I forgot to include the whole reason why I chose to post about
McCain's incredible war story yesterday. I've been re-trying to read Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, and I came to one of those places in the book yesterday morning that forced me to put the book down to devote more time to fully understand a thought. Here's the quote that set me a-thinking (retyped via BlackBerry to let it seep in more slowly...like taking in a landscape on foot vs. from a car):
"She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not believe in suffering."
That's where I had to stop, but the quote continues:
"She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter. Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it. She would not allow pain to become important. She had no name for the kind of resistance she offered, for the emotion from which the resistance came; but the words that stood as its equivalent in her mind were: It does not count -- it is not to be taken seriously. She knew these were the words, even in the moments when there was nothing left within her but screaming and she wished she could lose the faculty of consciousness so that it would not tell her that what could not be true was true. Not to be taken seriously -- an immovable certainty within her kept repeating -- pain and ugliness are never to be taken seriously.
She fought it. She recovered. Years helped her to reach the day when she could face her memories indifferently, then the day when she felt no necessity to face them. It was finished and of no concern to her any longer."
Now granted -- that section is about a powerful business executive and her EMOTIONAL reaction to the pain of love. But I believe Rand's thinking can have very broad applications.
For example, is that the line of thinking John McCain pursued, when abused and broken as a POW he refused to divulge any more than his rank and serial number? Is that how he dealt with the pain inflicted on his body? By refusing to believe in suffering thus overcome it?
Is that how
prisoners,
deportees,
guerrillas,
spies,
soldiers,
the terminally ill,
artists,
poets,
doctors,
activists
perceive pain and suffering?
Can one overcome things just by refusing to believe in them? Things like sin? Self-hate? Stupidity?
Is this an extremely empowering approach to life or ridiculously addle headed one void of a reality check? It would be extremely liberating to give suffering a big F-U, but aren't there degrees and shades to it?
How would I interpret this in daily life? How would you? Can you honestly say that's how we deal with pain? Physical and emotional? I wonder how a welfare abuser would read that excerpt.
I don't think society helps us with putting suffering in context. It could be because fear is so commonly encouraged by all the information we consume. Suffering becomes a constant when we have instantaneous news of terrorist bombings, tens of thousands of deaths from natural disasters, hit-and-runs, robberies, lying politicians.
It's a wonder anyone goes outside any more.
As much as I deplored
Fareed Zakaria's "post-America is here"
article, I think he had a great point in understanding why most people wouldn't think we're living in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. While global organized death it down, every little act is reported in the information age. That hasn't been the case throughout history when we've sometimes had to wait decades to confirm through the opening of secret archives that millions had been slaughtered. We've had trouble putting every death and deplorable act in context as a result.
Another place I think this culture of fear has been extremely detrimental has been in the process of birth. Our non-stop thirst for information and acceptance of fear have produced a dangerous cycle. OBs and "Baby Doctors" who typically have no formal training for normal birth, manipulate fear of suffering (not to mention fear of self-realization, fear of lawsuits, fear of responsibility, and fear of the routine) to escalate normal situations to the crisis kinds for which they're trained.
Working backwards, this has produced a fear of pain. People believe strongly in suffering and they fear it. Since pain is the cause of suffering, you avoid pain at all costs, even when it is beneficial.
To bring this back to the Rand excerpt, how can we apply her "suffering does not exist" mentality to birth? To be sure, the process is often painful, but how a woman interprets that is very important to the process in my opinion. By embracing a sufferer's mentality, the pain becomes a horrible burden to be avoided at all costs, even to the point of demanding to have a child cut out of your womb.
By denying suffering a seat at the table the pain of childbirth could be seen as limitlessly empowering.
(Full disclosure: I will never have to give birth)
So, is suffering real? Should it be denied? Is that empowering or ludicrous?
-dr-
Labels: ayn rand, birth, fareed zakaria, fear, john mccain, suffering