I wonder if there’s a correlation between the American emphasis on comfort and loss of utility for suffering as a social signal?
At least within notable chunks of American culture that I currently have a lens on—don’t live in the US at present, so do take this with a massive salt-boulder—it seems that visibly suffering quickly earns the sufferer a large amount of sympathy/compassion/support/etc.
This begets more visible suffering—to the point of harmful neuroticism—in order to garner more support from the community, and I doubt this is in any way a conscious effort on behalf of any of the involved parties. Similar to an unruly child that keeps throwing temper-tantrums because her parents quickly give in and reward the unwanted behavior—neither the child nor parents are really aware of the feedback loop in which they are trapped.
Moreover, in my observation, cultures where publicly visible suffering is ignored (or even punished!) don’t seem to suffer from the same levels of neurotic behavior that I regularly see in specific American subcultures—although increased suicide rates do seem to be an issue for when those cultures have yet to evolve mechanisms whereby suffering can be alleviated.
I wonder if there’s a correlation between the American emphasis on comfort and loss of utility for suffering as a social signal?
At least within notable chunks of American culture that I currently have a lens on—don’t live in the US at present, so do take this with a massive salt-boulder—it seems that visibly suffering quickly earns the sufferer a large amount of sympathy/compassion/support/etc.
This begets more visible suffering—to the point of harmful neuroticism—in order to garner more support from the community, and I doubt this is in any way a conscious effort on behalf of any of the involved parties. Similar to an unruly child that keeps throwing temper-tantrums because her parents quickly give in and reward the unwanted behavior—neither the child nor parents are really aware of the feedback loop in which they are trapped.
Moreover, in my observation, cultures where publicly visible suffering is ignored (or even punished!) don’t seem to suffer from the same levels of neurotic behavior that I regularly see in specific American subcultures—although increased suicide rates do seem to be an issue for when those cultures have yet to evolve mechanisms whereby suffering can be alleviated.