This question has haunted us since the dawn of time.
As a child, this confounding question was most likely your first entrance into the confusing, cryptic, and (sometimes) cruel world of humanity.
As an adult, this question is most likely what lurks in the background of your mind as you witness scenes of suffering and misfortune.
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And if you are a deeply philosophical person, this question is probably what keeps you awake at night as you play the role of the “Riddler” trying to solve life’s most puzzling questions.
If you are like me, you might have temporarily found solace in religion, believing that even though good people suffer terribly in this life, they eventually go to heaven or some kind of paradise after death. When this was my primary belief I felt some sort of consolation, some small sense of relief and reprieve from my melancholic ponderings of existence.
But eventually I came to see through the toxic fallacies of religious dogma, sensing deep down that this answer was not enough, despite how much it appealed to my childlike side.
And so began my eternal search for an answer to a seemingly unanswerable question.
Like you, I’ve suffered a lot in this incessant, obsessive quest, believing that inner peace of mind lies just over the other side of “The Answer.” Because of this, happiness has always felt “one step away” which I’ve later discovered is the worst form of self-torture.
But there is great value in this suffering because after you exhaust yourself, after you reach the point of despair, something within you breaks. Something within you changes.
After wearing down the narrow, societally-conditioned frame of thought and reference through which you have been perceiving, questioning and judging the world, it is possible to expand your mind beyond how it has been taught to think.
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I like to think of this as an angry driver raging down the highway. The livid driver’s fury causes him to shoot across the highway like an arrow, rarely deviating and maintaining a straight, narrow path. But once the angry driver has exhausted his reservoir of rage, he begins to slow down, take everything in, and curve his car towards a byroad.
The same can be applied to the question, “Why do good people suffer?” Like the angry driver, it is our first instinct to follow our preconditioned way of thinking and reasoning. For such a question to exist and to continue tormenting us, there must exist the following assumptions:
- There is such a thing as a “good” person in the first place.
- Good people shouldn’t suffer.
- Suffering and pain are one and the same experiences.
In this article, we’ll explore each point in depth.
Is There Such a Thing as a “Good” Person?
Our immediate reaction to the above question might be, “Yes! Of course there is!” We might then proceed to envision people like Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Jesus, and so on. And certainly, these people were kind, compassionate, courageous and generous. But then, were they – or is anyone for that matter – truly “good”?
The problem with our use of language is that it is limiting, divisive, minimizing and simplistic – and it has to be if we are to function efficiently as a society.
How far would we get each day if we were to stop and truly elaborate on the intricate nuances of a person’s character? “She is a generous but slightly neurotic compassionate people-pleaser who has a hint of malice and sensuality in the tone of her voice … yeah, I’d like to get to know her more.” To make things easier, most of us just opt to say, “yeah, she is a good person” instead, because it simplifies life.
The problem with the good/bad duality of language is that it fools us into believing that the world is “black and white”: that a “good” person deserves to be rewarded and a “bad” person deserves to be punished. This dangerous, divisive and two-dimensional way of perceiving the world is what creates so much of our suffering. And when we believe that we are “good” people, it is common for us to develop a sense of entitlement that causes us to believe that we should be exempt from life’s struggles.
However, when some tragedy or misfortune befalls us we cry out in rage or horror, “I’m a GOOD person … I don’t DESERVE to be punished!” This crack in the fabric of our reasoning greatly unsettles us mainly because it shows us that our “Good and Bad” framework of perception is an illusion:
that there is no such thing as a “good” person who is always rewarded and there’s no such thing as a “bad” person who is always punished.
People hate hearing this; it shocks them and offends them greatly. “If there is no such thing as a bad person then who the hell was Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and Mao Zedong? What were they … angels?” Such an argument is understandable and common, but misguided and a product of our black/white, either/or way of reasoning.
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Certainly these dictators and mass murderers were cold, callous, cruel, selfish, wicked and vile, and it would give us great satisfaction to see them severely punished, but the same reasoning we use against them (“they are BAD people”) was used by them against the people they terrorized (“they are BAD, they are not real humans, they are unworthy”).
Thus as Sol pointed out in an article on morality:
Once we’ve morally assessed someone, any form of disdain, or even cruelty, can be rationalized (social alienation, bullying, torture, wars, etc.)
We might think that we are “good” people who deserve the best in life, but then other people might believe we are “bad” people who deserve to be punished. So who is right? Us? Them? Who makes the final judgment and why? Which subjective opinion is more correct? And even if you prove yourself to be a good person, are you really 100% good?
Can you see the problem with dividing the world into a simplistic good/bad framework? It simply doesn’t truthfully represent the full spectrum of what makes us “us” and other people “other” people.
Should Good People Suffer?
As we have just seen, there is no such thing as a “good” and “bad” person because all is a matter of subjective, two-dimensional reasoning.
A priest might be thought of as “good” by us, but “bad” by those he terrorizes and molests. A dictator might be thought of as “bad” by us, but “good” by those he lavishes generously with gifts. So then, the question isn’t, “Should good people suffer?” but:
Why do people suffer?
I am neither a good nor bad person, I am simply a person … but why should I suffer?
But why shouldn’t I suffer?
And:
What exactly do I define as suffering?
Is suffering having something taken away from me that wasn’t mine to begin with like a lover, child, or piece of land? Is suffering undergoing a terminal illness that will destroy a body that isn’t the reality of who I am? Is suffering facing insults, physical abuse or abandonment against an identity that doesn’t represent the truth of “me”? What is suffering?
As we have seen, all of life undergoes processes of demise, death and loss – it is the yin to the yang of birth, growth and gain. A lioness loses her cub in an elephant stampede. A fish is eaten by a shark. A forest is mauled by fire. An ocean is slowly poisoned and polluted.
All of life faces loss and death. Why shouldn’t we experience the same as the rest of life? Why should we be given special treatment? Because we are special? Because we are separate or superior to everything else on this planet?
If you understand the interconnectedness of life your response will be, “No, we aren’t” but then you might hesitate. “But why do we suffer so badly? Can’t it ever stop?”
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Well that depends.
The Difference Between Suffering and Pain
While we can stop our suffering, we can never stop pain because pain is an innate element of life. Birds being eaten by cats experience pain, so do lizards being crushed to death on highways, and any other living, breathing, sensing being on planet earth. But these experiences of pain are momentary and fleeting.
Suffering, however, is a prolonged and often endless experience that is exclusive to us as humans. We suffer because we resist life and cling to that which is transient and subject to change such as people, relationships, promises, personal identities and ideologies.
When we stop clinging to and resisting things, we stop suffering and begin to experience only pain, but a pain that is fleeting and temporary.
Unfortunately we tend to define suffering and pain as one and the same thing, but they aren’t. One is unnatural (suffering) and one is natural (pain); one is a product of the mind and ego (suffering) and one is a product of existence (pain).
So why do people suffer? Because they cling to and resist the natural process of life: namely change, decline, death and pain. People suffer because they believe they have to protect their senses of self against “outside forces” when in fact their senses of “self” are completely illusory constructs of the human mind that smother the true reality of who they are: Life.
If you are Life, how can you suffer? You are unchangeable, boundless, eternal and innately whole. But people lose touch with this and therefore, suffer.
In the end, when we see through the fallacy of concepts such as “good people” and “bad people” and understand that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, our lives are liberated from the eternal riddle of, “Why do good people suffer?” Finally we can take our humble position in the cosmic play of life, understanding that while anything can be taken away from us at any moment, we are already innately Whole.
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Dear Alerheia,I see you are really very/phylosphical person. I will try to understand your thoughts. You are right,there is no black/ white bad/good people,but there is a rainbow. On one side there is extreem/bad person,between mixture of little good/very bad,little bad/very good and another extreme good person. Can I say. my opinion why good people suffer?For this world is.make like that that if you are good,you will have problems in life. Human nature is according to new scientific researches,not sinful/original sin/,not unwritten paper,that means nevtral, but good. Of course,there are different characters,some more good,some more ” bad”. Some are more sensitive,some more rude./you said you are sensitive empath/. Obviously very similar to me,and suffered enormously in my life too. I do not undersrand this things quite well,if human nature is in its essence good,why than so many spoiled,egoistic,exploiting people etc. Ii can only find an answer that human nature is also weak and if we have free willl/that would demand discusion too/,we quickly tend to bad deeds.And so we influence on our children,born good. So what I recognized after my Calvaria? If you invest in developing your soul,/ou will pay for that,because. many people remain on primitive level,and there are… Read more »
Honestly, I do see words and languages as limited to understand the nuances of people’s moral nature beyond black and white. But that is generally solved by just having the patience to use more words, at least longer than the length of one post on Twitter. Words are limited, but often we’re the best we have, unless we’re talented musicians, visual artists, or something of that sort. It’s just people aren’t really patient in taking their time to describe someone in longer and longer paragraphs in their own head. They usually do so by just sticking to a few sentences, phrases, or labels, and that simplifies things. People just need to learn to describe other people and themselves with longer and longer sentences, that don’t just repeat what the last sentences said. That is, the type of attention span of writing or speaking words in your mind that could write an entire book of words to describe something. Though people are awfully bad at speaking and writing even in their own native language, sometimes. I understand if they have some kind of medical deficit that makes it harder, but most average people don’t. People also ought to have the attention… Read more »
This is a great aricle! :-) … So, I’m a “good” person that suffered too much cause of clinging and resistance. Thx mademoiselle! ;-) <3 … As they say, wise innocence, with the emphasis on WISE. :-)
Why is Hitler always mentioned as the archetype of Evil? He is not worse than any other politician in our modern time! Those corrupt leaders and corporate people are destroyed nature, emptying the sea from its natural resources and polluting it with poison. Sea life is in danger and so is the forest and wild life ! All because of GREED ! Then instead of looking at our presence and our current leaders and Elites who are going to take us all down, we still simply evil by scapegoating Hitler!! Isn’t this ironic? ?? As a matter of fact Hitler might be one of the lesser “evil” that existed ! He was not driven by greed but by an ideology of a superior race! And in this strong believe in ideology he killed a couple of hundred thousands people. But this is nothing compared to what is happening now and how many lives are being destroyed by corporate greed!!!!
So true. :-) I’ve gone through many losses in life, and as that quote from a movie goes, “I am still strong. I am still standing.” … Losses may make our lives seem more bare, but they also allow us to get to know our true ourselves – these that nothing essential can be taken away from. :-)
There are simply the wrong questions that can never be answered, and this is most likely one of those questions. If we change it a bit, because basically this is the question of self pity and victim’s stage approach to life, we may come to conclusion that life is not fair, never was and never will be, that we all suffer time after time regardless how good or bad we are. When we keep our vibration high we just miss many small negative things, they don’t bother us at all
but we can’t escape the suffering altogether, life is life… Suffering becomes more like deep thinking when we are not in the victim’s feelings of self pity, we don’t really suffer but we have to surrender to what is happening or accept what has happened. In my opinion – it does not mean to leave it as it is, many times we have to take action and change things that are in our reach (and sometimes we can try to change things that are out of our control and bring at least awareness…) because if nobody cares nothing will ever change ✨
Thank you for this insightful explanation. My very wise, 17 year old son just gave me this very same lesson recently. “Mom don’t take it so personally, you don’t know what’s going on his life.” he said as I was ranting about the rude clerk. I didn’t care what his problem was and felt justified in my reaction, until my son’s words slowly sunk in. I spent the rest of the day asking God for forgiveness and beating myself up for “the illusory constructs of my own mind.”
I realize now that I have slipped back into this way of thinking recently because of I have become hardened by the past few years of traumatic events that left me with PTSD, severe anxiety and depression, mood disorders, and Agoraphobia.