The Cohen Brothers and The Book of Job (spoiler)

crowny2 -

Jimminy Crickets Don.  This is a Friday.  You aren't supposed to bring up this kind of stuff on a Friday. 

dontracy - 2009-11-20 11:27 AM

Maybe Jimminy Cricket and the role our conscience plays in being our moral guide is a good subject for next Friday.

dontracy - 2009-11-20 12:15 PM

Anybody see the new Cohen Brothers film A Serious Man?

I haven't, but I'm looking forward to it.

Saw an interesting review that compares it to the Book of Job.

Seems like we're living in a time when many people are suffering in ways that are like Job.  Lots of bad things happening to lots of good people. 

Raises some interesting questions.

Is there meaning to suffering?

Can there be a good God in a world that contains evil?

Do we receive in equal measure to what we pour out? In other words, is there such a thing as Karma. I'm not clear that the way the notion of Karma is used these days is actually rooted in Buddhism, but I trust you know what I mean. If you do something bad, does that mean that it will come back to bite you later because of Karma. Equally if something bad happens to you, is it because you did something bad to deserve.

What do you think?

 

ChrisM - 2009-11-20 12:51 PM Coen bros.

gearboy - 2009-11-20 12:34 PM Hey - I'll take a stab at this one!  I tend to be somewhat of an existentialist - I don't believe there is some secret meaning to life or the world.  But whatever meaning we decide to project is what we end up with.  So does suffering have meaning?  IMHO, not necessarily.  But we can, as thinking and rational beings, imbue our suffering with meaning.  So for me, if one decides there is import in their suffering, they can make it have meaning.  I think, for example, of people who use altruistic defenses.  The couple at my hospital who run the SIDS support group lost a child to SIDS many years ago.  I can barely imagine a greater loss, or suffering than losing a child.  But the meaning that they have put on it is to offer supports to others who undergo similar tragedy, in a way that people outside such events cannot.

I tend to have more or less a non-opinion about the relevance or existance of God or gods.  As I see things, if there is a prime-mover, creator god, once things got set in motion, there is no further need for intervention, and so such a god (if there is a consciousness associated with him/her/it) simply sits and watches things unfold.  I can equally imagine a sort of animism, where the overall effect of things is akin to a spirit or consciousness - for example, I often can count on the "gods of the keeping my inpatient unit full" keeping me busy.  I have no idea how to propitiate them to reduce the work load, or spread things out.  I assume sometimes they are angry at me, and I come in to find 4-5 new admissions, and sometimes that they are happy and I can just work with the patients I already know.  (I am sort of joking about their existence, but I can absolutely see how a society would develop a more codified view of such gods). In any event, such a god, if one or more exists, would have nothing to do with the presence/absence/nature of good and evil.

In addition to my existential philosophy, I find buddhist thought makes the most sense as an organizing principle for my life (I guess I'm just another Jew-bu).  I don't really believe in karma as a sort of balance that actually metes out good for good or bad for bad (or at least, no more than I believe in the gods of inpatient services, or the gods of call - who used to routinely torture me with bad nights of call).  Rather I think that there are two things that more or less create the illusion of karma.  First, if I do bad things, I make the world a worse place to live.  So eventually it is more likely bad things will happen to me.  If I do good things, and make the world a better place, the odds are better that good things will also be happening around and to me. Secondly, and this speaks to the nature of optimism and pessimism, if I am by nature a negative person, I am likely to be focused and aware of negative things much more (this is supported by psychological studies, btw). So I keep doing negative things, and focusing on the negative that comes my way, supporting a karmic view of bad producing bad.  If I am more upbeat, I can re-frame things in a more positive way, and also dismiss the negative more. 

Interestingly, one of the principles of cognitive therapy is to learn to reframe thinking.  But it turns out that happy upbeat people actually distort reality more than (mildly) depressed people.  So they don't let things get to them as much, and feel happier.  Personally, I find that as I get older, it is easier to let things go.  I also take a more experiential approach to bad things and suffering - that I will allow myself to experience a full range of emotions but not let them define me long term.  Perhaps because nothing truly horrible has happened to me beyond the usual losses of loved ones I can do this, so I wouldn't presume to say to someone who has had extreme tragedy (as above) that they should embrace the pain and suffering for it's own sake.  But I do know that emotions wax and wane, and that how we think about things affects us in many ways.

The one thing I would say about the view of karma that you laid out is that saying bad things happen to those who deserve them is really a "blame the victim" approach.  When a friend from my residency got breast cancer, for example, I wouldn't think "wow, she must have done something bad to have that happen to her".  Or conversely, I don't believe that people who do very well in life must be very good people (usually I believe the opposite  - behind every great fortune is a great crime, as the Balzac said...)