ABSTRACT

Having documented the cultural shift from the positive to the negative vision of suffering in Chapter 3, in this chapter I shall suggest that the growing cultural preference for the negative vision of suffering has not only altered our experience of suffering, but also altered it in self-destructive and socially destructive ways. Some of the alterations I shall investigate relate to the idea that this shift is creating an epoch in which suffering must be anaesthetised at all costs, in which antidepressants, frenetic activity, distracting media and rapid consumption are now the principal palliatives for displeasure. In short, I shall explore whether this `culture of anaesthetics' may well in turn have brought its own side-effects, largely by displacing the unlived suffering to which many of us are now sedated onto other hapless receptacles; these might be future generations (who must suffer the environmental costs of our self-numbing behaviour), present associates or loved ones (who suffer from our emotional avoidances), or less robust countries and economies (who fund our escapist and consumerist lives). Another question with which I shall be occupied is in what way is this culture of avoidance or anaesthesia denying individuals the possible fruits of discontent? For if we subscribe to the notion that a certain amount of suffering is entailed in much genuine human development, by denying suffering are we denying such development? And if we are denying such development en masse what will be the social consequences? Can we expect them to be sanguine? Finally, we must ask whether the negative model of suffering is actually a self-ful®lling prophecy. As I mentioned at the outset of Chapter 3, how we engage with and respond to an experience affects its very nature. If we brand hearing voices as a symptom of mental disturbance, this will affect how all those subject to this phenomenon experience it. And so, I shall argue, it goes with suffering. If we too quickly and thoughtlessly pathologise, anaesthetise and medicalise it, if we ostracise, brand and become uncomfortable with all those who experience it, are not these very responses simply compounding it? If so the irony is that in the name of removing discontent we engage in behaviour that effectively deepens it. In this respect certain so-called ongoing psychiatric disorders

may be less the fault of the human mind than of the human response. Is sickness being located in the wrong place?