Friday, January 14, 2022

Review: The Sweet Spot Lib/E: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning

The Sweet Spot Lib/E: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for MeaningThe Sweet Spot Lib/E: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning by Paul Bloom


This was a really interesting listen. Bloom discusses the role of suffering in life. His main idea is that suffering has an important role to play in the meaningful life. Along the way, he critiques various forms of hedonism (life is only/primarily about seeking pleasure or happiness). At the same time, he's not arguing for some kind of ascetic life or a life beset with suffering. His point is more that suffering is always, in some way, a part of a meaningful, full life. We can't banish it completely; and we wouldn't really want to if we could. He details various forms of what he calls chosen-suffering: from BDSM to watching scary movies, to mountain climbing and so on. Another part of his argument is in favor of what he calls motivational pluralism. This is the idea that we are motivated by many things: not just one. It's not just pleasure, or just happiness, or just _fill in the blank_. It's all of that and more. We have lots of different goals, ends, values that motivates us. Some of this involve some measure of pain or suffering. Indeed many of our life-projects; life long goals, involve a lot of pain and suffering of some kind. It's part of process. Sometimes we would, if we could, avoid that. But sometimes the grittiness, the hardness, the painfulness of the thing is an integral part of it and we wouldn't choose to remove it.

Bloom shares lots of fascinating anecdotes and relevant psychology findings. There is a lot to learn and think about here -- even if you don't agree with Bloom's conclusions.


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