Investigating the life of the priest and proto-rationalist Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, who heard the confessions of accused witches, I looked up some of the instruments that had been used to produce confessions. There is no ordinary way to make a human being feel as good as those instruments would make you hurt. I’m not sure even drugs would do it, though my experience of drugs is as nonexistent as my experience of torture.
There’s something imbalanced about that.
It seems to me that suffering is easier to produce than eudaimonia (I prefer that to the pallid notions of “happiness” or “pleasure”) for the same reason that to be wrong is easier than to be right. Truth and eudaimonia are small targets in their respective seas of possibilities. They cannot be achieved without striving and are easy to miss. With the wrong methods, you may be systematically led away from them. Though small, they are deep: progress opens up new vistas you never imagined.
Is suffering any larger a target than eudaimonia? It seems to me like they’d be the same size, just in opposite directions. The only reason suffering is easier to hit is that humans are all built facing that direction.
It seems to me that suffering is easier to produce than eudaimonia (I prefer that to the pallid notions of “happiness” or “pleasure”) for the same reason that to be wrong is easier than to be right. Truth and eudaimonia are small targets in their respective seas of possibilities. They cannot be achieved without striving and are easy to miss. With the wrong methods, you may be systematically led away from them. Though small, they are deep: progress opens up new vistas you never imagined.
Is suffering any larger a target than eudaimonia? It seems to me like they’d be the same size, just in opposite directions. The only reason suffering is easier to hit is that humans are all built facing that direction.