how can anyone enjoy while others suffer?

Question

I mean literally, while we watch tv and complain about how there is nothing on, others are working harder than we ever will to produce a mere dollar or less.

Answer 1

By ignorance. . . happy ignorance.

The fact of the matter is that you have to enjoy life while others are suffering. And if you are a decent type person invite them to join you

Answer 2

There is an ethical position of zero escalation I try to use that keeps all actions separate in one context. So if you kill someone in self defense you still murder. It most closely relates to a view of "what the light shines on." By the same idea you do deserve happiness even when someone else it unhappy. The self defense example is the worst, it is also rare. What this implies is there is no justification, only decisions for which we are responsible for making. Justification is mostly magical anyway. How do you take someone's action and make it equivalent to another action? Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind."

You must therefore go deeper and see if there is anything you are doing to promote unhappiness. I know a factory where MP3 players are made in China and I know they are paid $10 each month plus room and board. To me this works out as slavery and I think we act immorally by having normal trade relations with China. So I am obligated to do all that I can. But my portion of responsibility is still very small. The injustice is not limited to the Chinese labor, we cannot compete with slave labor and environmental pollution so infrastructure leaves western economies and goes East. So you are paying for this benefit and I am sure it will hurt at some point. So enjoy, act morally and try to do something.

Answer 3

Enjoyment, suffering...

suffering is embracing pain as your identity, your definition...so when you suffer, unfortunately it feels of equal value as any other suffering (not your actual pain, but the suffering).

On a lower level... consider:

I have been through both a divorce, and Hurricane Katrina hit my home ground zero. Which hurt worse? The divorce. When something hurts and it is personal, intimate, it is far more painful than mass, impersonal, or non-intimate suffering. The hurricane didn't hate or reject me. Rejection vs generic loss.

Now, I am not justifying ill-treatment of laborers or anything else, but... if you are not satisfied, and it upsets you, then for you, your suffering is valid...at the same time, one must think about workers toiling away for minute compensation- do they perceive it as injust or painful? or are they overjoyed to have something for themselves, their community and their family? would that be suffering then?

Suffering is relative, and a choice for us to experience or not.

I have seen many die and suffer first hand, and felt/experienced my own quite a bit, but if you are distressed or unhappy with what is on TV (as an example), it means the same thing to me as my own feelings.

It is also a sliding scale, suffering can only be understood within our own selves by using what we have already experienced. When I was 11, I was an obsessive Star Trek viewer. Cut me off from it (then) and it was the end of the world- agony to my mind's understanding back then. Now as an adult, that suffering has been placed into perspective- but it still hurt like heck when I felt it, worse in fact than evacuation from my home did (as an adult); again, think in experience and relative scale.

Suffering also brings us to a point in life that we embrace most everything as joyful- suffering is the shadow that is cast, showing us the difference between light and dark. If everything was light, we would have no concept of happiness.

So, think back to the feeling of finding nothing on TV when that was what you wanted the most, and the aimless void feeling that springs from having your desire crushed (in this case, desire to view TV) and you do understand suffering, and it too, is valid; just remember that unhappy feeling when you finally do find something you want to see, and from that understanding embrace every moment of bliss that arises from finding your desire fulfilled (albeit momentarily from a TV show), and enjoy it to the fullest.

Answer 4

Our egocentricity is a blanket that shields us...without it, we couldn't exist; we'd just wander around like raw nerves suffering constantly on behalf of others.

Answer 5

And.......................................................
There are 24 time zones on Earth. Just because I'm in the snowing really enjoying myself does that mean I really shouldn't because some one, some where else on Earth, has just lost a loved one and is devastated over it............... or someone in a desert in Africa is starving due to malnutrition.....

Answer 6

Because if you suffer with them, you can't help them.

Answer 7

so donate your money to them.