"Why are drugs, prostitution, gambling and suicide illegal, when they clearly give so much relief to suffering people? I think it is because, at a societal level, we are deluded into thinking that happiness is possible, maybe even easy or likely, without these things. I have called this “cheery social policy." The fundamental problem with this sort of cheeriness is the assumption that a good life—a pleasant life—is relatively easy to achieve. Cheery people are able to hold such a belief because they are able to ignore—and perhaps can’t even conceive of—the suffering of a significant minority of the population. A good life is not easily achieved for many of us."
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Sources
Sarah Perry, Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide (2014), p. 210.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophical_pessimism
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Philosophical pessimism
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