes some of the more worthwhile sentiments in the entire play. If nothing else, he communicates the idea of empathy - an emotion that has yet to be expressed by any of the characters in King Lear.

Lear not only puts others above himself by insisting that Kent and the fool take shelter before him, but also begins to be truly empathetic when realizing what the lives of the less fortunate in his kingdom are like. Lear states, “Poor naked wretches, whereo’ver you are / That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, / How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, / Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you / From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta’en / Too little care of this!” (III.iiii.28-24). Lear experiences the brutal forces of nature, really for the first time in this passage, and it is what causes him to feel for the homeless and realize he should have done more for the them as king, because now he knows what it feels like to be one of them.

For me, this monologue by Lear and this realization are one of the most important moments in the play so far. Suffering is a theme throughout the play, but it is not until this speech that Lear makes a concrete statement on how to begin to understand others’ suffering. Lear’s empathy here serves to show that he is still a coherent man worthy of respect, and that he is multidimensional enough to put himself in someone else’s shoes and try and understand how life is for them. Everyone experiences varying levels of suffering in their lives, as shown by the excerpt from Frankl’s book. And, one cannot truly know the magnitude of another’s suffering until they exercise some empathy and try and see the situation through their eyes That is what Lear does here for the first time, in a moment of clarity for both himself and the reader.

The Singer Solution to the World

When I began to read "The Singer Solution to World Poverty", I had the initial reaction of kind of distancing myself from Singer and his ideas, but as I got further into the article, the more I was intrigued and the more that I began to see, accept, and analyse his reasoning. Although I believe that his comparison between choosing to not pull a lever to save a child at the expense of a prized possession and not giving at least 1/5 of your income to help those who are impoverished was a bit stretched, I understood the point that he was getting across through that use of hyperbole.

I think that donating to charities is important, but I think that there are also different ways to help others. While I understand Singer’s point when he said that a family only needs around $30,000 to take care of all necessities therefore, families should donate all of their other income, it is extremely unrealistic and improbable that it would ever happen. One thing that this statement kind of reminded me of is this comic that was in the New Yorker when I was little. My family likes to keep comics and put them on the fridge, and one that’s been on fridge probably as long as I can remember is a giant building that says ‘wants’ and a much smaller one next to it that says ‘needs’. It’s always served as a reminder to me that while treating myself every once in awhile, helping others and ignoring some wants for the benefit of others is necessary.

When I finished reading, I began to think about the reasons that Singer would make the article so extreme, and I came up with one that I believe is a good argument. I think that in some ways, the extremes, even if they are exaggerated a bit, are necessary to make people see both the profound issue and how everyone can truly make a difference. In AP Gov, we’re talking about political participation and how the U.S. has such a low participation rate, and I think these two relate, once more people start to get involved and knowledgeable, change will begin to show on a state and even national level.

Relating back to suffering and The Tragedy of King Lear, I agree with many people that have posted already that have said that suffering is too commonly referred to as a negative thing and that it should be analyses more carefully. In addition, I agree that suffering is relative and that no one can truly compare their suffering to that of another. Everyone reacts differently, and even if we remain as open minded and attentive as we can, suffering is something that I think is practically impossible to compare. I really enjoyed reading the excerpt of Frankl and the article about Singer and I think they opened my eyes.

Good or Bad... Hard to Say.

Here's the thing; the idea that we can all label a situation as "good" or "bad" can often eliminate the curiosity and open mindedness we experience as we see things that come to us. Do you remember when we were young, and you would watch the world and not know any context, and you just didn't know what to think about it? All you knew is that people fought sometimes, but other times they hug and smile. What if we all saw that now, as adults who have known the bitter context of the world for awhile now? Maybe then we could retrieve some of our own humanity. As soon as we label things "good" or "bad", we forget all of the things in between.

I guess what I am trying to say is that suffering is part of the human condition and if we label it as "bad" we tend to not see all the good that comes from it. It makes us stronger when someone tells us no, or when someone says we are not proficient enough at something. Suffering is "good" and "bad", and so many other words that no one could possibly quantify!

That is why when we are faced with suffering, the best solution is to be impartial. The only way to find out how something effects us is to wait and give time for the results to set in.

Think about it this way: When a person faces adversity, in the short run they respond to it as something terrible and say they do not want to go through the obstacles necessary for true accomplishment. Eventually, people tend to look back on adversity as a teachable moment that has helped them overcome present and future impediments.

So why continue to label suffering as "bad" right away only to find out it has made you a better person? Seems to me that we all need to stop closing off our perspective in a repetitive process that only leads to more anger. Instead of saying "THIS SUCKS!" when you feel like things are not going your way, why don't you just say "good or bad... hard to say."

Becoming Bitter or Better from Suffering

Suffering is an inevitable part of life. It is how we chose to view our suffering that can change its meaning. Of course, in itself, suffering is certainly not good. However, it can be turned into a good deed, a moral value, by the way a person perseveres through it. Therefore, suffering has AND can have meaning if it changes someone for the better. However, there are a good number of people out there who view suffering as nothing more than a burden. Many people will not choose to find meaning to it, making their suffering senseless instead of making sense of suffering.

To suffer is to show that we are human beings and that we all go through some amount of suffering in our life. What distinguishes ourselves from others is how we deal with it. Although no one can truly understand your own suffering, we can rely on ourselves to help cope with it by finding purpose in it. How we choose to deal with our suffering can play a significant role in how we deal with future experiences. We can either become bitter or better from our suffering.

Suffering offers perspective. While we cannot fully comprehend others suffering, we can empathize with them and support them. With a positive perspective on suffering we don't only help ourselves but others as well.

A big factor in recognizing how to deal with our suffering is to realize that the solution is internal rather than external. Sure, relying on external things to deal with suffering may ease the pain for a while, but when it comes down to it, those external things are only temporary. To find meaning in your own suffering isn't develops over time, I believe. You can't expect to experience suffering and immediately know how to deal with it. It's all about growing and how that growing can be a positive impact for you.

Through suffering people can become stronger but not all suffering can be beneficial.

Suffering for Others

While suffering is by no means a welcome or pleasant experience, to say the least, it is viewed as essential to being human. We all suffer at some point in our lives, though the degree to which we do is by no means the same. Some say that ignorance is bliss, but I believe that it is just close-minded and selfish. Even the most sheltered people cannot stay protected, in the majority of cases. The current order of the world demands suffering and pain be present in our daily lives, if not our own pain, we see the pain of others.

If nothing else, suffering allows for greater empathy, by suffering ourselves, we can more closely identify and feel for with others. While in most situations we cannot understand completely what someone else is going through, by having suffered at some point in our lives, we are a step closer to being able to be there for them.

One of the hardest comparisons I believe can be made is comparing one person's suffering to another's, because suffering is relative. Similar to many other situations, we believe our suffering is greater than our neighbors because humans are competitive creatures who want to be the best, even if being the best is really being the lowest. In order to make ourselves feel more justified in our pain we compare ourselves to others, even though we can in no way understand what they are going through.

Even if we think we are going through the same thing as someone, say you both have a beloved family member who has cancer, we still cannot compare our suffering to them because the same situation does not mean the same thing for every person. We do not know what goes on inside the heads of the people around us, we cannot be cocky enough to believe that we know how they are feeling.

I am not saying that we cannot try to understand people, we can be empathetic and supportive to those who are struggling. We cannot push them to think that their suffering is nothing or stupid, we have to be there for people, even if we do not understand. I think that if as a world we can become more empathetic and simply kind, then we will see change.

The Tales of the Two Deaths

Throughout the first chapter of The Stranger by Albert Camus, two deaths take place.  The first death takes place at the beginning of the chapter when Meursault's mother dies in a retirement home and the second comes when Meursault decided to shoot the Arab who was following Raymond.  When Meursault is walking to the funeral the nurse says, " If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke.  But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church"(17).  On a literal level, the nurse's words describe the dilemma that the weather provides during the funeral.  As Meursault realizes, the nurse's words describe human life.  A man is born into a life and their is only one way out, death.  Also, the sun represents the harsh effects of death which is unavoidable for anyone.  Throughout the first chapter, we have learned that death is the one thing that you can not escape.  This helps the audience understand why Camus started and ended the first chapter with a death.  Camus wanted to show us that all men are condemned to death, therefore every life is equal.  He does not react to his mother's death because eventually everyone will be summoned to death.  Camus had a death take place in the start of the story to show that Meursault is indifferent to death.  He knows that it is going to happen to everyone, even if it is his mom.  Camus wanted to show that you cannot escape death no matter who you are.

Towards the end of chapter 1, Meursault decided to kill the Arab.  It says, " The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes...It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire.  My whole became tense and I squeezed my hand around the revolver"(59).   Meursault feels uncomfortable by the suns shining rays and suffers from it.  When the Arab finally pulls out his knife and the sun reflects off of it, it increases Meursault's suffering so much that it is too much for him to handle.  For Meursault, the Arab is a human but more of an example of his suffering.  By killing the Arab, Meursault is trying to escape his own suffering.  He says that the sun was stabbing at his eyes and he could not escape it. He did not necessarily kill the Arab to protect himself, he did it because his suffering was to much to handle.  He only shot the Arab because the reflection of the sun off the blade was tearing into him.  Throughout this chapter, Camus references the weather a lot as if the weather is acting as Meursault's suffering. Meursault is trying to cope with this suffering by getting rid of the unbearable sun and reaching the cool stream.   Meursault wanted to escape his own suffering and he found that the only way to do that was to kill the Arab and reach the cool stream..

The Meaning of Suffering

"Man's Search for Meaning," by Viktor Frankl, is the story and journey of a man being held in an Auschwitz concentration camp. The author explains how the mindset of a man can alter the longevity of their life and how they go about living it. The book poses the question,  "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Frankl uses a psyhcotherapeutic method that involved identifying a positive purpose or goal and then actively imagining how one could achieve it. He believed that the mind had more impact on one's life, rather than physical experiences or ailments. He summarizes that a prisoner goes through three stages while part of a concentration camp: they experience shock when first entering the compound, then apathy which motivates them to act in ways that only keep themselves and their friends alive, and finally the loss of morality or personality which leads to delusions of liberation or survival.

But Frankl does support the notion that there is value in suffering. It can teach you that regardless of the condition of your life, a person must maintain a look on the future, in order to survive the present. In the simplest terms, suffering allows a person to hope, which is an extremely powerful and inspirational force in the right circumstances.

In King Lear, the suffering Lear experiences leads him to realize his past follies and acquire a sense of empathy and remorse. He would not have fought against his evil daughters or repaired his relationship with Cordelia if he had not experienced a sense of dread and sorrow. Even though he died, he finished his last few hours with his daughter who he truly loved, and who loved him back.

Suffering To Understand Humanity

Victor Frankl speaks of the world and of humanity with a humble, deeper understanding of the way humans process pain and attempt to spare themselves from the worst of their suffering. The further I got into the article, the more I began to think that, while suffering takes endless forms and is unique to each person, the human reaction to suffering has similarities that span all kinds and levels of suffering, and lead people to similar understandings of the world around them.

If I am able to relate to the coping mechanisms and thoughts that went through a person's head while in a concentration camp, having never experienced anything remotely close to the horrors of Auschwitz, I believe that speaks to the creation of a greater understanding of humanity in the midst of suffering.

At some point, after all strategies of coping with suffering still leave you with the feeling of a hole through your stomach or a rock on your chest, you realize that the solution is not external, it's internal. Being angry at the world or at the people around you will not ease your pain. Instead, it is crucial to find the things that bring you sanity and hold on to them. For Frankl, imagining his wife brought him peace and comfort, and he knew that the man next to him was doing the same thing.

Suffering offers perspective. While some may argue the perspective is not worth the pain, I disagree. I believe that a greater, deeper, realer understanding of the world and the people in it is worth the pain. Often feeling the pain of suffering (in a more modern setting), whether it is a questioning of one's identity and morals, losing people you love, or making a life altering decision, I truly believe that if you can persevere through the suffering, the perspective you gain of the world is invaluable.

While it is hard to see at first, when you are trying to push through all of the things that are causing you pain and holding you out of reach of peace and comfort, attitude and hope are crucial to enduring suffering and appreciating the knowledge you gain looking back. After suffering, everyday emotions seem to have only scratched the surface of the capabilities and complexities of the human mind, and suffering allows you to peer into the deepest places of your mind and understand humanity in lights you never thought existed.