Ursula K. Le Guin about suffering and getting to the other side of pain – The Marginalian
Simone Weil considered it the highest discipline there is to “make use of suffering brought about by accident.” George Bernard Shaw saw suffering as our greatest source of compassion. “We suffer more in thought than in reality,” Seneca noted before offering his thousand-year-old, timeless cure for anxiety. And yet we suffer and the pain we feel, even if the suffering is based on it, is real. How do we direct ourselves to our suffering – or i suffering, as a Buddhist may correct the illusion and affirm our shared truth – may be the single most important predictor of our happiness, well-being, and potential for happiness. “Try not to include the possible suffering that involves the order of nature and the existence of free will,” CS Lewis wrote when he thought about how suffering gives strength to life, “and you find that your life does not exclude.”
What is that indelible relationship between suffering and life Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) explores everywhere Outcasts: An Uncanny Utopia (public library) — an excellent 1974 novel, part science fiction and part philosophy, that gave us Le Guin's insight into time, honesty, and the origins of human responsibility.
The main character of the novel – the prodigy physicist Shevek, who visits a beautiful world similar to the world from the community living on the barren moon of the Earth, where the colony had isolated itself long ago, not compatible with the profit values and the “identity” of the expanding and selfish human society – Guindo's philosophy channels the pitfalls of human society:
Suffering is misunderstanding.
[…]
It's there… It's true. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can't pretend it doesn't exist, or it will ever end. Suffering is the condition in which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as a fact. Yes, it is okay to cure disease, prevent hunger and injustice, as a social organism does. But no society can change the state of existence. We cannot prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. Society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the truth. All of us here will know sorrow; if we live for fifty years, we will know pain for fifty years… However, I wonder if it is not a misunderstanding — this holding onto happiness, this fear of pain… If instead of fearing it and running away from it, one can… go through it, go beyond it. There is more than that. It is the self that suffers, and there is a place where the self—it ends. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the truth – the truth that I realize in suffering as I have no comfort and joy – is that the truth of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure the whole way.
Defining freedom as “that recognition of the individuality of the individual that goes beyond that alone,” Le Guin contrasts her imperfect character with an imperfect society, which she speaks in her speech at the novel's climax – a speech she delivers before a large crowd of fellow unauthorized social workers, who have faced growing misery on the streets. but a corrupt earth like the Earth:
It is our suffering that unites us. It is not love. Love does not listen to reason, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is more than a choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we had to learn it. We know that there is no benefit to us without each other, that no hand will save us if we do not extend our hand. And the hand that you extend is empty, just like mine is. You have nothing. You have nothing. You don't own anything. You are free. All you have is who you are, and what you have to offer.
In the mystery of his mind, created by Le Guin's own mind, Shevek shows the central paradox of suffering:
When you run away from suffering, you also run away from the opportunity to be happy. The pleasure you may find, or the pleasure, but it will not be fulfilled. You never know what it's like to come home… Fulfillment… it's a matter of time. The pursuit of pleasure is circular, repetitive, transient… It has an end. It comes to an end and has to start over. It's not a round trip, but a closed circuit, a locked room, a cell… The thing about working on time, instead of opposing, …is that it doesn't waste. Even pain counts.
Dispossessed it's a great read, exploring sound themes that are timely in our socially confused and politically troubled world. Fill this piece with Rebecca West's brilliant and understated survival and redemption of suffering, then revisit Le Guin on poetry and science, the power of art to transform and redeem, the art of growth, storytelling as a tool for freedom, and her classic gender stereotypes.
