Episode 233 - The Most Real Things

Is Love & Truth More Real Than Pain & Suffering?

In Buddhism, it’s said that “life is suffering”. Though some Stoics may argue that this is not the Stoic view on life, it does seem to be unequivocally true that the philosophy of Stoicism exists because of that very fact – that life is suffering. Stoicism, like all philosophies, only exists because we must contend with that fact. Suffering, then, they seem like the most real thing, and that position could certainly be well-argued. But then the question becomes: if a philosophy is able to successfully transcend the suffering that is life, then wouldn’t that make the tenets of that philosophy even more real than suffering itself?

Episode Notes

Let’s take a naturalistic look at history. Our best theory at the moment for how we came into being is evolution. That is, life was created on earth as single-celled organisms and through the challenges of life, some survived and others did not. The ones that survived had some genetic advantage, which could have been completely random, while the ones that did not survive had some disadvantages. Of course, the ones that survived passed on their genes to the next generation.

Over billions of years, some of these single-celled organisms evolved into multi-celled organisms, and eventually, into mammals and then into us, human beings. With the evolution of human beings came the evolution of the rational mind, that’s your neocortex, which comprises the higher functions of our brains – perception, emotion, and cognition.