Does ‘character’ come from suffering, as Jensen Huang implies? Specifically, is suffering necessary for good character, or sufficient, or both or neither?
I don’t want this to be a game of semantics, of defining and re-defining words, so I’ll let character be the qualities in a person that they deem desirable and impressive, rather than ascribe arbitrary traits myself like resilience or calmness or empathy. Nor is it interesting to turn this into a virtue signalling game of who I (or anyone else) is to decide whether someone has character. All that such sanctimoniousness achieves is to make it impossible to talk or write about a whole range of topics. Far simpler to write this off as mere speculation on character by a person of uncertain or doubtful character and move on.
Suffering is even harder to pin down. If I start with Buddha’s maxim, that the cause of suffering is desire, I could argue living implies suffering; everyone suffers, so everyone builds character. Of course, that doesn’t withstand scrutiny; the suffering from an unfulfilled desire for a Ferrari is clearly different from the suffering of losing a limb or a loved one, which is the desire for the pain to cease or for what’s lost to return. Clearly then, the nature of suffering matters, but I don’t want this to be about different kinds of sufferings either, so I’ll leave the idea of suffering at this – a persistent, genuine desire, the unfulfillment of which causes pain or unhappiness. Which in another way, is essentially that what you want doesn’t happen, or what you don’t want happens. There’s nothing against material ambitions here; an idle daydream for a Ferrari doesn’t qualify, but a deep-seated, unceasing, unfulfilled longing for one might, though it probably doesn’t sound very noble or easy to sympathize with.
Now that that’s out of the way, the question is – if you do suffer, do you build character? And if you don’t suffer, do you not? Many people with ‘character’ did suffer – think Mandela spending nearly three decades in prison. Though you can always ask if they had character before they suffered – indeed, they might not have had to undergo the suffering if they didn’t have character which made them do what they did to be handpicked for that suffering. Which is to say that the correlation of character and suffering doesn’t imply a causation – and even if it did, it might be the reverse, that character leads to suffering, rather than suffering bringing forth character.
You also have examples of people who suffered but you might not count among those with character. Prison sentences might produce a Mandela, but they can just as well produce terrorists, as did Guantanamo Bay. Of course, there’s no reason ‘character’ has to be associated with ‘good’ – in Francois de La Rochefoucauld’s pithy words, “There are heroes in evil as well as in good.” Though it is questionable whether someone who kills random innocents over issues they have nothing to do with possesses ‘character’. That depends, I suppose, on whether you believe something – anything, even something senseless or heinous – done at sufficient scale is impressive and requires ‘character’ to achieve.
But the point here is that prison, or any suffering, even the suffering of an impoverished life full of drudgery, toil and misery, does not by itself necessarily create character. Were that true, we should objectively be able to say that people in the poorest, most miserable countries have the greatest character, rather than the greatest number of crimes and corruption. In that sense, suffering is not ‘sufficient’ for character, for many people suffer (more than the regular dose of suffering implied by living), and it’s highly improbable all of them possess ‘character’. In fact, you might as easily accuse suffering of eroding character, of pushing people to lying and cheating as much as they can get away with.
The harder, and more uncomfortable question, is whether suffering is necessary for character. Uncomfortable, perhaps, because some of us, among whom I too have the honour to belong, don’t really suffer all that much. In any case, ours is not a suffering that you could talk about without feeling at least a modicum of shame for making a mountain out of a molehill, especially when so many mountains remain molehills. Socrates, or whoever it really was, must have had such of us in mind when he said “If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart“.
I can, of course, tell myself that I do suffer, that I suffer as I pore through difficult texts I study, as I strenuously exert myself in a gym or sport, as I undertake arduous tasks at work, as I write this, and so on – and many do. I can claim that these actions are difficult and impressive, and that I am special and extraordinary for performing voluntary activities of my choosing for my own benefit. You can turn something as ordinary and privileged as going to a gym into a Herculean endeavour of grit and discipline.
Because when you don’t really suffer, not the suffering of someone in Palestine or Ukraine, someone born to poverty, someone afflicted with disease or physical or mental deficits, someone plagued by loss, what are you left with? Assuming that you don’t seek out suffering simply for the sake of it, either you accept that you have it easy, that you don’t suffer notably, so to say, beyond the inevitable pains and inconveniences of existence. Or you create the image, to yourself or others, that you do suffer, that a disciplined life, or a demanding job, is a noble suffering.
Yet, I’d have to acknowledge that these actions do often reveal or create some sort of character. Ceteris paribus, or knowing nothing else about a person, you could reasonably expect someone who pursues a sport or craft with dedication to possess discipline, the ability to grind, commitment, as opposed to one who doesn’t. And since they are difficult, you could argue they do involve some sort of suffering, a suffering akin to delayed gratification and self-induced deprivation. Perhaps such self-imposed suffering is better than nothing, if one cares about ‘building character’.
But that still doesn’t answer whether suffering is necessary for character. Suggesting that people who suffer do have character, as the previous paragraphs do, is at best a tentative speculation that suffering is sufficient for character. To answer the question of the necessity of suffering, you’d also have to be able to say that someone who doesn’t suffer doesn’t have character.
Can you say that? It seems difficult. Firstly, since living itself implies some amount of suffering, you won’t find anyone who hasn’t suffered, whose character, or lack of it, you can assess. But assuming we consider only non-trivial suffering, perhaps it means that someone who has it easy, who lives a comfortable existence, fails to build character. At any rate, if he has character, he won’t know it, not until he suffers and it has a chance to reveal itself, and if he hasn’t suffered much before, it’s possible he’ll not be able to suffer well when the time comes upon him. But there are always surprises, and the untested article can prove itself superior, just as the tested one can fail when push comes to shove.
The only conclusion I seem to be able to draw from this is that suffering perhaps need not be necessary for character, though it probably is necessary for character to reveal itself, and hence the close link between the two. Character doesn’t have to come from suffering, but it needs suffering to reveal itself. You only see a person’s character when they suffer (just as you perhaps come to know your own character when you suffer) and therefore associate the character with the suffering. Which also explains why we associate people who do hard things, be it exercise or study or labour, with character – because their character has more occasion to be visible, than others, who might possess character, even if it remains hidden.
In some ways, the relation between character and suffering is an instance of the nature vs nurture argument. The idea that suffering builds character is the argument of nurture, that character can be built, as opposed to nature, that character is inborn. Although it’s a boring answer, there are probably elements of both to character. It’s hard to imagine that every human is born with the same amount of character which they can then develop, so there must be some element of nature. But nurture is there as well – it’s likely true that doing hard things builds character. If nothing else, when you face adversity, you know it’s probably nothing compared to what you’ve already overcome.
Before I end, though, I might ask, what is the necessity of character itself? Whether suffering is necessary for character is one question, but what is character necessary for? If you must suffer for character, you’d want to know exactly what the point of this thing you’re going to be suffering for is.
Is character an end in itself, something I’d want even if it didn’t get me anything? Maybe if it makes you feel better, or happier, to think you have character, it could be. Other explanations – from character getting you to heaven, or counting for something after death – suggest its value lies in what it gets you.
Jensen Huang seems to imply the value of character is as a means to greatness, drawing a chain from suffering to greatness via character. Suffering breeds character, and greatness, howsoever it’s defined, comes from character. Which, if you agree with the reasoning, and also care about some kind of greatness, implies that inducing some suffering is an optimal long term strategy, though a sub-optimal short term one. It might pain today, but can pay off later, as opposed to avoiding both pain and greatness.
Unfortunately, this, like any other, becomes an endless sequence, continuing ad nauseam. I might ask, what’s the point or necessity of greatness? What can greatness get me? If you try answering, perhaps, you get something like fame, or being remembered, or something equally arbitrary, which only begs the next question – what’s the point of being remembered?
Carrying this further, you eventually arrive at the inevitable – what’s the point of anything? A question that need not be a pessimistic cry of nihilism – at least not the nihilism that denies everything, but the one that, to borrow a beautiful line from Turgenev, does “not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in”. Which is simply to say, the point is what one wants it to be, that if I think character, or greatness, or anything other, matters to me, I might want to suffer for it, but there’s certainly no reason I have to think that.