Thoughts

 Thoughts:

First draft:

Suffering among the ignorant and the free spirits/ brave souls:

There are the ignorant who suffer as deeply as the free spirits, but here we will not look at that, we will rather look at the ignorant who experiences close to no suffering. We can take a look at the most important and difficult question, as demonstrated in my short story: "Traveler, I want to know, what kind of man are you? Tell me: would you rather live a life in eternal ecstacy, dreams and complete ignorance, or a life full of passion, ambition, willpower, love, intensity, curiosity, wonder, thought, meaning, yet also full of suffering, pain, chaos, heartbreak, melancholy, existential despair, cruelty? Would you be Circe's pig or love? Would you follow your nature, or your will?"

Hm, I must admit I have hit this very wall a number of times, a wall hit by a number of philosophers already, a wall even Nietzsche himself feared breaking through. 

The argument:

Firstly, we acknowledge that the ignorant in reality often experience a lot of suffering, but to construct an airtight argument we will assume that the ignorant experience no suffering (like in our earlier dilemma).

Let's differentiate two sorts of pleasures, like Plato, though not in the same sense:

• High pleasure: intense passion, ambition, willpower, emotion, love, intensity, curiosity, wonder, thought, meaning.
• Low pleasure: comfort, sex, sleep, entertainment, shallow emotion and love

Then the components:

• The ignorant: Low pleasures (L), no Suffering (S)
• The brave soul: High pleasures (H) and Low pleasures (L) and Suffering (S)

The equation:

On the grounds that H > L 

H - S > 0

H - S > L

The difference between the brave soul and the ignorant is that the brave soul detracts High pleasure from Suffering, that is in the form of meaning, thought, growth, emotion, wonder, ambition, passion. Thus High pleasure always accompanies Suffering. Suffering for the brave soul (B) is equal to: 

S(B) = S + H(S)

This way the equation ends up like this if High pleasure is indeed equal to Suffering:

If H = S

Then: H - S = 0

But Suffering for the brave soul is S(B) so:

H - S(B) > 0 (=) H - S + H(B) > 0 (=) H(B) > 0

Then we continue to:

H(B) > L

And the answer is yes, because the High pleasures of meaning, thought, growth, emotion, wonder, ambition, passion we detract from suffering are superior the comfort, sex, sleep, entertainment, shallow emotion and love of the Low pleasures. (Which could actually be flatlined in itself, since we brave souls can also experience Low pleasures. H(B) + L > L = H(B) > 0)

This way our argument stands very strong and justifies our search for High pleasures and endurance of Suffering.