Suffering

Pain is a distressing sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage."

distressing thought or behavior pattern

thumb|upright=1.1|Captured Viet Cong soldier, blindfolded and tied in a [[stress position by American forces during the Vietnam War, 1967]]

thumb|Tragic mask on the [[façade of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden]]

alt=|thumb|Hugging is a common display of compassion Compassion is a social emotion that motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is sensitivity to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. When based on notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered partially rational in nature.

thumb|upright=1.3|Life in Kowloon Walled City in [[British Hong Kong has often inspired the dystopian identity in modern media works.]]

Duḥkha (; , ) "suffering", "pain", "unease", or "unsatisfactoriness", is an important concept in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Its meaning is context-dependent: it may refer more specifically to the "unsatisfactoriness" or "unease" of craving for and grasping after transient 'things' (i.e. sensory objects, including thoughts), or expecting pleasure from them while ignorant of this transientness. In Buddhism, dukkha is part of the first of the Four Noble Truths and one of the three marks of existence. The term also appears in scriptures of Hinduism, such as the Upanishads, in discussions of m

thumb|right |220 px |An old poster depicting cruelty, including selling slaves in Algiers, execution, burning, and other cruelties. Cruelty is the intentional infliction of suffering or the inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept.

metaphor for intense emotional/physical stress or pain one feels at experiencing great and deep longing

alt=|thumb|upright=1.2|Engraving by Jusepe de Ribera depicting the melancholic and world-weary figure of a poet '''''' (; literally "world-pain") is a literary concept describing the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind, resulting in "a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering".

moment when individuals question whether their lives have meaning, purpose, or value, and are negatively impacted by the contemplation

observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes

upright=1.35|thumb| by , '''''' () is a German noun translated as "longing", "desire", "yearning", or "craving". Some psychologists use the word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.

self-reported measure of well-being

thumb|right|Christian revival|Revivalist preacher Sam Jones coined the slogan "Quit Your Meanness" which was put to music by [[E. O. Excell.]] Meanness is a personal quality whose classical form, discussed by many from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, characterizes it as a vice of "lowness", but whose modern form deals more with cruelty.

paraphilic disorder in which a person derives sexual satisfaction from inflicting pain on others

unpleasant feeling of a psychological nature

an injury to an individual's moral conscience and values

subjective emotional state

Apeirophobia () (from ) is the specific phobia of infinity, eternity, endlessness, or the uncountable and is also known as the fear of infinity, the fear of eternity, or the fear of endlessness, causing discomfort and sometimes panic attacks from intrusive thoughts of the infinity. It normally starts in adolescence or earlier and it is currently not known how it normally develops over time. Apeirophobia may be caused by existential dread about eternal life or oblivion following death. Due to this, it is often connected with thanatophobia (the phobia of death), chronophobia (the phobia of time

In Buddhism, nirodha, "cessation," "extinction," refers to the cessation or renouncing of craving and desire which arise with unguarded perception and cognition. It is the third of the Four Noble Truths, stating that dukkha ('suffering', the perpetual cycle of sense impressions, attraction and rejection, and action) ceases when craving and desire are renounced.

ethical positions prioritizing the reduction of suffering

risks of astronomical suffering

history of unethical human experimentation occurring within the United States of America

biotechnological elimination of involuntary suffering

Medication used for other purposes that additionally has analgesic effects