How Meaning Makes Suffering

Humans have inherited many ancient values mainly encoded in DNA. These are mostly negative values, about avoid things like death, pain, hunger, cold, injury, boredom, confusion, loneliness, etc. Our main ancient positive values are social, about wanting allies, respect, sex, progeny, etc.

But we are quite reluctant to admit that social values are our main positive values. So our cultures give us other varied “sacred” positive values to focus on and aspire to. While these sacred values seem to function in practice mainly to help us achieve our social values, it is important to us that we not see them this way. So each culture gives its members distinctive high positive values. Like their versions of freedom, purity, honor, justice, equality, art, exploration, and inquiry.

However, when our culture shows us several different such grand values, or we are exposed to different subcultures, how do we rank such values? Yes, we have a norm that sacred values don’t conflict. But we are at times forced to see that two values do in fact conflict, which we then resolve this by deciding that the lower one can’t really be sacred. To do this, we need a way to pick which value is higher.

George Simmel, “founding figure of sociology”, in 1900 published The Philosophy of Money, wherein he argued (quotes below) that a common human heuristic is that we judge our highest values to be those that we, or people like us, have recently sacrificed the most to achieve, via suffering those negatives that we usually try to avoid.

For example, Christians see the great value of God’s love in the sacrifice of his son Christ, and the value of Christianity in the sacrifices of martyrs, monks, and soldiers in religions wars. Citizens see the great value of their nation in the many harsh wars to promote that nation. Professionals see the value of their profession in the sacrifice of potential, years of practice, and hours per day of devoted work. Activists see the value of their causes in the suffering of advocates at the hands of opponents. We have record levels of spending on education and medicine, and record levels of confidence in the high value of such spending.

You see, we humans aren’t satisfied to just enjoy tasty nutritious easily-prepared food. But foodies can hope that expensive ingredients, difficult preparation methods, and exceptional skilled cooks may deliver sensory nuance, harmony of composition, craft appreciation, place authenticity, novelty, and narrative. Enough of that and they hope to rise above the mundane to touch the sacred.

And we can’t just be entertained by engaging stories amid pleasing views in movies. But cinéphiles can hope that movie-makers’ artistic excellence and deep insight into human nature, obtained at great personal cost, can be combined with viewers’ careful attention, multiple viewings, literacy, and tolerance for ambiguity to let them see deeply, access serious emotions, encounter other minds and worlds, and join the community of those who “get it”. Which rises above the mundane to touch the sacred.

Now if we had some independent and strong grip on our greatest values, then we might only sacrifice for them when and to the degree that such sacrifice actually best achieved those values. But when we don’t have much of a way to tell which are our greatest values, but instead infer our values to be whatever we most sacrifice for, this can create self-reinforcing cycles that create great suffering.

For example, if we see that our greatest sacrifices lately have been for religion, we try harder to push more of us to be more strictly religious, via more personal sacrifice, and to convert outsiders, which cases suffering via conflict. If our greatest sacrifices have been wars to promote our nations, religions, or ideologies, then we get more eager to promote such things via new wars.

If our greatest sacrifices recently have been in culture wars, we get more eager to push for faster bigger cultural change, especially along the dimensions where we have faced opposition. For example, high levels of social conflict and sacrifice induced by recent “defund the police” initiatives on one side, and by anti-immigrant efforts on the other side, was probably part of the appeal of both approaches.

The longer the period where we have not seen great sacrifices lately, the more we fear that we have become decadent, selfish, profane, and have lost touch with higher values and deeper meanings. And the more eager we become to induce and join big sacrifice activities. For example, WWI ended an unusually long period of European peace and prosperity, and saw an unusually great enthusiasm for war on all sides.

Today we have also seen an unusually long period of peace and prosperity. I predict this will not last. We will come more see ourselves as out of touch with our grand values, and become more open and even eager for actions that induce new regimes of great sacrifice. Periodic high rates of sacrifice will probably continue for as long as we humans (or our AI descendants) use sacrifice as our key indicator of our top grand values. We really need to find a better way to find and affirm our highest values.

Those Simmel quotes:

Even superficial psychological observation discloses instances in which the sacrifice not only increases the value of the desired object but actually brings it about. This process reveals the desire to prove one’s strength, to overcome difficulties, or even simply to be contrary. The necessity of proceeding in a roundabout way in order to acquire certain things is often the occasion, and often also the reason, for considering them valuable. In human relations, and most frequently and clearly in erotic relations, it is apparent that reserve, indifference or rejection incite the most passionate desire to overcome these barriers, and are the cause of efforts and sacrifices that, in many cases, the goal would not have seemed to deserve were it not for such opposition. …

Moral merit always signifies that opposing impulses and desires had to be conquered and sacrificed in favour of the morally desirable act. If such an act is carried out without any difficulty as a result of natural impulse, it will not be considered to have a subjective moral value, no matter how desirable its objective content. Moral merit is attained only by the sacrifice of lower and yet very tempting goods, and it is the greater the more inviting the temptations and the more comprehensive and difficult the sacrifice. Of all human achievements the highest honour and appreciation is given to those that indicate, or at least seem to indicate, a maximum of commitment, energy and persistent concentration of the whole being, and along with this, renunciation, sacrifice of everything else, and devotion to the objective idea.