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RE: What Our Brains DO: Living With, Processing and Dealing with Hardships
I think one has to distinguish between "necessary" and "unnecessary" suffering. To put up with "unnecessary" suffering (suffering that doesn't contribute to your aim) is a defect of the ego I would think.
Good point!
Culture, in a sense, has a defect of ego. What I mean by that is the many instances in which we tend to "glorify" suffering as essential rather than optional. I believe it's a Buddhist truism that *"PAIN is inevitable, suffering is optional." And yet, there's often evidence that suffering is some kind of "must."
Having been in the art business (for example) for many years... the myth of "the Tormented Artist" is perpetuated, often with the subtext that the art isn't "real" or "authentic" unless it was created under torment and suffering. If you create art to express your happiness, it's not taken seriously; it's considered "fluff," no matter how good it actually might be.
Personally, I'd agree such an approach is more a reflection of an ego-defect (on a collective level) than it is about reality.
I once worked with a guy who was always moaning and groaning about his "bad back" as he worked. He was doing the job "under the table" because he was receiving "Workman Compensation" pay from the government for an industrial accident, and if the government knew he was working he would lose that. I ran across a really good masseuse/physio therapist who was visiting from Japan. I told my work mate that I could get him a session and I was very confident that it would fix his bad back. He looked at me with trepidation and said: "Oh, no. I will lose my Workman's Compensation!" He wouldn't book an appointment with the therapist.
Wow, that's a sad tale, too. Quite common, unfortunately. One of my neighbors when I lived in Texas many years back was actually a Workman's Comp investigator, and he would tell stories about all sorts of trickery and shenanigans people would pull... including filming a man with a "debilitating bad back" lifting the engine out of the back of a VW bug!
"People are addicted to their problems because it lets them escape their fears."
Dakota Meyer