Framing Suffering

How is suffering, including that caused by sickness, best explained? How is it to be addressed? These questions are, of course, as old as humankind. We've had millennia in which to address--societally, in an organized fashion--the suffering that surrounds us. In looking at approaches to such problems, one can easily discern three main trends: charity, development, and social justice. (Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 153)