The Right Kind of Suffering | Paul Bloom
Dr. Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto and Yale University, discusses chosen vs. unchosen suffering. He argues that voluntary suffering can bring pleasure and meaning, reduce anxiety, and explores benign masochism and the benefits of engaging with negative experiences.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Introduction to Chosen vs. Unchosen Suffering
Skepticism Towards Post-Traumatic Growth
Benefits of Chosen Suffering: Pleasure and Meaning
The Brain as a Difference Engine: Pleasure from Contrast
Impact of Violent Video Games and Movies
Evolutionary Basis of Negativity Bias and Worry
Benign Masochism as an Escape from Self
Meditation vs. Pain for Self-Transcendence
Value of Discipline, Control, and Mastery
Motivational Pluralism: The Many Things We Desire
Self-Love and its Geopolitical Consequences
Distinction Between Cognitive and Emotional Empathy
Dangers of Emotional Empathy Guiding Morality
Potential Downsides of Chosen Suffering
Upsides of Unplanned Suffering (e.g., Pandemic)
8 Key Concepts
Chosen Suffering
This refers to suffering that individuals voluntarily opt for, such as engaging in challenging relationships, activities like endurance sports, or starting a business. It is distinct from unchosen suffering and is argued to bring benefits like pleasure and meaning.
Benign Masochism
A concept describing the pleasure derived from mild, controlled forms of pain or discomfort, like eating spicy foods, watching scary movies, or engaging in endurance exercise. The pain is not severe and is experienced under the individual's control, often blurring the lines between pleasure and pain.
Post-Traumatic Growth
The idea that after experiencing trauma, individuals not only recover but emerge as better people, with increased meaning, gratitude, or kindness. The episode expresses skepticism about its reliable occurrence, noting that people often report growth even without trauma, and sometimes trauma just makes things worse.
Brain as Difference Engine
A model suggesting that the brain primarily processes information by comparing current experiences to expectations or contrasts. This explains why mild pain can feel good if something much worse was expected, or why the sadness in a movie enhances the subsequent positive payoff.
Negativity Bias
An evolutionary hardwiring that makes humans naturally drawn to explore and worry about negative things, as a mechanism for survival. This bias explains our interest in worst-case scenarios in fiction and the adaptive logic of preparing for potential dangers.
Motivational Pluralism
The theory that human motivation is not driven by a single desire (like pleasure or meaning) but by a multitude of wants, including pleasure, meaning, truth, love, beauty, morality, applause, and respect. Individuals constantly struggle to balance these diverse motivations.
Cognitive Empathy
The ability to understand what is going on in another person's mind, a form of intelligence that allows one to grasp their thoughts, feelings, and motivations. It can be used for both benevolent purposes (helping) and malevolent ones (manipulating).
Emotional Empathy
The experience of feeling what another person feels, such as becoming anxious when someone else is anxious or happy when they are happy. While it can foster personal connection, it is argued to be too narrow and exhausting to reliably guide moral decisions, often favoring those similar to oneself.
9 Questions Answered
Yes, there is a kind of suffering that people choose voluntarily, which can make life more meaningful and reduce anxiety, distinct from unchosen suffering like illness or assault.
Benign masochism refers to the pleasure derived from mild, controlled pain or anxiety, such as enjoying spicy foods, scary movies, or endurance exercises, where the discomfort is not severe and is under the individual's control.
Not reliably; while some people report post-traumatic growth, studies show that objective measures often don't reflect improvement, and many people who don't experience trauma also report growth, suggesting that resilience is more common than inevitable transformation.
People enjoy these experiences because the brain acts as a 'difference engine,' playing with contrast between negative and positive sensations. The controlled fear or pain enhances the subsequent feeling of relief or pleasure.
Extensive studies show little to no evidence that violent video games or movies make people more violent; in fact, as games have become more violent over the last 20 years, violent crime rates have decreased.
Intense experiences of pain or struggle, like those in BDSM or extreme physical activities, can obliterate the 'noisy' internal self-talk, self-doubt, and worries, capturing full attention and providing a temporary mental escape.
No, trying to be happy is reliably correlated with not being happy, often leading to depression and anxiety. A better approach might be to pursue a meaningful life, with happiness potentially emerging as a byproduct.
Cognitive empathy is understanding what others are thinking and feeling, while emotional empathy is feeling what others feel. Cognitive empathy is a form of intelligence that can be used for good or ill, whereas emotional empathy, while connecting, can be exhausting and biased, making it an unreliable guide for morality.
Emotional empathy is too narrow and exhausting; it naturally favors people who are similar to us (e.g., same race, ethnicity, situation) and can lead to burnout, rather than promoting broad compassion or rational action to help those in need.
20 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Voluntary Suffering
Intentionally choose activities that involve a degree of suffering, as this voluntary engagement can lead to a more meaningful life and potentially reduce anxiety.
2. Prioritize Meaning Over Happiness
Avoid directly striving for happiness, as this can lead to unhappiness; instead, focus on pursuing a meaningful and good life, allowing happiness to emerge as a natural byproduct.
3. Cultivate a Meaningful Pursuit
Establish a large-scale, long-term meaningful pursuit in your life that you believe will matter, as this is a powerful factor in resilience and thriving.
4. Seek Meaningful Struggle
Understand that a truly meaningful life often involves anxiety, difficulty, struggle, and worry; embrace these challenges as integral to significant pursuits like raising children or starting a business.
5. Develop Cognitive Empathy
Strive to understand what’s going on in other people’s minds and their perspectives, as this form of intelligence is crucial for productive conversation, wisdom, and peace.
6. Cultivate Rational Compassion
Prioritize rational compassion—understanding others’ pain and desiring to help—over emotional empathy, which can be exhausting and lead to burnout.
7. Guide Morality with Rationality
When making moral decisions, use rationality and compassion to guide your actions, rather than relying solely on gut feelings or emotional empathy, which can be biased.
8. Familiarize with Your Mind via Meditation
Practice meditation to open yourself to the ‘whole mess’ of your mind, becoming familiar with your thoughts and emotions to develop a ‘positive dispassion’ and avoid being owned by them.
9. Escape the Self Through Focus
Engage in activities that demand intense focus or physical discomfort, like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or endurance exercise, to temporarily quiet the ’noisy self’ and its worries.
10. Explore Benign Masochism
Engage in mild, controlled forms of pain or discomfort, such as eating spicy foods, watching scary movies, or participating in endurance exercise, to derive pleasure through contrast and control.
11. Utilize Contrast for Pleasure
Recognize that the brain is a ‘difference engine’ that enjoys contrast; allow for negative experiences to enhance the appreciation and pleasure derived from positive ones.
12. Build Discipline Through Difficulty
Engage in challenging activities like sports, arts, or rigorous exercise to cultivate discipline, control, and mastery, which can transfer to other areas of life and foster an appreciation for work and struggle.
13. Accept Diverse Motivations
Recognize and accept that human motivation is pluralistic, encompassing a wide range of desires from altruistic to self-serving, and avoid shaming yourself for having complex motivations.
14. Practice Self-Acceptance
Cultivate ‘self-love’ by becoming comfortable with your own flaws and ‘ugliness,’ as this self-acceptance fosters compassion and reduces judgment towards others.
15. Optimize Your Worry Level
Cultivate an optimal amount of anxiety and rumination to prepare for potential challenges, understanding that while excessive worry is harmful, too little can lead to recklessness.
16. Rehearse Worst-Case Scenarios
Indulge in fiction, such as zombie movies or stories of societal collapse, to safely explore and rehearse responses to worst-case scenarios, satisfying a natural human appetite to explore the negative.
17. Value External Feedback
Remain open to what others think of you, as external feedback can provide valuable insights into your behavior and performance, helping you to adjust and improve.
18. Differentiate Suffering Types
Recognize the difference between chosen suffering (which can offer benefits) and unchosen suffering (which is generally detrimental and not to be sought out).
19. Balance Suffering Consumption
Be mindful not to become so engrossed in consuming stories of suffering for pleasure that you lose sight of the need to actively work towards alleviating real-world unchosen suffering.
20. Avoid Pain for Status
Be cautious of engaging in increasingly extreme forms of self-inflicted pain or difficulty purely for social signaling or to ‘one-up’ others, as this can lead to harmful cycles and physical damage.
7 Key Quotes
Suffering is good in two ways. It could give you pleasure, but it could also give you meaning.
Paul Bloom
The negative is much stronger than the positive.
Paul Bloom
The self is a noisy thing. And it's often just like you get sick of another person. I think you get sick of what's going on in your own head.
Paul Bloom
Trying to be happy is reliably correlated with not being happy, with being depressed, with being anxious.
Paul Bloom
If somebody gives you a one word answer to what do people really want, they're wrong.
Paul Bloom
If you look long enough at your mind, you're going to see Hitler.
Thich Nhat Hanh (quoted by Dan Harris)
If I'm unforgiving of my own selfishness, I'll be unforgiving of yours. But if I appreciate my own and see where it comes from, and I see your selfishness, I say, well, you know, you're just like me, this human.
Paul Bloom
1 Protocols
Seeking Out Benign Masochism and Meaningful Life
Paul Bloom- Read 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to understand flow experiences.
- Find activities that are difficult but not too hard or too easy, where you can lose track of time once you start.
- Read 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl to appreciate the power of a large-scale meaningful pursuit.
- Identify a meaningful pursuit in your life that you have something to live for.
- Do not actively try to be happy, as this is often correlated with unhappiness; instead, pursue a meaningful, good life, and happiness may come as a byproduct.