Is that true if your being tortured by someone other than yourself? I've seen the picture of the monk who set himself on fire while meditating in protest.
I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.
I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.
"Suffering is optional" is a concept that dies immediately if you apply even a tiny amount of creativity to the question. It also fails if applied to animals.
It's really only available to people in a specific range of situations, and often it's stated not because it's actually true, but because it makes people feel powerful in situations where they're rather powerless. Which is mostly the point of stoicism anyway, as it is a philosophy developed during a time when people felt that they couldn't change anything about the world.
Of course, this means it's a poor philosophy to follow if your interest is in things improving, and not in just you personally not caring about them, something that many people already accomplish all too well...
> it's a poor philosophy to follow if your interest is in things improving
Stoicism helps people accomplish more, by letting them transcend the things that are holding them back that they control.
I think you’re projecting your own beliefs onto others.
So you claim that love, justice, truth, and honor are not real “by definition”? And, moreover, that everyone agrees with you on this?
> I think you should find another fight to pick with someone else.
Who’s “picking a fight” here? You’re being weirdly defensive.
Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, and one of his points (as I understand it) is that humans deeply desire to know that their life is meaningful, and even if another person is torturing you, you can find meaning by maintaining your human dignity in the face of the evil around you.
The stories in the book are heartbreaking, but there is a clear sense that it's possible to find something even when it seems like there's nothing. I guess he would say: perhaps you can't always find peace, but you can find meaning.
It’s an absolutely different story when you are being wrongfully interrogated in the USSR and thus giving up simply implies a life in prison. And the other option is another day of torture.
Suffering is relative.
* you feel less pain if you cause it for yourself (you've already conquered fear)
* mindfulness eases pain because of more knowledge / seeing, less fear