Kids that die young having lived a life of horrors, poverty and suffering don't mesh well with the Stoics viewpoint, nor with the "suffering must exist in order to experience joy" line of thought either.
There are people in this world who live short, unhappy lives entirely as a consequence of things outside their control. Even worse, there are people who live long unhappy lives, again outside their control.
No point of view that argues it's their own fault for wanting things to be otherwise, or that suffering is necessary for joy to exist, is ever going to be satisfying to me.
I mean the Stoics were no strangers to dying kids, dead kids were very much something that happened in the past. Kids surviving into adulthood by default is a consequence of modern medicine, and I'm not sure we're happier for it.
The modern notion that life is supposed to be in a certain way is a big factor. There's a narrative that we' supposed to get married in our twenties, have kids, retire after a long career (a journey ending in management), then die of a heart attack at 72.
A lot of people torment themselves by telling themselves that this is what their life should be.
I know the Stoics were aware of this; I just don't agree with their philosophy.
I think in this conversation we are conflating frustration ("my life isn't the way I would like") with suffering ("my child was ran over by a truck, I have brain cancer, my brother is dying of hunger in a ditch somewhere, I was tortured in a concentration camp, an earthquake killed everyone I loved"). The latter has little, if anything, to do with modern expectations of life. This kind of suffering has no greater meaning and is not necessary at all for joy to exist.
> The modern notion that life is supposed to be in a certain way is a big factor
The ancient Greeks and even older civilizations had all sort of expectations about how life should be. I don't buy at all that suffering is somehow the result of modern expectations.
We created some new forms of suffering and got rid of some older forms. And yet other forms are permanent, outside our control.
> "My child was ran over by a truck, I have brain cancer, my brother is dying of hunger in a ditch somewhere, I was tortured in a concentration camp, an earthquake killed everyone I loved"
Did you begin to suffer from these things when they happened, or when you were told they had happened? If, later, someone came and told you it was a mistake, it was someone else that had suffered all these misfortunes, wouldn't you at that point stop suffering?
If this is true, how can it be that these events in themselves are causing you to suffer?
I'm sorry, your line of thought annoys me. I'll bow out of this conversation before I say something I'll regret.
Good luck telling the parent of a child who died horribly "were you suffering before the doctors told you, or were the doctors themselves the cause of your suffering?".
There are people in this world who live short, unhappy lives entirely as a consequence of things outside their control. Even worse, there are people who live long unhappy lives, again outside their control.
No point of view that argues it's their own fault for wanting things to be otherwise, or that suffering is necessary for joy to exist, is ever going to be satisfying to me.