Whatever Floats Your Boat

I recently had to spend some time in a children’s hospital and as a result thought about suffering. I witnessed suffering in the very brief time spent in the hospital. I think that what I witnessed wasn’t intense or prolonged suffering but suffering nonetheless. Intense and prolonged suffering does happen. Moreover, can suffering be more intense then when it is a child suffering?

If one is a materialist or non-theist, one can make sense of suffering. Pain and loss are built into a material world and can’t be extracted from a material world. 

However, once an omnipotent and benevolent being is considered, suffering cannot be understood. Why? Because that being could prevent suffering calling upon omnipotence and benevolence.

But now for a minute, consider understanding suffering as an exercise in psychology and rationality. After exiting the hospital I remarked to my wife about suffering and she explained to me about how some people make sense of suffering. For example, some view their own suffering as a result of their own misdeeds – a personal karma if you will. I thought about this and the irrationality of it and while people may frame their experiences to help them function in the world, I can’t help but wonder, what is the intellect for? 

Is the intellect and rationality reserved only for the easy stuff – the mathematics, physics, and unemotional aspects of life? Once things get emotionally difficult we are to abandon the intellect and rationality and instead opt for a “whatever floats your boat” ethos?

I think I know what I think but I am wondering what you think because if I knew what you thought, maybe I would think differently.

What do you think?

RELATED:

My post on Leibnitz and the problem of suffering.

http://heavylevity.blogspot.com/search/label/Leibnitz

My post on Karma and Just World Hypothesis http://heavylevity.blogspot.com/2014/10/karma-and-just-world-hypothesis.html

http://heavylevity.blogspot.com/2015/02/turn-that-superbowl-loss-into-lemonade.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

Karma and The Just World Hypothesis

Karma and The Just World Hypothesis

I mentioned earlier that I am teaching an introductory psychology class this fall and last night we ventured into social psychology. As we discussed kinds of biases we covered the relationship between the bias of Blaming The Victim and the Just World Hypothesis. It works like this: the world is just and fair and because it is just and fair, people that find themselves the victim of unfairness or injustice must deserve the unfairness or injustice.

Sounds surprising at first but play it out a little and the view is probably more common than you think.

Consider karma. Ask most people in everyday sorts of conversations and they will endorse karma or some kind of variant. So I mentioned to the class that I have a knack for quickly becoming the most unpopular person in a room and doing so in record time. I mentioned that one time some colleagues were discussing diets and which one and this and that and asked my opinion. I gave it: Diets don’t work. Thanks Debbie Downer. Who needs cancer when we have this guy around?

Speaking of cancer, I was recently asked by current colleagues about believing in karma: I don’t. “What! Of course you do!” I don’t. I asked my colleagues that if karma is true and that if people get what is coming to them and that what goes around comes around, then why do kids get cancer? What did the kids do to deserve that come-around? 

Here is the kipper though. One colleague said “their parents must have done something." One student in the class also felt this way. 

So after some lively debate and tangents into Leibnitzian Best of All Possible Worlds talk I wrapped it up by pointing out that you can choose to believe in karma or the Just World Hypothesis but that it logically follows that you must blame victims. 

This is not a forced dichotomy. It is merely a conditional. 

The world is just
If the world is just, then a person will experience injustice if and only if they acted unjustly
[ergo]
A person that experiences injustice acted unjustly

In symbolic logic it might look like this:

1.    1.   j

2.     2.  (j>(i_­=u))

[(i>u)

3.      3. Asm ~(i>u)

4.      4. i               from 3 negative implication rule

5.      5. ~u           from 3 negative implication rule

6.      6. (i=u)      from 1,2 modus ponens rule

7.      7. (i>u)      from 6 iff simplification rule

8.      8. u             from 4,6 contradicting 5

(i>u) from 3-8 reductio ad absurdum 8 contradicts 5

As uncomfortable as it may seem and as unpopular as it may make you, the truth will set you free. Free from what?

No one better than Woody Allen captures the debate in movie form. The Seder scene from Crimes and Misdemeanors