Human Suffering - Essay Example

Social Suffering As individual, man had known sickness, pain, worry and unhappiness. Plenty have suffered discrimination because of gender, sexuality, appearance, ethnicity or religion. Many have also been victims of crime; natural disasters or traffic accidents. Many, one time or the other have witnesses to the suffering of others (family, friends and colleagues) and unknown individual (beggars on the pavement, disturbed people mumbling on the bus, children abused by their parents in public) (Images of suffering, n.d.). Although these are experienced at personal level, they are by no means comparable to the collective sufferings mankind had endured since the Garden of Eden to the gas chambers of Auschwitz (Lawrence, 1996) until the recent tsunami disaster that hit Asia, making 'social suffering' a part of daily human existence. 'Social suffering' takes in the human cost of war, famine, depression, disease, torture--the whole assemblage of human problems that result from what political, economic, and institutional power does to people--and also human responses to social problems as they are influenced by those forms of power. In the same way that the notion of social suffering breaks down boundaries between specific scholarly disciplines, this cross-disciplinary investigation allows man to see the twentieth century in a new frame, with new emphases (Kleimman et al, 1997). Today, the forces of globalisation have further resulted in various form of social suffering amongst poor countries. For example in Bangladesh, the problems of landlessness, impoverishment and rural out-migration are compounded by environmental hazards and environmental degradation caused by economic development activities (Globalization, n.d.). Although social suffering could be brought about by circumstances beyond the control of man, sad to say, many social sufferings are caused by the fault of man. War, genocide, and environmental exploitation are just a few examples of man-made social sufferings. Social sufferings due to war When it comes to war, the World War II is the most deadly in human history. It was the first time that a number of newly developed technologies, including nuclear weapons, were used against either military or civilian targets. World War II resulted death of more than 60 million people, which is over 3% of the world population at that time. Additionally, many millions more received serious and permanently crippling injuries, such as multiple loss of limbs due to enemy gunfire, bomb or artillery explosions, inhumane experiments, and nuclear fallout. It is estimated to have cost more money and resources than all other wars combined: about 1 trillion US dollars in 1945 (World War II, 2005). Another example of social suffering, the most horrible one, is the Holocaust. Holocaust is the state-sponsored persecution and genocide of various ethnic, religious and political groups during World War II by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Early elements of the Holocaust include the Kristallnacht program and the T-4 Euthanasia Program, progressing to the later use of killing squads and extermination camps in a massive and centrally organised effort to murder every possible member of the populations targeted by the Nazis (Holocaust, 2005). The Jews of Europe were the main victims of the Holocaust in what the Nazis called the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. The commonly used figure for the number of Jewish victims is six million, so much so that the phrase "six million" is now almost universally interpreted as referring to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, though mainstream estimates by historians of the exact number range from five million to over six million (Holocaust, 2005). In addition to the Jews, the Roma and Sinti were targets of the Holocaust; about 220,000 Sinti and Roma died in the Holocaust (some estimates are as high as 800,000), between a quarter to a half of the European population. Other groups deemed "undesirable", especially Poles, Soviet military prisoners of war including Russians and other Slavs, the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, outspoken Lutheran and Catholic clergy, Communists and political dissidents and criminals, were also persecuted and murdered. Taking all these other groups into account, the total death toll rises considerably. Estimates place the total number of Holocaust victims at up to 26 million people, although the number 9 to 11 million is usually held as more reliable (Holocaust, 2005). Famine and poverty Famine and mass starvation has been threatening millions of people across Africa. 39 million people in 19 countries are currently facing incomparable food shortages. These figures are expected to even rise further. In both southern and western regions, unpredictable rainfall, enormous death of livestock and decreased annual harvest has put the weakest of people, mainly children and the elderly, at risk of starvation (Africa, 2005). Comparisons are being made between this famine and the devastating famine of 1984-85. The number of people affected by the food crisis in Africa this time around is far greater. There are hundreds of people who are drifting through barren fields planted with land mines, in countries such as Ethiopia and Malawi, searching for food and water to feed themselves and their families. Despite all of this however, a tiny window of opportunity remains for the outside world to help prevent further deaths by thirst and starvation (Africa, 2005). Rains and crops have failed, drinking water for people and their livestock is scarce, many of their livestock have died or are dying, and malnutrition rates are increasing - yet the peak of the crisis is yet to come. People are in need of immediate food aid and water. There remains a $700 million deficit in the U.N. appeal to supply food to these millions of people. Action is essential before people start dying in large numbers and before television viewers begin to see pictures of skeletal children camped around therapeutic feeding centers (Africa, 2005). Furthermore, in Asia, there are more people with insufficient nutrition; more are living in horrible conditions and more without access to water and sanitation than any other developing region of the world. By number, Asia is home to seven in 10 of humanity's poor-about 700 million people-who subsist on $1 a day or less. Even more people dangle one rung up the socioeconomic ladder, earning just $2 a day per capita. In all, about 1.9 billion Asians live at or below that global poverty line. Asia improverised masses now exceed the region's total population at the end of Worl War II (Wehrfritz et al, 2005). Social sufferings due to natural calamities The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is one of the horrible examples of social sufferings brought about by natural disasters. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake also known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) on December 26, 2004. According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake and its tsunami killed more than 283,100 people, making it one of the deadliest disasters in modern history. The disaster is known in Asia and the media as the Asian Tsunami and also known in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom as the Boxing Day Tsunami because it took place on Boxing Day, though it was still Christmas Day in the Western Hemisphere when the disaster struck (Tsunami, 2005). Social sufferings and mass media The main distinction between social sufferings of the past and that of today is the presence of mass media. Since the Second World War, most people in most Western democracies have not lived in worlds of mass suffering and public atrocities. Man knows these worlds only through mediated knowledge. Information has passed through multiple layers of filtering, representation and interpretation by the mass media, humanitarian organizations, political discourse, high art and mass culture, history and social science before it reaches the knowing eye. The mass media and humanitarian organisations and their shared links to denial, especially through the thesis of compassion fatigue'. The mass media have a near monopoly in creating the cultural imagery of suffering and atrocities. Television is the primary channel through which the agonies of distant others reach the consciences of the more privileged, safe and comfortable (Images of suffering, n.d.). However, its selectivity, promiscuity and short attention time span, make viewers into voyeurs of the suffering of others, tourists amidst their landscapes of anguish'. Man knows nothing worthwhile about the cumulative effect of media imagery. Research deals more with the earlier stages: how events are initially selected and presented. The media scan events and places, decide what constitutes news', filter and frame the issues, contextualise the problem and set the political agenda. The selection of news about suffering and atrocities fits the classic formula: the media do not tell its viewers what to think, but they do tell its viewers what to think about. As news and popular culture become more globalised, so the format of this what' (down to the verbal inflections of the CNN reporter) has become more homogeneous. Thus, human suffering becomes a commodity to be worked on and recast (Images of suffering, 2005). Sociology and social sufferings Nowadays, social suffering has been receiving greater attention from sociological communities than ever before. Anthropologists, historians, literary theorists, social medicine experts, and scholars engaged in the study of religion join together to investigate the cultural representations, collective experiences, and professional and popular appropriations of human suffering in the world today (Kleimman et al, 1997). The attention 'social suffering' is receiving from various study groups is very relevant and appropriate although already long overdue. Research on 'social suffering' has the ability to make a deep and enduring contribution to the reformulation of man's intellectual and ethical concerns. The effort to provide a better account of what actually happens to people 'in' suffering is not only understood to reflect a moral demand to reinterpret the meaning of modern history, but also, a concern to 'humanise' the ways man relate to one another as global citizens (Wilkinson, 2005). In dwelling on what suffering does to people, and by developing new ways of thinking with the pain and distress of embodied experience, man might one day come in a position to radically reappraise the moral and political value of contemporary social science (Wilkinson, 2005). Moreover, a sociological study of human suffering can contribute to the formulation of a more conceptually comprehensive account of the social meaning of risk, it also provides a vantage point from which to bring critical questions of morality and politics to bear upon the forms of discourse and terminology by which sociologists are inclined to represent the lived reality of human affliction, tragedy and loss (Wilkinson, 2005). Efforts are already underway to build more elaborated sociological theories of the ways in which the experience of suffering comprises social consciousness as a phenomenon 'without meaning' and 'devoid of moral purpose' (Wilkinson 2004). Accordingly, it may be possible for man to identify the social and cultural conditions under which people are most likely to encounter suffering as 'meaningless' and as a matter that stands radically opposed to moral sensibility. There is mounting sociological and medical evidence to suggest that man's sensitivity towards pain is diminished by the influences of social perception and cultural experience (qtd. From Wilkinson, 2005). An increasing number of researchers are led to study the extent to which the social dynamics of cultural reproduction and exchange are implicated within the development of a shared imagination for the suffering of others and the force of humanitarian moral sentiment (Boltanski 1999; Tester 2001; Wilkinson 2004: 108-56; Wilkinson, 2005). Until man finds a way of toppling the obstacles that sequesters mass suffering in other regions of the world from the comfort and safety he enjoy away its devastation, little will be done to get the attention of the political or professional leaders as well as his own. Domestic calm encourages separation from real foreign social sufferings. Past episodes of catastrophe have taught man how difficult it is for the distress of others to disrupt the calm rhythms of his daily life. Man may be horror-struck by the chaos that starvation and civil strife inflict on victims in foreign places like Somalia or Sarajevo, but to be horror-struck is a frugal form of charity. We need a new kind of discourse to disturb his collective consciousness and swirl it into action that moves beyond mere pity (Lawrence, 1996). Reference List Africa [online]. (2005). Available from: [Dec. 29, 2005]. Boltanski, L. (1999) Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press Globalization, Environmental Crisis and Social Change: A Case Study of Bangladesh [online]. (n.d.). Available from [Dec. 29, 2005} Images of suffering [online]. (n.d.). Polity.co.uk. Available from :< www.polity.co. uk/FoM/007.pdf> [Dec. 29, 2005]. Kleinman, Arthur. Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, editors (1997). Social Suffering Lawrence, Langar. L. (1996). The alarmed vision: Social suffering and holocaust atrocity [online]. Daedalus. Available from:http://www.findarticles.com/p/ articles/mi_qa3671/is_199601/ai_n8754915 [Dec. 29, 2005]. The Holocaust [online]. (2005). Available from [Dec. 29, 2005]. Tester, K. (2001) Compassion, Morality and the Media, Buckingham: Open University Press Tsunami [online]. (2005). Available from [Dec. 29, 2005]. Wehrfritz, George, Joe Cochrane, and Jonathan Ansfield. (2005). Continental Devide. Newsweek, Nov. 21, p.42. Wilkinson, Iain. (2005). From the Sociology of Risk to a Critical Sociology of Suffering. University of Kent. Available from: [Dec. 29, 2005}. Wilkinson, I (2004) Suffering: A Sociological Introduction, Cambridge: Polity World War II [online]. (20050. Available from [Dec. 29, 2005]. Read More