How can suffering and misery in our current life propel us forward?

Question from the Internet:

“Would you rather be born into a society where the majority is happy, but ignorant of the society’s flaws, or a society where the majority is miserable, and hyper-aware of the society’s flaws?”

Human beings are “simple creatures.” We are driven by a simple “pleasure/pain” software.

But when we feel fulfilled and happy, we tend to rest and enjoy what we have and we become comfortable and stop progressing. When we feel unpleasant and miserable and we suffer, then we tirelessly search for solutions in order to get out of that unpleasant, miserable, and painful situation.

Thus, I think it is better when at least a critical minority of any given society becomes aware of the flaws of that society, so they can search for true solutions and move society forward.

The problem comes when even when we are miserable, even though we know that things are not going well, but at the same time, we do not know the root cause of the problem, or we suspect what it is but we want to ignore it since it forces us to change ourselves and how we live, then we would rather not feel the misery and the true problems and want to escape into lies and illusory activities.

This is where our own society is right now. Most of us feel that we are in a bad state, which bad state is getting worse each day. Many people even openly proclaim that we are heading towards inevitable self-destruction through multiple possible scenarios.

But when it comes to the actual root cause and how to remedy it, we all become blind, deaf, and mute, or we find ways of escaping reality and immersing into something that numbs and dumbs us.

And, of course, our “leaders” and “influencers,” the vast and very sophisticated media and entertainment propaganda machinery, deliver the necessary “numbing and dumbing” content while virtual reality and truly numbing substances are readily available and promoted.

We will not be able to face our mounting and increasingly threatening problems, and we will definitely not find the right solutions until that critical mass or minority of people start honestly facing true reality and recognizing the root cause of our problems inside of ourselves and in the way we connect to and behave with each other.

Thus being unhappy, miserable, and very unsatisfied with our present life is a good start. But we also need humbleness and honesty to search for and find the root cause of our misery inside ourselves and how we relate to other people. Then, out of the misery, we can start progressing towards true positivity and happiness — through changing and correcting ourselves and the mutual relationships between us.