Fireside Musings, "Maniac" & Chaos Theory

As the class sat huddled around the dying fire, the starlight piercing through the cold November night, Kip asked us about the relationship between joy and suffering.

"Must there be prerequisite suffering to fully understand joy?"
Is suffering the only measure from which we contrast joy?
A classmate suggested that humans are capable of comprehending joy as a concept independent of suffering. Humans can acknowledge beauty, happiness, gratitude without having endured the opposite- brokenness, mourning, and taking things for granted. It depends on the willingness of an individual to recognize the good for what it is.
Another classmate responded that, even within this conceptual framework, a comparison must yet be drawn among the joys, if not to compare them with suffering. A child’s laugh is joyful, but is as joyful as the thrill of a wedding day? A hierarchy is still essential to gauge a greater joy as distinguishable from a lesser joy. In this light, she suggested, would not a lesser joy be seen as suffering in comparison with the greatest joy ever known?
Perhaps humans are drawn to insist upon the relationship between the two because it gives intrinsic meaning to suffering and pain. If pain serves to shed new perspective on life, to differentiate the bad from the good, then suffering is worthwhile. A character from the show, “Maniac” which explores these themes comes to mind. Annie Landsberg, a troubled woman failing to grief the loss of her beloved sister, suppresses her grief through substance use and a bitter persona of sarcasm. “There is no plan or pattern to the universe, it’s just chaos,” is her declaration and mantra. This is a projection of chaos theory, or the idea that suffering, or anything in life does not have some great penultimate meaning. This theory is ridden with nihilistic worldviews.

Over the course of the show, however, as she comes to terms with death and is released from debilitating guilt, she decides, in the end, that "this isn't just coincidence... maybe the universe isn't total chaos..." Is it the newfound experience of joy in friendship which gives her the much-needed distance between the suffering she was entrenched in? Is the joy only joyful because of the horrific suffering she endured? Would someone else who experienced the same joy not feel as joyful because they did not have a palate for pain?


Are humans simply terrified of meaningless pain, leading them to search for meaning in the most chaotic, dysfunctional, painful aspects of human existence: loss, trauma, and brokenness?


Is the joy-suffering question a false dichotomy? Can joy prevail in spite of suffering, making it possible to endure?

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