# why grief is good for us: finding value in harsh loss

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** oliSUNvia
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBU3ch6T1s

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBU3ch6T1s) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Grief is an inevitable part of most, if not all, lives. Even those who lived the most privileged lives will watch loved ones die. They are not safe from natural disasters, misfortune or being mortal. At least not in 2025. If you're watching this in 2040, who knows what the tech billionaires are up to nowadays. By the way, I originally wrote 2030 in my script and my brain malfunctioned... 2030 was like the default year you'd say to express something far into the future, and now it's only five years away. I'm about to have an existential crisis off screen. In fact, I'm about to *grieve* the loss of time (heh). Grief is a horribly painful process. It leads people to cut themselves off from the world, to undergo very problematic procedures just so they can forget the pain, or to mind control an entire town to avoid grief. Should we then strive for a world in which grief doesn't exist? Let's say you lost your family in an earthquake, and I could give you a pill that prevented you from experiencing intense grief. No more full body sobbing, no more sleepless nights for months on end, or feeling like you're being ripped apart inside out. You can move on with ease. I find most people say they would reject this pill. On a moral level, it feels utterly disrespectful to not grieve the loss of our loved ones. If they were truly important to us, how could we move on without acknowledging the massive hole they have left in our lives? Suffering in this context is a signal of care. It's almost like a remnant of the loved one. Hence the saying, what is grief, if not love persevering? But let's imagine we lived in a society where it was not a moral norm to grieve our deceased loved ones. No one expects you to hold a funeral and cry uncontrollably. No one will think you're a psychopath for returning to your normal life. There are no moral expectations to mourn after you've lost someone important. Should you take the pill then? I still think no. Generally, grief is not just good for others, but also good for us. That might sound strange, and it makes sense why. Grief is immensely painful and disorienting. And usually we would want to avoid those kinds of feelings as much as possible. But there must be a reason why, despite its serious negative effects on our mental and physical wellbeing. You don't diagnose someone with an illness called 'grief. ' People can receive medical help for depression, but not grief. Even though they may seem to share similar symptoms because grief is something we need to go through. Think about how we don't feel bad for people who aren't depressed -- that seems absurd -- but we do feel bad for people who can't grieve. When the Titanic sunk and many of its victims disappeared into the ocean, their loved ones were understandably distraught. Yes, it feels wrong to not have a proper funeral and burial for the lost victims, but it also feels like an injustice has been done to the people grieving. The lack of a body to come to terms with is harmful to the people who are alive in their own right. Is it because they are denied an expression of their love one last time, and that self-expression is important? Is it because they cannot fully know themselves and their relationship without the final presence of the deceased? During genocide, when people are being systemically eliminated, day and night and death becomes more available than food, people are stripped of the ability to grieve and this is seen as an inhumane consequence. People see their sisters, mothers and grandfathers blown up before their eyes, but there is no time to process this loss. They have to keep moving, stay vigilant because they could be next. The disruption of the grieving process has awful effects on one's wellbeing. They may never be able to move past their loss. Their body will live with all sorts of repressed pain and trauma. We'd probably be relieved if someone's depressive episode was disrupted, but grief is different. People deserve to grieve. If a group of people is systemically denied the ability to grieve, that's seen as a denial of their humanity. In Michael Cholbi's paper, "Finding the Good in Grief" Cholbi wants to discover what makes grief good for us despite our full awareness of grief's severe painfulness. He considers three possibilities. First, one might think that the pain of grief is masochistic in character, so we are drawn to grieve because it's a pleasurable pain similar to certain moves in the bedroom. However, Cholbi rejects this possibility. Masochists experience pleasure "through and because of pain," making pain and pleasure inseparable, but this does not seem true of grief. The pain of grief is not simultaneously pleasurable, nor is it a pathway to pleasure. In short, what makes grief good for us must be non pleasurable. The second possibility starts from the recognition that sometimes we willingly endure pain to bring about a greater good. For example, people willingly get vaccines because the pain of a brief period of illness brings about the greater good of immunity to serious diseases. People also willingly sign up for sites like Incogni, because the five second pain of clicking on a link and waiting for a page to load brings about the greater good of protecting your data.

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBU3ch6T1s&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

In case you didn't catch on yet. Michael Cholbi didn't write about this in his paper, though I'm sure he would have loved Incogni too <3 ✨This is a sponsorship transitionnn✨ but it worked out well because data protection in this day and age is truly an important good. If you don't want a data protection service for yourself, please, PLEASE at least get it for your parents or your grandparents. Just last week, my mom almost bought two pairs of "Uggs" from sportschekca. shop (bruh) because she thought it was the real Sportscheck website. I was like, mom, look at the URL and the sketchy front page with an AI generated boobie model. But she was like "looks real to me! Instagram recommended it, so it must be real. " Who knows what would have happened to her Social security number if she had placed that order. So please protect yourself and others from incidents like this. I've been using Incogni for over a year now, and this is what my dashboard looks like. It has a live update of the removal requests sent to data brokers, with an activity log at the bottom of when the requests are complete. I really like the detailed view because you can look at specific companies to check how compliant they are with removal requests, and how severe their information sharing practices are. The high risk ones have identity theft and stalking as their associated risks, which was scary to read, but it makes me all the more glad that I'm getting removed from those. If you click the link in the description box and you use code olisunvia, you can get 60% off Incogni. That's incogni dot com slash olisunvia. You can use the code olisunvia to get 60% off this service, which takes your personal data off the market. Okay, so sometimes people willingly endure pain in order to obtain a larger good. Is grief like this? Well, if the good of grief was determined by weighing costs against benefits, then all other things being equal, the less pain someone feels while grieving, the better that episode of grief is for them. But this seems mistaken. Cholbi asks us to imagine two siblings who both had similar extremely close relationships with their now deceased father. If one of the siblings experienced less pain while grieving, it is far from obvious that they are better off than the other sibling. In fact, for extremely close relationships, there's a common intuition that grief should be intensely painful. Moreover, if we thought about grief as a cost to endure for a greater good, grief would just be tolerated. The way a vaccine is tolerated for our health, however, Cholbi notes that during grief, people do not merely tolerate the suffering. We actively seek out objects and activities that will cause grief. He references a passage from the philosopher Augustine's Confessions, where he's grieving the death of a close childhood friend. He writes that his "eyes were restless looking for him," and he had "no delight but in tears. " Augustine did not seek out reminders of his friend because they were pleasurable. "My native place was a prison house in my home, a strange unhappiness. The things we had done together became sheer torment without him. " Nonetheless, he was drawn to this pain, making it more than a cost to be tolerated. This leads Cholbi to consider a third possible explanation for why grief is good for us, which he ultimately endorses. As a general model, he states, pain can be good insofar as it occurs within, and is an integral part of a larger good. For example, Cholbi says he used to hate running, but over time he grew to look forward to the pain. The raw physical sensation of pain did not change, and outside of running, he would definitely have avoided this feeling. But because he had a positive attitude toward running, the larger activity the pain is a necessary part of, his judgment of the pain also changed in a positive way. Similarly, Cholbi argues that grief is genuinely painful, but when situated within a larger good, we can be drawn to seek it out. To discover what this larger good is. Cholbi notes that the scope of grief extends primarily to people we had close relationships with, such as family members and romantic partners, but can also sometimes include public figures like celebrities or artists. This indicates that we feel grief about identity-constituting relationships, relationships that significantly affect our values, concerns, and commitments, and consequently, how we value ourselves. I always think about how Michelle Zauner opens "Crying in H Mart" with an anecdote of her breaking down in the Korean grocery store, mourning the loss of her mother, who often cooked for her and was her main connection to her Korean heritage. This grief of hers leads to a lot of self-reflection about her identity as a biracial woman, and her complicated relationship with her mother. Obviously, you talk a lot about your connection with your mother and how there were periods where you were really at odds. You cling to her as a child, and then there's adolescence, and you're really fighting her. Yeah, I mean, I think if anything, it just made me realize, like, how badly I wanted it, you know, because I think that it's almost like if your parents are like, oh, great. Like, yeah, go be an artist. You was like, don't want it anymore. And so I think that, like, her being so adverse to like me

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBU3ch6T1s&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

being following that path or just having so much concern about it made me so much more drawn to it and so sure that was the path I needed to take, because there was just nothing else for me in a way. When Michael Jackson died, many musicians were in grief because he had a huge impact on their identity, which made them reflect on their own musical goals. For Cholbi, grief gives us an opportunity to obtain an important human good: self-knowledge. By losing someone that was integral to how we understood ourselves and reality We are reminded of the contingency of our identities. Grief exposes the fact that we could have been otherwise, causing us to deeply examine our values and commitments. Grief is a particular fruitful motivator for self-knowledge, because death is an especially visceral loss. Moreover, grief itself is a source of self-knowledge because it causes us to undergo a diverse range of emotions, allowing us to analyze different parts of ourselves. For instance, if I feel angry when remembering that my dead parent missed my graduation, it reveals the importance of that event in my life, even if I tried to deny it before. Since it is possible that an episode of grief does not result in self-knowledge, grief is instrumentally good, but not necessarily so. Thus, Cholbi concludes that grief is good for us when it motivates and is a source of self-knowledge. I find Cholbi's conclusion interesting but unsatisfying. I think self-knowledge can be a part of grief. In "Mourning and Melancholia," Freud differentiates melancholia or what we might call depression today from grief. In grief, we know what we have lost, and we know that the loss is real. But in depression, we may feel as though someone or something is dead without them actually being so, such as being abandoned by a loved one who's still alive out there somewhere. We have lost them from our life. But the loss isn't final. A depressed individual may also feel a general sense of loss, whether that be a loss of interest in things that they used to enjoy or a loss of hope for a good future. But there isn't clarity around what, if anything, has actually been lost. Moreover, depression focuses on the self, whereas grief transforms how we reflect on the world. "in mourning, it is the world which has become poor and empty. In melancholia, it is the ego itself. " So whereas the depressed patient is saying, I hate myself, I'm worthless, I only bring pain into the world. The grieving individual sees the world in a new perspective, albeit a negative one, but one that is completely colored by the person they lost, which some might think leads to self-knowledge. This is what makes depression pathological and grief not. However, I'm not convinced that grief is good for us because of self-knowledge. For many, if not all, grief is a confusing, all encompassing pain that makes any form of reflection very difficult. The plethora of emotions that supposedly allow us to examine different parts of the self are usually far too messy to make any coherent reflections about the self. Am I feeling angry about that promise mom broke or am I upset? Is it both? Are these emotions even about that promise, or is it about something else? I find grief an unlikely path to or source of self-knowledge. I lost my pet bunny, Pluto, this year, and obviously I cared about him very much, but he wasn't a central part of my life. When I moved out from my family home for school, I stopped seeing him every day. And it's not like we had deep conversations or shared interests. You can't keep eating the plant. Okay? But when I received news about his passing, I was torn. I felt so much guilt around not taking him to the vet sooner and then anger towards myself. And then that turned into regret. My emotions were all jumbled up. When I saw his limp body, and I reached my hand out to pet him. It was truly an indescribable feeling that I still don't understand. It's like my mind had full belief that when my hand brushed across his head, Pluto would open his eyes and I'd feel his jaw move to let me know he enjoyed it. But none of that happened. He remained still and lifeless. I cried a lot that day, but that particular moment didn't make me sad. Strangely, it felt closer to fear because my brain just couldn't comprehend how this was reality. So losing a pet that wasn't a central part of my life already gave me indescribable feelings that I could not understand, and I still can't explain properly. I imagine that it would be ten times more confusing and messy to lose someone who was a crucial part of one's life. So it's hard for me to see how self-knowledge is a reliable ground for grief value. I'm not denying that grieving individuals can obtain self-knowledge, and I, of course, think that self-knowledge is a good thing. But if we think self-knowledge explains what's good about grief, then grief would only be good for a small minority of people who have

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBU3ch6T1s&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

perhaps mastered meditation or have wonderful therapists. I still want to know, though, what makes grief valuable for everyone else. Now, a defender of Cholbi might say that I have misunderstood the larger good that grief is instrumental to. Grief gives the opportunity for self-knowledge, not self-knowledge itself. For example, one might say, it's good for us to talk to strangers because it holds the opportunity for friendship, even if most of the time the interactions don't amount to anything meaningful and are probably uncomfortable. Similarly, it is perfectly consistent to say that 'grief is good for everyone, because every episode of grief holds the opportunity for self-knowledge,' and 'only some episodes of grief result in actual self-knowledge. ' But I don't think this resolves our issue. If X is good for us solely based on the potential good Y it brings, then one must also hold that even if X never actualized Y, X would still be good for us. But this seems like a difficult position to maintain. If talking to strangers only ever resulted in panic attacks for me, the mere potential reality of friendship doesn't seem strong enough to ground the value of this activity. Thus, when someone says 'it's good for us to engage in X because it enables the opportunity for good Y,' I think it's implied that there are other goods that X is situated in. So if Y is not actualized, there are backup goods to ground X's value. For example, when talking to strangers does not lead to friendship. Perhaps increased social interaction, regardless of its quality, will benefit our health. But then that would mean I've located the wrong good! X is not good because of Y but because of all those other backup goods. As such, grief cannot be good for us solely based on its participation in a potential good. So what actually makes grief valuable? We got to go back to how we characterize the scope of grief. Remember how Cholbi said we grieve for identity-constituting relationships? That's why grief teaches us about what matters to ourselves and how we value ourselves. But this falsely treats relationships as working one way: the other person shapes me. But Cholbi says nothing about how we respond to the other. In actuality, there are people who significantly affect our values, concerns and commitments. But we do not grieve them because we do not respond to their influence with strong positive attitudes. For example, there are people who were separated from their parents at a young age who struggled to recall their parents' touch and mannerisms. They really don't know their parents beliefs and values. This might mean professors or authors have shaped their values, concerns, and commitments far more than their parents. Yet if one of those professors or authors passed away, I suspect this person would be deeply sad but would not undergo grief. Comparatively, they would grieve the death of their parents, whom they have these strong positive attitudes for. Thus, it is partially true that we grieve identity-constituting relationships. It doesn't make sense to grieve people who have not impacted us in significant ways, but this is not sufficient for grief. The relationships we grieve are the ones we also have strong positive attitudes toward. My parents certainly had some influence on my identity, but when they pass away, I doubt most of my values and commitments will come into question. Instead, because I love them, unlike my professors, I will grieve them and our relationship. The pain of grief spotlights these strong, positive attitudes such as love, wanting to persist but not being able to as it once could. Grief is not just a loss of self, but a loss to our self. I think this better explains why we feel and behave the way we do when it comes to grief. We don't pity those who fail to grieve because they are missing valuable knowledge about themselves. We pity them because a lack of grief shows they do not reciprocate a strongly positive relationship. That is why we may find ourselves worrying: Did they actually love their partner? Because a life in which we do not have any strong or passionate positive attitudes towards anyone seems very bad for us. This also explains why we sometimes seek out grief inducing activities by visiting places our loved ones used to occupy, and listening to songs that remind us of them. The pain is proof that we had deep reciprocal connections in our lives, ones that extended beyond an instrumental contribution to our individual sense of self. Thus, grief is good for us because it confirms the presence of strong, positive connections in our life and allows us to continue to relate to them even when they are physically gone. This is why it's so heinous to see a group of people prevent another group of people from being able to grieve. When an oppressed group tries to grieve and their grief is automatically made political, it strips them of their ability to intimately connect with their loved ones one last time. This is the end of the video, but there's always more that could be said about this topic. I want to acknowledge my limits on a topic like this especially. I am extremely grateful to have only experienced

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBU3ch6T1s&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 20:00)

one instance of grief in my life, and it wasn't even severe. That definitely also limits my understanding of grief. If you have any thoughts or experiences of grief that you would like to share, please feel free to comment and I'll try to read through as many as I can. Give your loved ones a hug and show them that you care while you still can. When the time comes to say goodbye, know that grief will be painful, but it's better than no pain at all. If you want an extra way to support my channel, I'm about to sneeze. *achoo* Check out my Patreon if you want to. I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much for watching. Let's keep talking and I hope to hear from you soon. Bye.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/41104*