The Catch-22 of Deep Thinking

I’m a deep thinker…duh. I overthink everything, at least according to underthinkers. I like to think that I think the perfect amount, and that most people underthink. But, when you think a lot, you begin to see patterns that others don’t see at first glance. Let me explain with a quick story about my intention to make the world a better place. 

When I became enlightened after an intense mushroom experience, I decided that my purpose in life was to alleviate suffering. I used that purpose as my litmus test as to whether an action I was performing was appropriate. As long as I alleviated suffering, I felt that I was doing the right thing. I started becoming a bit extreme in some of my decisions such as giving up money, wishing to live in a cave in Ecuador, and giving away all of my possessions. I felt great at the time, largely because I felt that I had found a purpose without fault. I mean, who’s pro suffering anyway? 

But the problem with being a deep thinker is that it doesn’t stop there. We never just let something go. We keep scratching and scratching until what we thought was a good idea gets transformed into a terrible idea. 

You see, if I proceed on the premise that suffering is bad, and that alleviating suffering is good, I could conclude that we should avoid punishment and pollution, end torture and enslavement, and end cruel acts altogether. That sounds amazing. But if we push further, we see that life itself contains within its experience some degree of suffering. Every living creature suffers a small amount from time to time - it’s inevitable. To be hungry is to suffer a bit. To be thirsty - a mild degree of suffering. To try to accomplish a task and fail - slight suffering. To be born the runt of the litter and struggle to get milk from your mother - suffering. Everywhere there is life, there will be some suffering. 

So if I really wanted to alleviate suffering, I’d eliminate all life. What’s that you say, that’s insane? Well, since suffering is pain or fear multiplied by time, as long as there are living creatures, there will be suffering. But if we eliminate all life instantaneously - I mean by like a gamma ray burst - then there would be no suffering, because there is no time element. We all recognize that if we’re going to slaughter an animal humanely that it must be quick, why? Because the element of time determines the degree of suffering. So if we can instantaneously, and hence painlessly kill an animal, it is the most humane way to die. Since all living creatures have the ability to suffer at some point in time, if we eliminated all of them instantly, we’d effectively end suffering. 

So that’s where deep thinking gets you. You start with what sounds like a great idea: alleviate suffering, and your logical thinking ends up bringing you to a conclusion that the elimination of all life instantaneously is the solution to this problem. Perhaps I do think too much….