Life is different for those who cannot permit certain comforts and pecuniary coercion makes the vulnerable more vulnerable. From a professional perspective, people seek spiritual health with the greatest eagerness.
After surviving two world wars, the Jewish French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas expressed that we can understand another’s suffering when we reflect ourselves upon the recognisable human face of the other.
The keloid scars of torture on a migrant’s back coming from Libya, the moans of people with dementia, the downtrodden’s pleas and the dispossessed’s haggard appearance are not random acts. They invite witnesses to acknowledge the sufferer and provide a moment of comfort.
Why should we care about people on a boat in the middle of the sea, the unborn at risk and those in pain who feel trapped? Suffering is defined by the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Bioethics as “a specific state of severe distress induced by the loss of integrity, intactness, cohesiveness, or wholeness of the person, or by a threat that the person believes will result in the dissolution of his or her integrity”.
Recent events have confirmed that society can also suffer from a threat to its integrity. A sense of collective remorse and guilt pervaded New York City after the fall of the Twin Towers, accompanied by nostalgia and anxiety. Maltese society experienced similar feelings following the deaths of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Jean-Paul Sofia and Paulina Dembska. And proposed legal amendments to the protection status of the child in utero sparked thousands of protestors to demonstrate in December 2022.
While society may value less the suffering of those that do not have a cultural or communal relationship with them, this does not make one less human than another.
When suffering is exposed to the eyes of the onlookers, something stirs inside them. The suffering state makes them reflect on their individual dignity and integrity, making them feel vulnerable.
Society can also suffer from a threat to its integrity- Ian Baldacchino
For those sinking to the deepest point of suffering, it is the moment they need people the most to acknowledge and assuage them. In the community, I have seen faces light up simply by asking people about their appearance and problems.
An acquaintance would point to the cross and tell me that showing Christ’s figure was inappropriate for young children, especially during Easter. One might ask why the object of our love and devotion is nailed to a cross.
In Night by Ellie Wiesel, the Jewish protagonist Eliezer loses faith in God while experiencing the atrocities and suffering in a concentration camp with his father.
When a Nazi guard hangs a child, another prisoner asks where is God at that moment. Eliezer internally says: “Here he is – he is hanging here on the gallows.” He feels the spirit of self-preservation as the dominant principle in his life after this experience.
When they escape, he identifies as the master of his universe but the helplessness before his rabbi father’s piteous state on his deathbed stirs him into a prayer, asking God to give him strength.
He realises his limitations and that the evil he endured and witnessed at the hands of the Nazis could make people commit the most heinous criminal acts to satisfy their basic instincts.
“One day, when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”
Uninvited life events may lead to negative experiences, making us suffer by questioning our existential integrity after losing our previous persona. The ensuing uncertainty, loss of autonomy and sense of injustice make sufferers and witnesses feel vulnerable.
A transformative period of spiritual growth or regression makes sufferers, and their witnesses, go through stages similar to grief. Responses may be acceptance, denial, bargaining, anger and depression.
Eliezer finally realised he was dead and needed help to rediscover what he had lost.
Ian Baldacchino is a doctor and a council member of the Medical Council Malta.