How Suffering Challenges Our Future

Abstract

This last chapter imagines possible futures and the degree to which suffering remains a challenge. After a summary of the chapters in Part V, an illustrative conceptual model visually shows the key elements that make a major difference in the cycles of relieving and deepening suffering. Such abstraction can be an aid in both qualitative and quantitatively oriented research. Next, I list and discuss a wide variety of human rights violations, showing not only a strong relationship between global suffering and human rights violations, but how these violations might push us to devise more sophisticated measures of suffering. Research on suffering remains difficult and sometimes tedious, but it offers progress toward a knowledge base that can lead to more effective ways to understand and alleviate suffering in the future.