Dialectic Two-Step – The More We Suffer, the More Human We Become?

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. – Octavio Paz  

Some time ago, I answered a question on  Quora  about how we suffer as humans,  The question read as follows:

Question: What philosophy states that “the more we suffer, the more human we become”?

Here is how I responded

Answer: I’m not sure I can place it into a philosophy in the academic sense. Putting on my philosopher hat, I would be  looking for clarification on what it means to be more human vs.  less  human.  I think William Ranger’s  answer is heading in the  right direction if we would be willing to adjust the question to  something like:

“The more we suffer, the more opportunity we  have to understand who we really  are”

If we carefully  observe  our suffering and make an effort to determine it’s causes, we learn a few things:

1.  We are often the  cause  of our own suffering.  Of course, we have  little  control over disease, aging, and death, but our day to day suffering is usually the product of our attachments and aversions.

2.  Part of this self generated suffering is caused by an incorrect view of who  we really  are.  We live  life like  we’re  immortal  and forever young.  We take  for granted the beauty and  abundance  around  us . We manage to miss it or even worse find it dissatisfying. We somehow snatch failure from the jaws of success.

If we’re willing to act on our backwards behavior, and  live as a real human – mortal, frail, and blessed – we can only come closer to bliss.  As William states , “Anyone  can  maximize her/her degree of freedom.  The method is [simple (not easy)], and free.”

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