Hi,
About a year ago there was a discussion here originally posted called "why does suffering exist". There is a specific kind of suffering that to me seems like it is in a different category of suffering and shouldn't exist.
I wanted to come to this forum because, since May, after I got my undergrad degree (which took way too long), I have been having this fear of suffocating. I imagine that either I or someone in my family will suffocate. The problem though, is a philosophic one- the question of why suffocation exists has been bothering me more than the fear that it might happen to me. By suffocating I mean any kind of death where you can’t breath. There might have been several not uncommon things in my life that happened that made me have these thoughts but the important thing now is for me to deal with the question.
I have thought about it suffocating from time to time over the past few years but lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot. A couple of years ago I was speaking with a scientist, who does medical research, who is a friend of the family. For some reason the conversation turned into which ways of dieing where painless and which were painful. He said that dieing from not being able to breathe would be terrible. To me it seems like a horrible way to go. I can’t even imagine a worse kind of suffering. About a month ago I decided to hold my breath until I pass out so I would know what it is like. After less than a minute I was in such a hell that I couldn’t hold it any more. I thought that anyone who had to be in that state for 30 seconds more, from when I started breathing again, or minutes more, would be in a situation so painful that it would be other worldly.
I researched this a little bit on google and found out that Kafka had written about a “God of Suffocation”. People who were destined to die of suffocation first needed to communicate with the God of Suffocation so that he could prepare them for what was to come and so that when the time came their pain would be less.
The real problem now is that if this kind of physical and mental anguish exists, it would seem to me that even if only one person in the history of the earth had to live through it, it would make all the other joyful things that have happened in the history of the world not worth it. It would be better not to have a world at all and just to have forever nothingness than to have a world with that kind of pain. Five minutes of the kind of pain that I imagined wouldn’t be worth a billion years of happiness. I can’t think of a single kind of pleasure that would be as euphoric as that kind of “pain” is excruciating.
So my view of the world in this case is that it is like a wedding that has been planned. Even if a wedding was filled with laughter and signing and happiness, would it be worth planning if you knew someone would die horribly at the end of it? It would be better just not to have the wedding in the first place.
The questions “does this kind of suffering exist” and if so “why does it exist” are so important to me because they hold the answer to whether or not the world is worth being and whether or not our lives are worth it. That kind of suffering in the world would be like a little bit of poison in a cup of tea. Mix a small bit of poison in a cup of tea and it would never be worth drinking.
So firstly I want someone’s opinion on the first question which is more of a physiological one- “does this kind of suffering exist” If the answer is yes than the second question, “why does it exist” is a philosophic one.
In regards to the first question, of course I can’t really know what it is like to die of suffocation. Maybe it is not quite as bad as what I imagined. Maybe I also misunderstood Kafka or maybe he is just an eccentric. In cases of drowning, I have heard that when people can no longer stand not being able to breathe, they will naturally start to inhale which will cause them to swallow water and faint, which will stop their pain. Maybe it’s also possible that all people who have died of suffocation first went into shock which killed their pain. It seems though that dieing from lack of air or by having a pillow shoved up to someone's face would be much more torturous. Another obscure idea is that maybe suffocation doesn’t exist because everyone is their own world and how can I or anyone else say for sure what anyone else went through. I hope though, that what I imagined about suffocation never happened within this world or any other world. I have been thinking about this so often lately that I even wanted to see an MD to ask about the physiological aspects of suffocating. If this kind of suffering doesn’t exist than I can be more at piece. Although no kind of suffering is good, any other kind of suffering would be more tolerable to me than suffocation.
Any opinions or advice would be greatly appreciated. This is starting to anguish me. I have tried to tell myself to stop thinking about these things. I succeed for a little while but then they come back to me. I think this is something worth confronting.
Thanks[/i]
