The Correlation between Suffering and Want: The Path of Greed (A Lesson on Stoicism & Albert Einstein)
“Everything even lunacy is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly.” (Einstein 537 on America).
American culture has transitioned to a new world of mass media and of keeping your mind preoccupied by mindless entertainment.
Advancement of technology has revolutionized the world to lose itself in the unending greed of satisfaction to our desires.
Technology has elevated, too extreme measures, our impulses to dangerous levels.
The internet itself has created a universe of instant gratification and satisfaction of our wants whenever we demand them.
It is a beautiful madness.
Algorithms have been designed to study your impulses and desires to place you inside a wormhole of gratification.
Analyzing your data, they read what you're looking for.
And exploit those desires and impulses into addiction.
The internet is the 21st century cigarette.
Therefore, it is critical to always be aware of the operation of these platforms to maintain self-control.
There are alarming amounts of studies indicating we as a species are on an upward trend of losing control of our impulses and individual judgements.
At the bottom of this blog, I will be posting an article describing how dopamine affects our behavior in addition to healthy natural ways to enhance dopamine levels.
One natural way is to listen to instrumental music! (click on the article at the end for more).
We can become lost in satisfying our dopamine that we forget the meaning of ourselves and lose the opportunity of individual success & achievement.
It is important to be presently aware that in specific moments your dopamine will trigger you to re enter the internet realm.
And that can be dangerous.
The internet for many of us is a method of distracting us from the pain and suffering we are feeling.
In other words, it distracts us from the present moment and forces us to avoid our own thoughts.
And in some cases, that's great.
However, studies have proven distraction and avoidance of your suffering is only a temporary solution to the pain you are feeling.
How can we live in the present moment when we are letting pain and suffering linger within us on a day to day basis?
What is required of us to move forward with our lives to get past the experience of suffering?
For me, personally, it’s as simple as this:
Acceptance.
And I’ll explain why that is the first step in the healing process.
But first, we must understand the concept of suffering and its correlation to desire.
Cole Schafer states the following: “There is a jarring correlation between wanting and suffering. The more you want, the more you suffer.
When you want something and you don’t yet have it, you suffer-- you suffer because you don’t feel entirely complete without having the thing that you want.”
Once you do get it, you no longer want it. You want something else.”
In other words, the experience of suffering always exists.
There are 3 specific concepts of suffering. (presented in the buddhist tradition)
Suffering, pain, and misery exist in life.
Suffering arises from attachment to desires.
Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases.
It’s a vicious cycle of greed and constant lack of satisfaction.
Which results in loss of happiness.
But, we can limit our suffering by limiting our wanting.
However, it is important to have the awareness that in some cases we purposely seek out friction and discomfort in our life because it provides us more meaning and value to our individuality.
The so-called “Ikea effect” suggests that we associate value with effort.
In other words, people are often willing to sacrifice more to feel more gratification once they succeed.
This in return makes activities more meaningful.
Adding friction to our lives forces activities or work itself a higher sense of purpose in life.
Speaking for myself, my blog, my instrumentals, and my journey are self-gratifying because of the challenges it presents to my life.
The challenge, the suffering if you will, is what has brought meaning into my life.
I have deliberately chosen discomfort to compliment the idea that I am gaming the system and achieving my best self.
It provides me with the self-belief that I am in control.
In truth, however, the line between chosen and unchosen suffering is not always clear.
But, we do have the choice in the narrative we build around the suffering we endure.
There are various ways to judge (and when I mean judge I mean take action) in a specific experience that you have.
For instance, adversity is something we all experience at different points in time.
Whatever adversity or failure we experience, it will always be an opportunity to learn something about ourselves and improve our characters for our future selves.
It offers us wisdom and an opportunity for personal growth.
A poor attitude would be letting yourself somber in disappointment and not moving toward a better self.
In other words, if you have control of your judgments you can control your happiness.
Judgments are one of the few things we have control over which in turn control our desires and impulses.
When we desire or crave control over things outside ourselves, such as craving sensual material pleasures, we are more likely to suffer.
For example, if you make your well-being dependent on something you don’t have control over (specific career ambition, material possessions, physical appearance, etc.) you have handed your happiness on the dependency of something else rather than yourself.
The key is not to turn away from the things you don’t have control over, but to develop the right attitude toward it.
And Albert Einstein, an optimist, did just that.
He was a genius for not only his imagination, but for his ability to focus.
He had an unrelenting drive to achieve the vision of his best self.
Many argue his tenacity in sticking to a problem for years, in returning to the problem again and again, is the characteristic feature of what made him a genius.
There were various theories Einstein worked on for months or even years.
All the work he did in most cases resulted in failure and he would start over again.
Yet, despite his failure, his suffering, he maintained the attitude and self-belief that he would find a solution to the problem.
How many of us have that level of patience with ourselves?
How would you react if you worked on something for months and it resulted in nothing?
How would you react if you worked toward a project for months and realized at the end it was a complete failure?
This is why many consider this element, including myself, of what made Einstein a genius.
His endless tenacity changed the realm of science.
Einstein’s unrelenting drive was continuous even when he experienced tragic loss in his life.
For instance, when his wife Elsa died, Einstein dove even deeper into his work:
“As long as I am able to work, I must not and will not complain, because work is the only thing that gives substance to life.” (Einstein on Elsa’s death).
Now, Einstein still did struggle when he experienced tragic loss.
He cried for days and even randomly months at a time.
However, he would not let the suffering disrupt his work.
He understood his suffering was rooted from uncontrollable circumstances.
Einstein was mindful and aware of what he controlled. His attitude and judgments on particular experiences of loss or failure were responded with a deterministic viewpoint.
Meaning, he understood his life as a story.
And in every story suffering exists.
In other words, Einstein believed the death of his wife happened in circumstances out of his control.
Would he have not let her die if he could? Of course.
However, in this particular situation of loss, Einstein knew the suffering he was enduring was rooted from a situation he had no control over.
He accepted the reality she had passed and moved forward to the present.
The awareness of understanding where your suffering is rooted from is critical in moving past it.
Once you have the awareness of where your suffering is rooted from ask yourself this:
How much of the suffering you are experiencing is outside of your control?
And you will realize, We don’t really have much control of our pain & suffering.
It's just there.
And that’s okay.
It is important to maintain the mindset of yourself and to have the awareness of how much lack of control you have to understand the pain you are feeling.
suffering and pain is a price of wisdom.
And it is with that wisdom, you will prosper to your best individual self.
Understand you will suffer in a variety of different ways.
And expect it to come and go throughout your life.
Amor fati, or “love of fate”, an idea drawn from the Stoics, is adopting a spirit in which the sufferer transforms life’s afflictions into something useful.
Reflect on the emotions and passions you are feeling and put them to use in a virtuous way to the world.
As that is what Albert Einstein did.
Killedmonkmusic
11.10. 2021
Other methods of coping with suffering:
Kendrick Lamar on how meditation helped him stay in a stable mind-state during times of pressure and situations of suffering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMFTbp5gpw
More detail on the concept of Dopamine and how it drives our behavior:
https://www.intoactionrecovery.com/how-dopamine-drives-our-behavior/
A detailed essay on the New Yorker describing different forms of suffering and different practices of coping with tragedy:
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