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Bloom on Suffering and Meaning

Paul Bloom shows that suffering and pain can be necessary to meaningful pursuits, although sometimes he does not carefully distinguish useful suffering and authentic meaning from pointless suffering and false meaning.

Deadlifting is terrible. I work up to it in stages. First I tell myself that all I need to do is put on my gym clothes. Not so hard! Now that I have on my gym clothes, there's nothing to do but head to the garage and start stretching. Now that I've stretched I can't back out. The first warm-up set is not hard; an easy 120 pounds (times five lifts). By the time I hit 260 pounds I have to reverse my grip just to hold the bar. Lifting the weight is unpleasant, painful. Sometimes I scrape the bar along my shin. My muscles scream. Okay, I just have to set my feet and grip the bar. Now that I've done that, I guess I have to pull the weight. Stay in form so you don't hurt yourself! Lock it in! By the time I hit 300 pounds I am able to tell myself I can do it mainly because I've done it before. Just one more set and I can quit! It's one of the most miserable things I do, up there with squatting, which leaves a bruise between my shoulder blades.

It is miserable and it is awesome. For years I suffered severe pain in my neck and lower back. Now I don't (although I still have some neck pain, owing largely to an injury collected in my youthful stupidity). Lifting weights is part of my general health regimen, along with walking and eating a reasonably good diet. I feel good taking care of myself and taking my future seriously. Other benefits that I didn't think I'd care about, such as better-defined muscles, also please me. And every time I finish my last set I feel the pride of a difficult accomplishment. I hate lifting weights. I love lifting weights.

Paul Bloom explores the paradoxical nature of suffering in his 2021 book, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. As interesting as the book is, at times Bloom seems to rationalize pointless suffering and false meaning. (In what follows, numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers of the book.)

I will lay out my own views upfront before digging through Bloom's book. I agree with Bloom that suffering is a necessary part of the pursuit of a meaningful life. Suffering is not valuable in itself, but often it is built into the sorts of challenging, difficult projects that help to constitute a meaningful life. And learning to cope with that suffering can make a person psychologically (and physically) more competent and resilient. Here is how I would distinguish healthy suffering and authentic meaning from their opposites: Meaningful pursuits involve improving one's self or the world. And this has to involve a basic commitment to the truth; it will not due for a Nazi to pretend that he is improving the world by exterminating people he doesn't like.

Bloom blows apart the simplistic theory that people are merely pursuers of hedonistic pleasures and avoiders of pain. "Under the right circumstances and in the right doses, physical pain and emotional pain, difficulty and failure and loss, are exactly what we are looking for," he writes (xii). He overstates the point; what we are looking for are the benefits that come as a result of enduring such pain and difficulty.

A quibble with the introduction: Bloom says that suffering is "central to Buddhist thought" (xiii); it is, but not in the way he implies. The point of Buddhist teachings, as I understand them, is to teach us how to avoid suffering by giving up our unhealthy attachments. So Buddhism would not seem to lend support to Bloom's argument that we need to embrace suffering in some contexts. (But there are different strains of Buddhist thought and different ways to interpret them, and anyway I am far from an expert.)

Bloom commits himself to moral or "motivational pluralism" (via Tyler Cowen), the idea "that there are many things that people want" (xiv). Well, we can't boil everything down to sensual hedonism. However, drawing lines between sensual hedonism, a more sophisticated hedonism, broader pleasure, happiness, and a life-encompassing eudaimonia is not so easy. Bloom quotes Cowen (from Stubborn Attachments) as saying that the good cannot be reduced to "any single value" such as happiness, but also must include things such as "human well-being, justice, fairness, beautify," and the like.

Okay, but someone like Aristotle would say that a sufficiently robust conception of happiness includes all those things. Does it really make sense to say that we can be truly happy without well-being or justice? No one thinks that human well-being reduces literally to a single, concrete value, such as a tasty meal; what we are talking about are the relevant categories and their boundaries. We can sensibly talk about what constitutes the good life, but we have to have some way of telling what is good or what helps to achieve the good. We need a one in the many (as the Objectivists like to say). There has to be some common standard, even if broadly "the good life."

Bloom does not pursue the ridiculous theses that happiness is worthless and pain an end in itself. He acknowledges (xvii): "[T]he good life is much easier to achieve if you are in [relative!] physical and emotional comfort. It's hard to be joyous and satisfied if your children are starving to death or you are in agony because of an untreated illness." Bloom often talks as though, despite his claims about moral pluralism, he is committed to happiness after all. Sometimes he distinguishes "happiness" in a narrow sense from "eudaemonia" or "flourishing in a more general sense" (xxiii).

I can completely agree with Bloom's core thesis (xxiv): "First, certain types of chosen suffering—including those that involve pain, fear, and sadness—can be sources of pleasure. Second, a life well lived is more than a life of pleasure; it involves, among other things, moral goodness and meaningful pursuits. And third, some forms of suffering, involving struggle and difficulty, are essential parts of achieving these higher goals, and for living a complete and fulfilling life."

Bloom uses the term "suffering" to describe a wide variety of physical and psychological states that we normally regard as negative or hurtful or unpleasant. He hints at several, partly overlapping categories of suffering and discusses why people might choose a sort of suffering. (I am listing the categories; the motive described may or may not be a good one.)

Display physical prowess or endurance: Think of a slapping competition or the eating of painfully spicy foods (1). The point here might be to gain social prestige by showing off. This can backfire if some people think the display is silly.

Demonstrate strength, toughness, and personal commitment: To things included above, we can add climbing Mount Everest (1), running a marathon, and biking a tough trail (2). I'd include all athletic events here. Such activities can bring a variety of benefits: social prestige, a sense of community, fun play, and a demonstration to one's self of personal competence and toughness.

Develop physical or emotional strength: This is the most obvious aim of lifting weights. The Stoics recommend taking on some difficulties for the purpose of improving one's stamina and resilience.

Demonstrate social commitment: Think of initiation rites for religious groups and college fraternities.

Have children: The difficulties of bearing and raising children (pregnancy, sleepless nights, expenses) deserve a category.

Protect one's country, allies, or family: Signing up for war is the chief example here.

Join a cause: Many people who joined ISIS "were looking for more, something of real value" (152). (More on this later.)

Seek the pleasure of relief: Watching horror films, BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission).

Seek self-transcendence: Bloom writes (54), "[P]ain can relieve anxiety by distracting you from your consciousness. It gets you out of your head. . . . Roy Baumeister [puts] sexual masochism . . . into the same category as extreme exercise and getting drunk."

Seek domination or submission: In the context of mutual consent of rational adults, government ought not intervene. Almost all of us would except extreme cases; someone should not be able to sign up to be beaten to death. I can see some potential role for benign domination and submission in sex, but I've never sympathized much with the desire to dominate or to be dominated, or to hurt others or be hurt by them. What about contact sports? Maybe some people pursue them to experience the thrill of dominating others, but I think the main motivation is to demonstrate physical and psychological strength and skill.

Seek emotional healing or coping: This might entail listening to sad music. "Maybe we just enjoy experiencing sadness in a safe context," Bloom writes (12); maybe "a breakup song . . . reassures the person that they're not alone, that there exist others who have felt just the same." I was struck by Geddy Lee's description, in his recent autobiography, of the psychological benefits of embracing a period of mourning following the loss of a loved one, per his Jewish background.

Experience the satisfaction of witnessing the suffering of others: As "mind reading" humans, we are able to vicariously experience the pain of others. Sometimes it's satisfying to see a bad person get his due, which seems to be the appeal of revenge films.

Punish the self: Self-flaggelation, and even signing up for (non-fatal) crucifixion, has a long religious history. (Such actions also can involve displays of loyalty to the group or one's religion.) Plausibly some people who cut themselves are punishing themselves because they think they are bad. Generally, I hold, such physical self-punishment is unhealthy and something to be overcome rather than indulged.

Cry for help: This could be another motivation for people who inflict self-harm (66–67).

Seek excitement and an endorphin rush: I think a lot of self-harming activities can be explained partly by this. Some people experience their lives as basically or largely boring, and seeking pain can be a way to break out of the ordinary and do something thrilling, exciting, taboo, or exotic.

Seek catharsis: Bloom rejects the Aristotelian idea of catharsis, declaring it a "dead" psychological theory (92), but he doesn't offer any reasons for this judgement that strike me as compelling. I think a number of Bloom's claims boil down to the claim that people can experience some sort of catharsis by subjecting themselves to pain, watching a horror film (2), viewing sad images (40), or the like.

I agree with much of Bloom's analysis. For example, he points to the important difference between chosen and unchosen suffering. Even if you get through suffering a better person, even if it is "psychologically useful to try to find benefits in loss and pain," obviously we should "try to avoid cancer, mass shootings, the death of our children, and other horrors" (204). I suppose this point needs to be made explicit in a book stressing the benefits of suffering!

At times, though, I worry that Bloom is rationalizing or at least tolerating types of suffering that clearly are bad. Consider his description of a religious rite (176):

In a Hindu festival in Mauritius, celebrants walk on hot coals and have skewers plunged through their cheeks and tongues. They have hooks dug into their backs and stomachs, and these hooks are attached to chariots that weigh hundreds of pounds. The men then spend hours in the afternoon heat dragging these chariots to the top of a distant hill.

At no point does Bloom mention that, oh, by the way, such practices are crazy and horrible. People should not be doing this! (Let's leave aside the hot coals, which I hear aren't so bad if you step quickly.) If you want to signal loyalty to your group or religion, or signal your virility as a romantic mate (see 178), there are way better ways to do that that don't involve gratuitously damaging one's body.

Or consider what Bloom says (and does not say) about war. "Whatever one says about the horrors of war, social connectedness is a common positive theme" (146). People joined ISIS for a sense of meaning (152). And war can meet "the desire to defend one's group and strike back at one's enemies" (153).

The "benefits" of war are so great that some people argue that "we" should manufacture wars just to provide people (young men at least) with these "benefits." Obviously that is insane.

Even if we grant that often people can find a sense of meaning and social bonding through war, surely we also must grant that there is a big difference between joining up to fight for the Nazis and joining up to fight the Nazis. This points to the profound difference between false and authentic meaning, and between pointless suffering and suffering as a necessary cost of a worthy cause. These are just the sort of distinctions that Bloom too often leaves to implication.

"Many meaningful pursuits are moral," Bloom writes (168). But he says that Eichmann's campaign of mass slaughter was "meaningful" if "terrible." That won't do. We need a more robust sense of meaning that aligns with morality and a life considered as a whole. Eichmann, who was hunted down and hanged for his horrific crimes, today is universally and justly reviled. I don't doubt that at the time he felt or imagined some sense of purpose in what he did, but that's different from authentic meaning.

Still, Bloom has successfully defended the thesis that suffering is not something to be automatically and always avoided, but rather sometimes something to be embraced or at least tolerated as an aspect or cost of some grander purpose. Readers will not be surprised to find in Bloom's book a discussion of Nozick's experience machine (31), which illustrates that the best life is not one of pain-free, uninterrupted bliss. A life worth living is not one lived for the sake of suffering, but it is one in which suffering plays an inevitable role. If you're never uncomfortable, never suffering or in pain, you're not growing as a person or contributing to a better world.

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