{"id":4758,"date":"2020-01-11T21:45:06","date_gmt":"2020-01-11T21:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=4758"},"modified":"2020-02-09T22:59:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T22:59:00","slug":"a-world-without-pain-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/11\/a-world-without-pain-the-new-yorker\/","title":{"rendered":"A\u00a0World Without Pain | The New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

This is entirely fascinating, and a direct refutation of the argument that without unhappiness and suffering we wouldn’t experience true happiness. I wish for everyone to have the kind of experience that she has, and hopefully someday self-modification will get us there.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2020\/01\/13\/a-world-without-pain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

We like to think that what doesn\u2019t kill us makes us stronger, or more resilient, or . . . something. Deeper. Wiser. Enlarged. There is \u201cglory in our sufferings,\u201d the Bible promises. \u201cSuffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.\u201d In this equation, no pain is too great to be good. \u201cThe darker the night, the brighter the stars,\u201d Dostoyevsky wrote. \u201cThe deeper the grief, the closer is God!\u201d We atheists get in on the action by insisting that the agony of loss elucidates the worth of love. The hours spent staring into the dark, looping around our own personal grand prix of anxieties, are not a waste of time but a fundamental expression of our humanity. And so on. To be a person is to suffer.<\/p>

But what if our worst feelings are just vestigial garbage? Hypervigilance and pricking fear were useful when survival depended on evading lions; they are not particularly productive when the predators are Alzheimer\u2019s and cancer. Other excruciating feelings, like consuming sadness and aching regret, may never have had a function in the evolutionary sense. But religion, art, literature, and Oprah have convinced us that they are valuable\u2014the bitter kick that enhances life\u2019s intermittent sweetness. Pain is what makes joy, gratitude, mercy, hilarity, and empathy so precious. Unless it isn\u2019t.<\/p>

\u2026<\/p>

Because of a combination of genetic quirks, Cameron\u2019s negative emotional range is limited to the kinds of bearable suffering one sees in a Nora Ephron movie. If someone tells Cameron a sad story, she cries\u2014\u201ceasily! Oh, I\u2019m such a softie.\u201d When she reads about the latest transgression by Boris Johnson or Donald Trump, she feels righteous indignation. \u201cBut then you just go to a protest march, don\u2019t you? And that\u2019s all you can do.\u201d When something bad happens, Cameron\u2019s brain immediately searches for a way to ameliorate the situation, but it does not dwell on unhappiness. She inadvertently follows the creed of the Stoics (and of every twelve-step recovery program): Accept the things you cannot change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is entirely fascinating, and a direct refutation of the argument that without unhappiness and suffering we wouldn’t experience true happiness. I wish for everyone to have the kind of experience that she has, and hopefully someday self-modification will get us there. https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2020\/01\/13\/a-world-without-pain We like to think that what doesn\u2019t kill us makes us stronger, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1eK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4758"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4769,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758\/revisions\/4769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}