I agree that a desire to escape suffering is universal human desire. But what is truly American is the tremendous unwillingness to address and accept both aging and death - and denying the inevitability of these two experiences are the cornerstones of human suffering.

We tend to externalize causes of suffering, which leaves us constantly craning our necks, trying to find the cause of our discomfort.

That alone leads to most of the problems in our country.

Wow, what an interesting review, and a fascinating thesis about America's approach to suffering. I don't have much to add to the discussion at this pre-coffee hour, but I do want to thank Louis Bayard for the article. I'll be looking for the book.

My experience is that America does not like us to grieve. We may be angry or we may be forgiving, tidy box-able feelings, we may be most anything, but not grieving. That is far too uncomfortable and uncontrollable and real a feeling to be permitted. Grief demands that we each be seen as a complete human being, not a mere consumer. One cannot sell things to real grief, neither products nor platitudes. Nor does it lend itself, truly, to 'quick fixes.' Suffering is different for each person, and for all our vaunted love of individuality, we don't seem to like that. We want a standardized thing with a standardized 'solution' we don't have to think about.

We're also not taught by our culture: books, television, movies, news, or cultural heroes, whomever they may be -- or often, alas, not even by our religious institutions -- to simply bear witness to suffering. 'Bearing witness' sounds a lot like 'doing nothing,' and we Americans seem obsessed with filling every moment with activity.

About a year ago I was in a meeting at my church, and a distraught man burst in. No one knew him, and we did not know what was going on -- was he a drug fiend? Delusional? Angy? It turned out he was in, truly, an agony of grief. His wife had died and he had fled the funeral home, where he and his family were 'making arrangements' and come to church. Someone called our priest, someone called the funeral home, practical things that definitely needed to be done.

I left the meeting and simply stayed with this man. I felt stupid and useless and worried my presence might aggravate him, but I simply could not leave him all alone. When his family arrived later to collect him, they were astounded he had received, as they put it, "actual help!" from a church or anyone in it.

All I did was hold this man's hand, let him weep and rail, and occasionally acknowledge that grief is great and painful.

And it turned out I did the right thing, the one thing that could help that man at that time: simply stood beside suffering. I didn't try to fix or change it, I didn't try to sell him on church or God or drink or 'time will heal.'

I dread the suffering in Trachtenberg's book, and I'm sorry if he has made a soap-box, but I look forward to reading it: a whole book acknowledging that grief and suffering are powerful and there is nothing we can do except stand beside our fellow human-beings and cherish them.

We find the American's tendency to demand the suffering of others on the altar of ideology, themselves never having gone a day w/o three meals and cable tv.

Did you really write millenniums and not millennia? I hate to be an asshole, but we just crossed into a new one of these a few years ago, and I thought everyone learned how to spell it.

the impulse to shield ourselves from others' suffering cannot simply be an American failing

Did the author say that in the book, or in the interview, at all? All that was referred to was that it is "particularly hard" for Americans, which seems fairly uncontroversial.

The writer's reaction might be seen as a proof of that point...

Feeling "down" most of my life (dysthymia), I've focussed on my losses and suffering while largely ignoring my successes. Not a happy way to live in a competitive society. To maintain a modicum of sanity, I must push myself to create poetry, art and affirmations such as "I'm grateful for today's health". I shy away from gore in war and other tragedies, as a highly sensitive person who's overwhelmed by others' suffering all too easily. At least, I've never taken to alcohol or drugs for escape.

I learned this lesson at age 29 when my mother died and I was dumped by most of my friends. My raw grief was too much for most people. I hear all the time that people never contact others who have lost a loved one because "they don't know what to say". That's what etiquette was invented for. Nothing you can say will ever mean anything.

I always tell them, I don't remember a word of what anyone ever said to me at those moments when I was heartbroken and crushed by grief. All I remember is the ones who stayed with me and listened.

Our public policies amount to a symbolic exorcism in which crime, illness, and ignorance are drawn out of the general population and projected into the Gadarene herds of the poor, the black and colored poor especially.

Wow. That's a powerful and beautifully deduced statement for what I see going on in American culture. Especially with our current "Christian" president who has displayed a startling lack of Christian compassion for the world, much less his own nation.

Your post was moving. Thank you for the compassion you showed to that man.

I think once we accept suffering is inevitible it helps tremendously. We can let go of being singled out or punished. Knowing we all suffer takes away our self consciousness about seeking another's presence or toughing out our pain.It also relieves us of needing to "fix" another's"misery. This is one of the biggest reasons people avoid those undergoing pain, we feel so helpless.. Knowing suffering is ineveitble for all beings also allows us to let go of the "specialness "we claim from suffering, and move on to preventing suffering in others through gentleness..