The Distribution of Misery
The capacity to suffer is, clearly, a part of being human. — Paul Farmer (50)
The ability to address the systematic issues and larger social matrix, structures and conditions are very crucial among societies if we are to truly understand each other’s suffering and apply it to our own context. Farmer explained and quoted from Scheper-Hughes’s description of the anthropology of suffering as “a new kind of theodicy, a cultural inquiry into the ways that people attempt to explain the presence of pain, affliction, and evil in the world”. This quote explains how the power of sharing information can be crucial to expand our knowledge of understanding suffrage everywhere. However, though reading about Acephie’s and Chou chou’s stories moved me, it must have been a completely different experience having to witness the effects of their mistreatment; and learning from their stories that the military, which was meant to protect and care for their people, instead is exploiting their power to take advantage of men and women and their vulnerability. If more of us were able to experience the way Farmer did, we will be able to “bear witness” as Farmer claimed that “ ‘bearing witness’, like ‘solidarity’ and ‘compassion’… captures ways of knowing… in forms of silence… on behalf of others” (Farmer 28). Thus, knowledge of such suffering will allow us look outside of ourselves and within others to make sense of their suffering; and imagine the bigger picture and what may be causing it.
If we can understand that and what causes it, we can devise a plan to fix it.
Being open and listening to other stories and the concept of structural violence will be very important in my community partner experience because it will allow those, whom I am listening to, to relieve their stress by expressing their fears and insecurities or share their aspirations by talking about their dreams and memorable moments to me. At the same time, it will allow me to put myself into their perception of reality for both the women and children and understand that their experiences can be equally as strenuous as my own. As the title says, and as weird as it sounds, distributing the misery between individuals and groups of people who are willing to come together and discuss issues and find resolutions will allow all of us to bear witness to each other’s experiences and help each other find closure over issues that might have taken longer to resolve by ourselves or not have been resolved at all, if we had not worked together to solve it. With that knowledge and being able to bear witness to these issues, I can try and experiment with simple tasks and goals in my own life to hopefully relieve some stress for others around me.
