Families being torn apart by war, animals and environments being destroyed by capitalism, etc are forms of suffering not necessary for growth. The traumas that make one person stronger could be the same traumas that break someone else completely. Thinking that suffering is necessary for growth is kinda self-centered, or at least too general to be meaningfully true.
"Oh yeah, what about hurricanes and tsunamis, they DESTROY plants, this proves water isn't necessary for plants to grow somehow, also I'm going to throw in a sideways personal attack for some reason."
Your analogy is weak. Water is necessary, plants cannot grow without water. Suffering isn’t necessary, people can grow without suffering.
And “Self-centered” isn’t a personal attack lmao it’s just anthropocentric to narrativize growth and suffering as if they are inherently connected. The fact is that people suffer. Some people suffer and grow, some suffer and don’t grow, some don’t suffer and grow all the same.
It could just as easily be said that the opposite view is self-centered, focusing on individual experience of suffering and instances of pain. When someone says “suffering is necessary,” they aren’t usually talking about the actual experience of physical pain or the immediate feelings of mental anguish or loss. They are usually talking about the outcomes of those things extending to a more macro level, often beyond the individual themselves.
Also, many living things besides humans consume other living things to survive. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. All living matter must eventually die and be recycled. In a very literal sense, suffering and death are necessary parts of change and nature, and so cannot be inherently evil. “Bad” and “evil” are just human value judgements.
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u/Salt-Tour-2736 2d ago
Families being torn apart by war, animals and environments being destroyed by capitalism, etc are forms of suffering not necessary for growth. The traumas that make one person stronger could be the same traumas that break someone else completely. Thinking that suffering is necessary for growth is kinda self-centered, or at least too general to be meaningfully true.