Quotation from the Red Cross and Red Crescent "The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, born of a desire to bring assistance without discrimination to the wounded on the battlefield, endeavours, in its international and national capacity, to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found." (Website of the Red Cross and Red Crescent)

Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche "Whether it is hedonism or pessimism, utilitarianism or eudaemonism - all these ways of thinking that measure the value of thing in accordance with pleasure and pain, which are mere epiphenomena and wholly secondary, are ways of thinking that stay in the foreground and naivetes on which everyone conscious of creative powers and an artistic conscience will look down not without derision, nor without pity. Pity with you - that, of course, is not pity in your sense: it is not pity with social 'distress', with 'society' and its sick and unfortunate members, with those addicted to vice and maimed from the start, though the ground around us is littered with them; it is even less pity with grumbling, sorely pressed, rebellious slave strata who long for dominion, calling it 'freedom'. Our pity is a higher and more farsighted pity: we see how man makes himself smaller, how you make him smaller - and there are moments when we behold your very pity with indescribable anxiety, when we resist this pity - when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any frivolity. You want, if possible - and there is no more insane 'if possible' - to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it - that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible - that makes his destruction desirable. The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin. its inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting and exploiting suffering and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness - was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? In man creature and creator are united: in man there is material, fragment, excess, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in man there is also creator, form giver, hammer, hardness, spectator divinity, and seventh day: do you understand this contrast? And that your pity is for the 'creature in man'. for what must be formed, broken, forged, torn, burnt, made incandescent, and purified - that which necessarily must and should suffer? And our pity - do you not comprehend for whom our converse pity is when it resists your pity as the worst of all pamperings and weaknesses?" (Beyond Good and Evil : Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, section 225)

Quotation from Albert Camus "In his greatest effort, man can only purpose to reduce arithmetically the pain of the world."  (The Rebel : An Essay on Man in Revolt)

Quotation from the International Association for the study of pain (IASP) «Pain, particularly chronic pain, is a major threat to the quality of life worldwide, and will become more so as the average age increases. In developing parts of the world the major epidemic of ‘killer diseases’ produce enormous amounts of pain for which there is little or no relief available. This is especially true for patients with HIV/AIDS and cancer, but also for the millions of people suffering injuries from road accidents, childbirth, acts of war and even after surgery. The control of pain has been a relatively neglected area of governmental concern in the past, despite the fact that cost-effective methods of pain control are available. The time is now right to raise the profile of pain, to promote the recognition that the consequences of chronic pain is a disease entity in its own right and an important health concern, but above all, to raise global awareness to a fundamental truth – the relief of pain should be a human right.» (IASP website)

Quotation from Ralph Siu "After analyzing the unceasing mutual inflictions of suffering by practically everyone and the neglect of this pervasive and degenerating human deficiency by the academic community, I urge the immediate creation of a new and vigorous academic discipline, called panetics, to be devoted to the study of the infliction of suffering." (Ralph G.H. Siu, Panetics − The Study of the Infliction of Suffering, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 28 No. 3, Summer 1988.) (See the website of the International Society for Panetics, which is dedicated to the study and development of ways to reduce the infliction of human suffering by individuals acting through professions, corporations, governments, and other social groups.)

Quotation from David Pearce "The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event. Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice." (The Hedonistic Imperative)

Quotation from Iain Wilkinson (who is proposing a 'sociology of suffering')  "The sociological study of human suffering requires us to question, and if necessary oppose, disciplinary boundaries that drive us into narrow fields of technical expertise. Wherever possible, we should be thinking about the diverse realities of human experience; for 'the problem of suffering' is such that it touches upon every aspect of our personhood. In addition, it seems that in attending to the existential reality of this phenomenon, it is practically impossible to avoid questioning the essential meaning and value of our work (...). The negative impact of suffering on our lives is such that it demands debate over what we are fundamentally for. In this respect, we should expect all research and writing in this area to involve a critical engagement with the morality and politics of our times. Finally, in so far as it is in terms of an attempt to understand 'the difficulty of understanding' that we touch upon some of the most vital aspects of what suffering does to people, then it may well be the case that this field of study amounts to one of the most critical settings in which sociology is made to confront the failures of its scholarship, methods and thinking. Yet, as I  have argued, we might still relate to such failings as a necessary part of 'thinking with suffering'." (Suffering – A Sociological Introduction, page 165)

The page background shows neurones that represent the neurological basis of suffering.

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Last modification : 2008/03/12

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