The Capacity to Suffer

At one point or another, we all become acquainted with psychological suffering, at some level or another. Anxiety, pain, fear, contempt, anger, and death of a loved one, just to name a few ways humans feel distress. We see these states of being as innate, normal, and ubiquitous across the human race. It is part of the human condition, and we have so much literature, art, and music representing the vast diversity for human suffering. However, it is not a common idea that suffering is something that must have a platform to operate in. In other words, an organism cannot just suffer, without having the ability to suffer first. 

Our type of suffering is different when compared to other species: We have an advanced, unique capacity for suffering. In other words, we suffer beyond physiological pain. We have the mixed blessing of consciousness, which allows for elation, but paradoxically also facilitates emotional distress beyond belief. Most humans would agree that emotional turmoil is its own special type of hell. Our ability to hold memories allows for a complex emotional system. Beautiful blends of grief and arousal, anger and envy, joy and pity, fill every square inch of our life. 

It is ironic that evolution endowed humans with the capacity to suffer in the very specific ways in which I explained. Nature literally forged a biological system that can produce a live model of its surrounding physical world, interact with this world, then also have the capacity to let this same world inflict intangible pain. There has to be a biological infrastructure that allows the organism to feel and experience pain. For example, the mechanisms for anxiety include increased heart rate, out of control thoughts, panic, distress,  a feeling of oblivion, and a sense of doom. Why would nature in its right mind program the capacity to feel doom? What purpose does that serve? 

I am unsure if the capacity for some of these psychological stressors are actually beneficial towards helping organisms survive. This is especially true nowadays were there is little to any life-threating scenarios. We are left with an old infrastructure, that was built for a short-lived, unthoughtful life. 

Who ever said the human experience is the pinnacle of experiences?