Human suffering


Nature

All human beings experience in varying degrees physical, mental and spiritual afflictions, which are the three facets of human suffering.

Incidence

In Africa, for example, the 1980s was characterized by severe and progressive deterioration in practically all facets of socio-economic development, eroding many of the impressive gains achieved in the previous two decades. The result was human suffering and misery on an unprecedented scale. The unyielding crisis was the consequence of a number of internal and external factors.

Internally there were structural imbalances and weaknesses of national economies and domestic policy failures. The coalescence of these factors allowed persistent differentials between rural and urban areas to continue unabated, giving impetus to massive rural-urban migration, which in turn explains, to a large extent, the low productivity of the rural sector, culminating in severe food crisis and food insecurity. Policies did not adequately respond to the need for employment creation and labour absorption. This situation was exacerbated by national calamities resulting in mass starvation, further exacerbated by civil strife.

Externally, worsening terms of trade, the result of persistent falls in prices for primary commodities, were compounded by an inhospitable international economic environment in which the debt burden escalated. The situation was exacerbated by the widespread implementation of orthodox structural adjustment programmes, with devastating effects on the social sector, especially health, nutrition, education and employment.

Counter claim

  1. The voluntary acceptance of suffering, supernaturally motivated, has a definite place in authentic Christian asceticism, and there can be times and circumstances in which physical suffering is not only implied in the pursuit of Christian perfection but may even be demanded in adherence to basic Christian morality.

  2. Therefore, to suffer and endure is human, and although men may strive in all possible ways, they will never be able by any power or art wholly to banish such tribulations from human life. If any claim they can do this, if they promise the poor in their misery a life free from all sorrow and vexation and filled with repose and perpetual pleasures, they actually impose upon these people and perpetuate a fraud which will ultimately lead to evils greater than the present. (Papal Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, 1891).

Broader

Aggravates

Aggravated by

  1. War
  2. Vulnerability of human organism
  3. Vice
  4. Unsustainable population levels
  5. Structural violence
  6. Socio-cultural environment degradation
  7. Social neglect
  8. Pathologies of civilization
  9. Moral evil
  10. Misdirection of human energies and desires
  11. Malevolence
  12. Lack of protection for the vulnerable
  13. Lack of control
  14. International conflict
  15. Injustice
  16. Inequitable distribution of wealth
  17. Inadequate health services
  18. Inadequate child welfare
  19. Impropriety
  20. Immorality
  21. Ignorance
  22. Human infertility
  23. Human inequality
  24. Human disease and disability
  25. Human death
  26. Human contingency
  27. Global crisis
  28. General obstacles to problem alleviation
  29. Fragmentation
  30. Failure to value suffering
  31. Disintegration of technological capacity
  32. Deteriorating quality of life
  33. Denial of the right to procreate
  34. Denial of right to liberty
  35. Denial of human rights
  36. Crime
  37. Corruption of the good in human nature
  38. Behavioural deterioration
  39. Absurdity
  40. Absence of God


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