We concluded in a previous article that thinking is a disease. Today we take that statement a bit further.
In Take Arms Against A Sea of Troubles, Harold Bloom made the following observations:
‘The only thinking personality in Paradise Lost is Satan’s. Like Hamlet, he thinks by relentless self-questioning... Suffering is far more memorable than pleasure. In Satan, as in Hamlet, thinking is suffering.’
To think is to suffer, but should this come as a surprise? In Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung suggested that ‘the early origins of man’s capacity to reflect [may have] come from the painful consequences of violent emotional clashes.’ In simple terms, sensations of unbearable agony may have been the cause of consciousness.
If this theory is true, it follows that there can be no consciousness without pain, and so no thinking without suffering.
Brilliant !