What is Mankind's Suffering?

“What is mankind’s suffering?”

There is an immense peculiarity in mankind's perpetuation of pain. Although obsessive, it is the fault of the entire cohort rather than an individual failing. The notion that pain is an absolute necessity in creating “Great Artworks” creates a false precedent that has dangerous consequences.

The romanticizing of unfortunate circumstances such as poverty, misogyny, racism, injustice, and several others has led to a sort of ‘Normalization Culture.’ Not only does this inexplicitly imply that all such conditions aren't to be refuted or questioned, but it also breeds inequality in the name of art.

Brilliant musings being simplified to a catharsis of misfortune is a redundancy of art.

There is poetry everywhere: in the silent dripping of water droplets from the roof, gushing winds in a storm, breathless ocean waves, uncontrollable ecstasy, fervent desires, unyielding melancholy, haunting grief, and joyful epiphanies. To reduce it to one emotion is a shortcoming to one’s understanding of artistic pursuits.

Great literary scholars themselves were under the presumption that their best work arose from deep suffering. To the excessive point where many of them would choose not to forgo their pain to continue writing soul-stirring works. But why did they write? Poetry, literature, and song serve as an exceptional escape from the sorrowful trenches of reality, but perhaps they are too exceptional? Perhaps the solution to their worldly problems was less alluring than the utopian universe they created in their works. Certain melancholic works have a recognition of their state, with glimmers of hope and recollection of better times. This, in ways, can be interpreted as an ‘Expectancy of Happiness’ rather than a result of torment.

Yet, I concede an attribute in their favor. I reiterate that agony is not a requisite to extraordinary art, but art in many ways is desideratum for agony itself. There is a desperation for an outlet when in anguish, a need to pour out all of the heart's torment. Glee, Ecstasy, and Desires have the luxury to seek comfort from the world; feeding off of its mysterious ways, but not pain. “Misery loves company,” a yearning to seek solace in the solidarity of misery. This characteristic, I admit, is unique to pain alone.

When thinking of the grander picture, anyone worth their salt observes a world- plagued by sorrow. Destruction seeping through narrow tunnels and trickling into homes from broken sink pipes. Epochs only ever unfurled more chaos. With every new complexity thundering against order, the flickering lights of joy were bound to lose the time war.

Mankind has normalized this contagion and has left the responsibility of happiness to an individual’s strength. In this uneven reality, stories of exuberance were bound to be forgotten. Lost amid a billion cries, extinguishing the flames of sea glass speckled in the perpetual sand. Hymns of abandonment have prevailed and songs of Euphoria have been abandoned. After all, the corpses of the underworld heavily outnumber the gods in heaven.

The word of mouth carried tales of sadness and glorified the wars won. In this, it forgot, the sweet lullabies that rock a babe to sleep, the chords that tug at one's heartstrings, and the brushstrokes that gave life to Arcadia. We have tried to destroy all that is good just to feel it again, burnt the library of Alexandria and have worked for centuries trying to restore it, created happiness to tear it apart and remember it again, and gave birth to knowledge to live as fools searching for wisdom. We have faded away the coruscating sun searching for the faint dazzle of a rainbow.

What is mankind’s suffering if not mankind itself?