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Human history is saturated with man-made suffering. A realistic assessment shows that in most directions in which humans have extended their thoughts and actions, they have ultimately brought upon themselves and the planetary relations not reciprocity, order, and harmony but different forms of suffering—subtle and gross. Planetary technicity, grand advances in symbolic apparatuses, institution building, logic of commodity, and investments in a competitive ego-bound self, each has brought in its wake large-scale unhappiness and erosion of livability, especially to those who are powerless. This is an unpalatable truth that many might find hard to acknowledge. Nevertheless education and curriculum must respond to the meaningless or useless suffering that keeps humans tied to ever-widening circles of conflict. The present chapter engages with the nature of man-made suffering, and attempts to move us toward a space that affords a fresh perception of the ontology of suffering and a related praxis.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-61106-8_4

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