And, when her heroes did suffer, they weren’t particularly kind toward themselves with respect to it. Roark observed his suffering like a sadistic “executioner,” if I remember correctly. He would smile at it.

These days I am a proponent of recognizing the reality of suffering as a some-times part of life, and an always potential part of life. I see a lot, not just in Rand, but in the new age world, of attempts to deny that simple fact. (“Everything happens for a reason” and so on.)

Also, I think it’s unhealthy when suffering to be self-punitive or masochistic. Some people think suffering is shameful and punish themselves in order to feel right by themselves; to me this is just adding insult to injury, and blocks the natural healing and re-adjustment process.

So in that sense I think the issue of suffering is important: I think denials of it lie at the root of many problems.

I do wonder, though, if this gets at what you are talking about. I sense you may be referring to something more.

On a more everyday level, most of us suffer greatly from things that wouldn’t seem like big deals: traffic jams, malfunctioning computers, misplaced possessions. We fill ourselves with anger and fear and despair, unless we can find ways to be vigilant about making ourselves happy.

Your old “Buddhism and Suffering” post invited to “Consider how many different professions are almost ‘entirely’ dedicated to addressing, treating, or responding to significant forms of suffering.”. And your post asked “Have these professions succeed, in the modern world, at eliminating the problem of suffering?” The problem IMHO, to put it shortly, is that no profession, no religion, nothing until now has been dedicated ‘entirely’ to addressing suffering. That is why I propose that we develop an ‘algonomy’, a work area concerned with suffering, the whole of suffering, and nothing but suffering, as explained at http://www.algosphere.org/indexen.htm.