In order for something to be happy, someone or something needs to suffer, right?

Question

Someone will suffer for your happiness, lets take vegetarians for an example, they will eat veggies in order to fill them up and who or what suffers? The plants people, the plants. Give me an example where this is not the case, and my mind will be at rest.

answer to first question, atheists do, people will look down on them and so will any other wrong religions, and the third question, childbirth, THE MOTHER SUFFERS SO MUCH YA IDIOT! and in marriage, they suffer financially, and do u think that everyone will be happy with the marriage??

answer to fourth question, plants dont suffer then, then, but they die, and ends their life... and they are not a renewable source, for example, if a person smokes, can they smoke the same leaf again? no, they cannot.

Answer 1

In order to exist, I have to eat, ergo, following your logic something has to suffer for me to exist.

But in order to be happy, someone can tell me a joke. Who suffers?
I've felt quite joyful seeing a beautiful sunrise in the morning after knocking off work at 6 am. Who suffers?

I guess it depends if your happiness requires a lot of resources or virtually none... (If I create a joke in my head and laugh to myself, who does that hurt? No one, nothing else involved).

Peace

Answer 2

No. There is no "economy of happiness." Unlike money (of which there is only so much to go around), the amount of happiness in the world is not limited and 'distributed' among the earth's inhabitants. Anyone can have happiness without taking happiness away (in fact, a person is more likely to have happiness while also helping to _give others_ happiness).

P.S. Plants don't "suffer." They feel no physical pain and are a renewable resource. I don't think your example holds up.

P.S.S. You've misconstrued the definition of 'renewable resource.' Plants are not irreplaceably individual in the same manner as humans or even animals, and are not advanced enough to suffer pain like animals. It doesn't matter if the tobacco leaf has "died" and "the same leaf will never grow again." This is an inescapable fact of time; you seem to argue that "everything should always stay the same," which cannot be the case. The tobacco plant has not suffered for human happiness; it has participated in the natural cycle of life and death in which everything on earth - and humans, too - are always trapped. The plant could have either died on its own or provided some brief relaxing moment to the person who smoked it. Another plant with identical characteristics and an identical function in nature will be planted in its place. Food, on the other hand, is a _necessity_, not a happiness. It is not the case that I am happy if I have food, but can live less happily without it if I wish. Without food, no human exists to be happy or unhappy; without sunlight and water, no plant exists. Does the plant cause "suffering" to the sunlight and water? No. Your argument still makes no sense and needs to be re-articulated.

Do you believe other issues regarding animal-population control, such as deer hunting, cause suffering? Should we instead leave the animals to propagate until they overrun and kill off other animal species or experience food shortages, leaving many in the population to starve and/or suffer and die of painful diseases? Hunting brings about less suffering in the long run.

Answer 3

Why do you consider suffering and happiness to be opposites. Maybe they are in fact the same. Sort of like heads and tails. They are "opposites" but in the larger picture they are really the same coin.

In a different, less philisophical answer, there is no such thing as a free lunch. There is always some sort of cost which in some way will cause suffering in some party somewhere.

Answer 4

There are countless examples of happiness without sacrificing another's happiness. Marriage, childbirth, to name a couple. The balance of nature does not apply to happiness.

Answer 5

in this world, yes
because, simply, our desires are infinite while our resources are finite - they pay teachers to teach us that in economics classes :) - and that is why we desire heaven. we want to believe that there is a world other than this where ultimate happiness (i.e. sadness cannot be defined anymore) will be achieved

if there was one thing in this world that was ultimately happy, we wouldn't have had all those fights between the religions of 2day

Answer 6

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The "reaction" is not always bad. So, to answer your question, things don't always suffer when you do something.

Answer 7

Yes. Within the confine of self.

The intention is the key.

If the intention is to make "everyone" happy/benefited, no attachment/expectation for a preconceived outcome, then no one suffers.

Because the intention is pure, benevolent, solely for the benefit of others.

Answer 8

Without unhappiness how could someone possibly know what it really means to be happy. How about if someone finds God or no God and it brings that person happiness? Who or what suffers?

Answer 9

well, I guess you could say that one man's heaven is another man's hell. I would not say that your theory is required to happen in order for happiness to be brought into the world, but I would not put past you that it does not happen.

Answer 10

yes