The wisdom of death knights: "Suffer well."

If you have done the Death Knight starting zone questline or have interacted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, you have likely heard one of those reanimated warriors say "suffer well" after you finish talking with them. This always seemed a bit odd to me, but I just chalked it up to their deathly nature. However, a chapter from Arthur Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism entitled "On the Sufferings of the World" gave me a new perspective on this salutation, perspective I would like to share here.

Before I talk about that, let me summarize the relevant portions of On the Sufferings of the World. (You can read the whole thing here if you are interested. If you are familiar with it, skip this paragraph and the next two.) On the Sufferings of the World begins by acknowledging that everyone, by virtue of their existence, suffers. Our friends and family die, time is slowly wearing away on us, and tragedy enjoys visiting us on a regular basis. Schopenhauer also contends that happiness is really the absence of suffering, for happiness only serves to distract us from the miseries of the world. Thus the default mode of our life is suffering, so life is suffering. As such, suffering must have a purpose, for if suffering has no purpose, than life has no purpose. After all, if there is no point to suffering, then why go on living if we are doomed to suffer?

Schopenhauer discovers a few purposes for suffering in this chapter. One is that it gives our lives meaning--purpose, if you will. Most of what we do is motivated by the desire to avoid suffering. We work so we can make money so we can eat so we don't feel hungry. We socialize so we can have friends so we don't feel alone. We play World of Warcraft so we don't feel bored. "..if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves..." In other words, eliminate suffering, and our lives have no purpose, causing us to become depressed from the lack of things to do. That may sound absurd to you, but it turns out that suicide rates increase as you move up social brackets, so Schopenhauer is right when he says that, if there were no suffering, we would die of boredom or hang ourselves.

Schopenhauer then goes on to talk about how our powers of reflection and and expectation cause us to suffer even more, but let me skip to the important part, the part you'll want to pay attention to. Towards the end of On the Sufferings of the World, Schopenhauer says that the best perspective to see this world from is to see it as a prison of pain, a penitentiary of misery, a jailhouse of suffering. Why, you may wonder? Because then we can adjust our view of the world accordingly and brace ourselves for the suffering we will inevitably face. If we see life as full of misery, then when tragedy does strike our lives, it will not come as some great surprise, and it shouldn't, for we all know that bad things happen. More importantly, when we recognize that we are suffering, and that other people are suffering, it's much easier to be empathetic towards others. After all, when our we perceive our lives as good, it's difficult to be empathetic towards others because we don't want to get bogged down in their misery. And, of course, if others' lives seem good, we have no reason to be empathetic towards them, for they don't need our empathy. However, if we see our lives as bad and others' lives as bad, "...it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life—the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow."

So, what does that have to do with Death Knights? By saying "Suffer well" to people who talk to them, Death Knights (from here on in, I am referring to Death Knight NPCs, not Death Knight players) acknowledge that suffering is a part of life; they don't try to sugar coat it. This is especially true in WoW, where your character gets attacked by wild beasts, monsters, and agents of the scourge on a daily basis, or even other players if you PvP. Suffering is an intrinsic part of your character's life; in fact, it probably defines your character's life. Death Knights' saying "suffer well" acknowledges that suffering and the fact that without it, your character's life would likely be meaningless. "Suffer well" is simply a more appropriate greeting than something like "Have a good day," for such a greeting ignores the suffering that is a necessary part of life.

What can we take away from these former agents of the Lich King and their Schopenhauer-inspired salutation? For starters, we can realize that everyone around us is fighting their own personal battles, that everyone around us suffers, and thus when we suffer, we won't feel so alone. We can recognize that suffering motivates most of what we do and thus have some appreciation for it; we can see it as the unfortunate necessity that it is, rather than proof that this is a cold, uncaring universe (although that is a completely different topic). When suffering seems pointless, like when someone is slowly dying of a terminal disease or when you lose a family member, we can recognize that suffering is a vector for empathy, an experiences that motivates us to connect with others. And so, I say to you, my readers, suffer well.

If you found this post depressing, let me leave you with one more quote from On the Sufferings of the World: "I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless—because I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it."