MyNameIsNonYaBizniz t1_ir66dks wrote on October 5, 2022 at 4:57 PM

Reply to comment by DeusAxeMachina in How to Live In A World That Makes No F*cking Sense: Nietzsche and the Search for Superhuman Laughter by simsquatched

False equivalence though, dread is far from suffering.

people should stop defining suffering as anything that pains them, because the word loses its meaning, common intuition would define suffering as pain so intense and prolonged that it makes people avoid it at all costs, including suicide.

DeusAxeMachina t1_ir6f0ii wrote on October 5, 2022 at 5:52 PM

There's nothing "common" about that intuition, and you just invented a new meaning to the word suffering that's in line with your argument, so it's begging the question as well.

Either way this is a poor game of semantics and the point still stands. If we accept your unusual definition to suffering, then your argument becomes far less relevant, because barely anyone is experiencing that degree of suffering, meaning purpose-seeking is still relevant to the vast majority of mankind. If we do not accept it (which I see no reason to), then your argument is false as people in suffering do have a use for purpose-seeking. So your argument is either false or irrelevant.

MyNameIsNonYaBizniz t1_ir6tfng wrote on October 5, 2022 at 7:24 PM

>unusual definition to suffering

Lol, what is suffering to you? How about some examples?

DeusAxeMachina t1_ir6xmoh wrote on October 5, 2022 at 7:50 PM

An undesirable state of being, which can be but isn't necessarily convergent with pain. For example, the muscle pain from an intense work-out wouldn't be called "suffering" by most people, but intense depression would, despite not being painful. This is, incidentally, how most people use the word.

Either way, it's definitely not "pain so intense and prolonged that it makes people avoid it at all costs, including suicide", because in that case, the term "moderate suffering" would be a self-contradiction, and that's just absurd and definitely not common-sensical.

If you're genuinely curious about the question of defining suffering, I can elaborate or offer some reading recommendations, but otherwise, I'd like to go back to topic, which is that existential confusion/dread/suffering (call it as you will, the term is secondary in its importance) is relevant to the majority of mankind regardless of living conditions or physical state, thus your initial claim that the problem is irrelevant to most still fails.