the most playful of all creatures

Suffering is the true religion. It is everywhere: suffering and its imitation. If you suffer, you are virtuous; if you do not suffer, you cause offence and are disrespectful.

One suffers for love, whether materially, spiritually, intellectually or physically. Everything is suffering. And wealth is a form of suffering. One suffers from the very earliest childhood. Suffering is preserved and passed down to you, with sanctity, from previous generations. It is a virtue: ‘Christ suffered for us’... and here you must be sorrowful, putting on a face that reveals your pain and your unwavering, steadfast concern in the name of suffering. Your mother suffered, your father suffered, your grandparents… everyone, for goodness’ sake! It is a business, an act of faith, a way of being.

Suffering is so thoroughly woven and structured into and amongst your emotional and mental layers – into your very energy – that you can scarcely see things any other way than through the lens of suffering. Everything is suffering, pain, grief, sadness.

Not even wealth is an exception. The rich are sad. They surround themselves with the sadness of others and inflict it upon them. They relish hierarchy and the subservience of others, for it offers them comfort and solace in their own insignificance. Their primary concern is the sadness of their fellow human beings: how to make them suffer, how to torment and keep them in a state of sadness. They flee from their own suffering by inflicting it on other people, because they have the means to do so!

Everyone makes a point of making one another suffer. It is a global pastime. Suffering, pain and sadness lie at the very core of every honourable and formidable citizen.

Joy has become a sin. It provokes fear. Sadness is comforting. Cheerfulness is even deadly for some – it is reprehensible, disrespectful and lacking in common sense.

If you dance, laugh, are joyful and lovingly – you are mad, mentally ill and alienated. If you crawl on your knees for kilometres, kiss relics; if you revel in illness and condemn others to pain through your suffering – then you are healthy, normal and moral.

Suffering, sadness and a frown make you special, interesting, attractive, full of potential. There is also a certain elegance to sadness. You cannot simply suffer – you must have class, prestige, stature; you must even be chic. And, above all, you must follow tradition. You can go through life with your head held high only if you suffer in the right way. Then you are a hero, a role model. Some are rewarded for inflicting suffering, pain, sadness and death: they are the criminals, the torturers and the state-paid thugs – they are ‘happy’ when they inflict trauma and death upon you; this excites them, satisfies them; they take pleasure in following orders, ‘the law’, and in not being held accountable. It is the hormone of delegating responsibility for any atrocity – it is the hormone of stupidity and arrogance.

Sadness, suffering, pain and gloom have ranks, uniforms, decorations and hierarchies – they are extremely well organised; otherwise they would not survive, nor would they perpetuate themselves with such skill.

Suffering is cultivated; it is subtle and has its nuances. Its subtlety lies in the fact that you do not even realise you are suffering, and above all in the fact that you do not know why you are suffering. It is a culture of suffering. The absence of suffering provokes fear; it is a sign of inculture – because it is absolutely unimaginable not to know why and for what purpose your ancestors suffered, and above all not to suffer just as they did, or even more fiercely than they did!

Suffering is handed to you on a plate from a very young age: the priest offers you the suffering of Christ; your grandparents boast of the crimes they committed during the war or the traumas of the dictatorship they endured; illness and wallowing in illness, pain and sadness are seen as signs of naturalness, of normality, of the comfort of being ‘human’ and part of ‘living together’ with other sufferers.

Sometimes those who cause another’s suffering are condemned – but that is only half the story, because the ‘victim’ themselves is also part of the process, of this dynamic. It is not only the ‘aggressor’ who bears the blame, but also the ‘victim’, because in many cases the victim has indulged in the suffering and the aggression, thereby perpetuating the entire scenario and the vicious circle. That is why, very often, the punishment should be shared equally between these two companions in pain. The aggressor suffers too, perhaps even more than the victim – otherwise they would not have resorted to this desperate act. Aggression is a sign of suffering somatised on a psychological level, and even on a physical level – it is not a sign of superiority or power, but a sign of decline, a result of collapse, a sign of being overwhelmed. And it is the victim who bears this shared burden – the victim takes on the burden carried by the aggressor – and, by indulging in the role of victim, absolves the aggressor himself of responsibility. Remaining in a state of victimhood, of powerlessness, is not a sign of strength, heroism or virtue – but of weakness and a lack of self-respect – and this small-mindedness sometimes even becomes arrogant and full of self-importance! The victim themselves is a figure to be admired, emulated, praised and loved – they are an ideal.

Pleasure has become guilt; cheerfulness is condemned – if you are in a state of undisguised joy, you must surely have something to hide or a motive, a selfish one, of course! If you suffer, if you are constantly in pain, then you are selfless, you are accepted, because you share – and give of yourself through – the same ideals as/with everyone else – and you do not simply rejoice, alone, apart and in secret, in your own happiness and pleasure...

The more you participate in collective suffering, the better you are regarded – and this aberration is seen as a good deed, as health, as natural, as participation in the common good. This common good means: illness, death, wars, poverty, fear, struggle, the constant search for the hidden threat and enemy.