Why Is There So Much Pain and Suffering?

 

“Why Is There So Much Pain and Suffering?”
By Fred Pauser

“Mother
Teresa said, “Suffering is a gift of God.” Well, it may be true that
suffering tends to build character, but it also sometimes builds
bitterness and criminals. In any case, we would naturally prefer to do
without it, especially the extreme forms of it.

We can derive
much toward answering the question from a basic knowledge of the
evolution of life. Ernst Mayr succinctly summed up the process of
natural selection: “Natural selection is a two-step process: (1)
variations produced, and (2) variations sorted, with the elimination of
the less fit so that you end up with a ‘selection’ of the best.” Fitness
may involve cooperative abilities as well as competitive, and the
ability to adjust to varying environmental conditions.

Variations
between individuals are produced by means such as mutations or genetic
drift. The individuals that are most able to deal with the circumstances
provided within their environmental niche are likely to be most able to
reproduce and pass on their genes.

Contributions to the process
of natural selection are also made by cataclysmic events such as
volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, meteors and asteroids, etc. It is
commonly believed that most dinosaurs were destroyed by such an event.
Consequently, niches were opened to species that were more fit in terms
of surviving that particular environmental upheaval.

As Teilhard
de Chardin could see almost a century ago, evolution is directional. If
we step back to see the big picture, nearly 4 billion years of life on
earth is most notably characterized by overall increasing complexity and
diversity of life, accompanied by greater capabilities, including the
development of consciousness. Scientists are beginning to abandon
Gould’s philosophy of non-directional evolution in favor of something
more like de Chardin’s view.

Einstein said, “Everything that the
human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of
deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain.” This is the
pleasure/pain principle. It applies to virtually all life, albeit in
very rudimentary form in single-celled creatures. It is fundamental.

Humans
and other creatures born without the functional pain apparatus of their
peers, do not live long. Clearly, without the capacity for pain and
suffering, the evolution of life would not and could not happen.
Certainly all higher life forms including humans would not have had even
a remote chance of coming into existence.

Suppose there is a
God, and s/he created the world pretty much as it is (as per the
Christian fundamentalist view), except there was no pain and suffering,
and all danger had been removed for all creatures. Wouldn’t it be a dull
and boring place? Would there be any reason to strive for anything?

But
we humans are acutely aware of our ability to experience pain, and we
do what we can to avoid it, while simultaneously striving to maximize
satisfaction. This more than enables us to survive. As products of
evolution we mirror the directional progress of evolution of increasing
capabilities. as human history indicates.

We possess a nearly
unique ability among animals in that we can visualize all sorts of
future possibilities, which bestows upon us the potential for a kind of
pain that other creatures are capable of experiencing only minimally if
at all: anxiety. Other animals probably, in general, suffer less than we
humans assume they do, because we tend to anthropomorphize. Perhaps
natural selection is not quite as cruel as it seems to us. Besides a
minimal anxiety factor, consider that death in nature through predation
is usually swift, and it often occurs before creatures can experience
much of the sort of suffering we associate with old age and years of
gradual loss of abilities.

The human propensity to suffer the
pain of anxiety through the ability to imagine, has a plus side. It
leads to a greater ability to experience empathy and sympathy (as
compared to other animals). We are at a stage of development whereby our
world is becoming one united economic entity. Human similarities across
the world are becoming quite apparent. We are increasingly aware of our
interdependence. We are coming to realize (some of us) that it is in
our own self-interest to relieve suffering among our fellows. So our
intellectual capabilities are being used via the pleasure and pain
systems in us, to advance morally as well as technologically. The
spiritual notion of profound interconnectedness and unity is becoming
less abstract, more real. Ironically, none of this, including our very
existence, would be possible without the billions of years of
evolutionary struggle and strife that preceded us.”

- http://www.scientificblogging.com/