This site is the new home for Ron Anderson’s website World Suffering & Compassionate Relief of Suffering.
Ron Anderson, an innovative scholar of technology and society, and a dear and generous colleague to all who were privileged to know him, passed away on December 21, 2020.
In honor of Ron’s legacy, and in recognition of Ron’s support of The Society Pages, TSP now hosts this website. We will continue to feature the content that Ron wrote and curated, and seek submissions for new posts that reflect Ron’s unique perspective and vision of World Suffering.
Below you will find Ron’s description of this website and its goals and structure, written in Ron’s own words:
“This site has two pillars, understanding world suffering and enabling compassion and other actions to alleviate suffering. Think of compassion as the desire to alleviate specific suffering. Exposure to a situation of suffering shapes how a compassionate person comes to help reduce the suffering of others or one’s self. This site will attempt to lay out the scope and nature of suffering so that we direct our empathy and compassion more effectively. Look at it as an aid to identifying the suffering most deserving of alleviation or even elimination.
Books. Several books serve as resource material for the authors and readers of this site. Written by Ron Anderson, the book Human Suffering & the Quality of Life, was published by Springer in 2014; World Suffering & the Quality of Life, was published by Springer in 2015. Like a handbook, it contains articles by 45 authors from all over the globe. Both books discuss how compassion and caring relate to suffering. A third book, Alleviating World Suffering, was published in 2017 by Springer. It has the same structure as the previous one but focuses upon relief and alleviation of human suffering.
Category Tabs. The tabs on the home page can be used to more quickly find the articles on each of these topical areas: Suffering, Compassion, and Wellbeing. A Fourth tab labeled “Resources” contains links to longer reports and articles on one or more of these topics.
The site encourages active dialogues using the comments feature. To leave a comment about an article, you only have to give a name, enter an email address, and write a brief comment.
Facebook and Twitter. World Suffering forwards notices of any new articles to the World Suffering pages Facebook and Twitter. They can be found under the name ‘world suffering.’ Please check out the site pages there.
Editorial policies. Any who wish to add their articles to this site are welcome to submit them for consideration. The guidelines for both articles and comments can be condensed into these three policies
- We expect tolerance of all social groups except those that promote intolerance and hate, but for them we expect courtesy.
- Plagiarism is not acceptable.
- We do not advocate particular religions or political parties.
Deep caring and humanitarian action, not political activism, are our primary objectives. Social policies derived from genuine compassion are especially encouraged. Making the world, and ourselves, kinder and more empathetic takes knowledge, practice, attentiveness and will. Our role is to encourage and support people with this mission.”
Contact Us
Questions and suggestions are most welcome. Contact the site administrator by sending an email to tsp@contexts.org.
Comments 5
Joe Smith — December 10, 2016
My comment is that this is a remarkable website
Ron Anderson — December 12, 2016
Thanks for your comment.
Jeroen Jansz — July 29, 2017
Dear Ron, it is some time ago we met at the ISRE conference in Berkeley (USA). It was a pleasure to contribute to the book. I am very pleased to see the flourishing website and thank you for putting all this together in a way that is accessible to all.
Barbara L. Siry — February 20, 2020
Hello Ron, I learned about your site from the RLS website (I, too, am a victim of this condition). It sometimes takes personal suffering to understand it in others and to want to help relieve it. I hope you have found some practical means to do so, short of sending money to Doctors Without Borders (my first choice) and other admiral organizations. But to speak specifically to some of the areas in need of help in your archive, The New York Review of Books just had an analysis of the crisis in South Sudan, a country that should be prosperous, but has been stripped of its wealth by mismanagement, corruption and a failure by well meaning outside organizations to fully understand the culture and history of its people. This newest world government didn't have to falter as badly as it has, and hopefully can be relieved of some of its people's suffering, but I am still at a loss for knowing how to do so.
Anyway, I hope to get a chance to meet you at some point -- perhaps at an RLS gathering in Washington DC. In the meantime, I will visit your site and learn as much as possible.