Suffering
It is a common observation that many comedians have a dark depressing side to their nature — dubbed the sad clown. The common theory is that they have developed a great humor in order to abate their dark side. Likewise, wisdom is often developed in response to negative experience. I believe that all human experience is relativistic: that things can only be understood in respect to other things. Pain, suffering, sorrow, depression are all great modes of contrast which naturally lend themselves to deeper understanding by the nature of human experience itself — namely that it’s relativistic/contrastive.
Now before I get started on this reflection, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not positing that all knowledge or wisdom must come from suffering: “You can learn things the easy way or the hard way.” Pain is a brutish teacher. I do think, however, some lessons are very difficult to learn in the absence of suffering.
A method of judging design: it’s good design if no singular component stands out — that they all merge together to form a singular identity. Our lives are very similar to this in respect to suffering and is captured by the saying: “You don’t know what you have till it’s gone.” When we are in a state of equilibrium, where the opposing forces of our lives converge to a sonorous hum, it puts us to sleep — Nietzsche called this wretched contentment; however, when we lose something that is instrumental to maintaining our equilibrium, we get thrown into a vortex of utility gradients until we find a new state of equilibrium. Suffering gives us insight into our state of equilibrium and its characteristic by disrupting it and by putting us in a vortex of utility gradients which gives us relativistic viewpoints.
