reframing dissatisfaction

A central question in being human is what to do with dissatisfaction. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but the best strategy is usually a blend of finding satisfaction when it's possible and practicing patience when it's not immediately available. I might not always be able to directly scratch the actual itch I'm feeling, but I can always find something that provides some degree of satisfaction. If satisfaction is elusive, I might need to shift my focus, dig deeper, or go further.

Potential satisfactions might be right under my nose, or I might need to put some effort into breaking out of whatever it is that is limiting my search. There is a good chance that I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be. Human beings are more intellectually and psychologically complicated than other animals. Our power of imagination can be an affliction as well as an asset. Sometimes our restlessness is of our own making. We often don't really know what we want, or what we want is incapable of providing any actual satisfaction.

Distinctively human attributes have enabled us to enjoy significant success in the Darwinian survival game, but they can also create problems for us. It is possible to have an overly gloomy view of this. The Christian doctrine of original sin is not the only example of that. A thoroughly secular and objective assessment of the human capacity to do great harm to other living things, to each other, and to ourselves can easily lead to the belief that the planet would be better off without us. However, since eliminating the human menace through collective suicide doesn't feel like a very good solution, we are morally obligated to do what we can to improve the situation. But how do we do that?

Some would say that our only hope is divine intervention. They might argue that the main problem is that society has moved away from God and from traditional morality, even though there is no chance of ever finding agreement on just what society returning to God and to traditional morality would even look like. Or they might believe that the best path is to hasten the apocalypse. Thus increasing the likelihood of human demise through nuclear annihilation or radical climate change seems like a good idea to them. For the rest of us though, such talk leads away from rather than toward an actual solution.

There is a reason that society has become increasingly secular in modern times. As the world has grown smaller and cultures are bumping up against each other, often leading to pointless and devastating wars, it has become more and more clear that the global public arena needs to be a space that is judiciously neutral with regard to religion and matters of private morality. That doesn't mean that society would become amoral. It is just that we make a distinction between, on the one hand, morality that is in the public interest (like "thou shalt not kill") and, on the other hand, morality that falls strictly into the realm of personal values.

What we have in common with each other is our humanity. That has to be the basis of public morality, and while some don't have a lot of confidence in the human capacity for good, it is our only hope. Only if we are able to feel empathy and act compassionately can we make any progress toward peace and general wellbeing. It is also the most reliable way to still our restless hearts, since much of our dissatisfaction is caused directly and indirectly by our repressed awareness of troubling realities. We can't solve the problem of human suffering, but we can each find what is in our hearts that can contribute to its mitigation.