It is natural to avoid pain and suffering.
Once burned, we snatch our hand from the flame before we can be burned again.
So why is there a schism about how adults approach suffering?
Speaking in very broad generalization, conservatives and liberals approach suffering very differently and some say that it predicates their entire notions about life.
Conservatives see suffering as a natural consequence of their lives. To an extent, how they live their lives determines how much and what kind of suffering they endure. They believe that suffering can be honorable, worn like a badge. Suffering can be a challenge, giving greater meaning to their achievements. But most importantly, suffering is an unavoidable condition of being.
Liberals, on the other hand, believe that suffering arises from ignorance, avoidable outside influences and alterable imperfections in humans and human societies. Suffering is to be avoided at all costs.
This difference can be seen when discussing policies that are meant to directly affect suffering like schools shifting focus in sports from competition to cooperation leading all participants to receive awards.
For me, I would rather have the courage to bear my suffering and the genuine sympathy of my companions than an indifferent kindness that removes my suffering. To quote C.S. Lewis
Kindness...cares not whether it's subject becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.
While love and kindness are not exclusive of each other, kindness without love leads to cruelty.
3 comments:
You know sometimes I wonder why there is such a huge difference in the way people look at things. Your examples in mind I think that perhaps people with liberal views believe they are entitled to, among many other things, a idyllic life filled with only the most pleasing of things.
On the other side, a conservative understands that there is no entitlement in life, and to have a happy and prosperous life you must work hard, sacrifice, and ...wait for it... suffer.
This is perhaps a difference in their very character, and I doubt there is a way to ever change it. There will forever be people happy to bend their backs in hard work to the pursuit of happiness~ and people who think they should be given everything just because they had the grace to be born.
Sad to say the least, unfortunately very true. -.-
I don't think that liberals want entitlement for themselves. Just as a conservative knows suffering, so does a liberal. Liberal struggle with all the same things a conservative does.
What I think we observe in liberals is that they don't want to see suffering. They don't want to see the suffering of others. They don't want to see "les faits de la vie", the facts of life.
I'm willing to bet that any liberal you find would say they are willing to take on the suffering of the world so the world wouldn't have to suffer. Likewise, a conservative would say they love the world enough to let them suffer their own lives.
And you both make very good points to which I have nothing to add.
Kelly I love your posts and am so glad you're blogging again :)
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