"If desire is suffering, then is love noble?"

a Student, after a 2-hour discussion on the resolution, "Suffering is a requisite to nobility."

Let's talk extremes. The debate mainly focused around the definitions and historical examples and then redefinitions of "suffering" and "nobility," the latter being near impossible to agree upon. A generally agreed definition of suffering was that it is the cause of tension between what is, and what one wants it to be. Whether it was inadvertently imposed, or voluntarily assumed, suffering is itself because there's the discrepancy.

So, desire is suffering.

But then is love noble? Love that is realized and progressed, is it noble? It is certainly beautiful. Perhaps noble, depending on its longevity or difficulty in achieving it. But our general votes for nobility would go towards the other possibility in the following.

Love that is never realized, but tamed its desire in the name of love and accepted the impossibility of realization- is it noble? Love not just romantic, but for humanity or for a subject: if one has failed to bring the change to the world that one wanted to, or if one has not fully come into terms with a subject or created progressed on it, is that noble? Is failure, noble? Because it suffers more but has come into terms with it? It certainly is not despicable just because it could not achieve it; it would be more despicable if one forced it to work.

So suffering seems quite noble. Love, up to you.

Whatever the case, nobility does not console the suffering.


Mothagesso.