It is quite naive, this view that some hold, the hedonist and utilitarian view of morals which takes reduction of suffering and increase of pleasure as the standard by which to judge the morality of actions, although some would phrase it differently as sadness and happiness instead of suffering and pleasure, but in essence what they mean by those is the same thing.
It is naive as I will argue that by referring to the good that comes and whose only path is suffering, and in fact most of what is good to be had from life entails suffering in one way or another and that suffering is so far as it has an end and meaning in the good must be good and that suffering is only evil insofar as it is arbitrary and meaningless.
Now what does constitute meaningful suffering, I will give few examples of this.
Concerning health for example, it is evident that to build a healthy and strong body one has to train and thus go through physical discomfort to achieve that this and that there is no other healthy way to do it, also one has to abstain for excess in pleasures whether they be of food, drink or sexuality in order not only to serve one’s physical health but also to keep a sober mind and these as well involve suffering especially since our instincts is to have all these comforts by abundance and therefore one experiences discomfort and suffering through acting against one’s carnal instinct although to ends which will grant us good results.
As for the mind it is also the case that if one is to acquire valuable skills and knowledge one must go through trials and intense study often exactly at the expense of more pleasurable actions which itself involve suffering through depriving one’s self from pleasure and also through suffering of hardship of study on account of the effort spent by the mind.
On the social level, to build a family that is stable and strong, one is required to sacrifice of his own selfish desires, of his own time and income and also of the carnal instincts which demand pleasure for one’s self as much as possible, and this is also the case for friendships and partnerships with people which demand of us a level of looking outside of ourselves and sustaining some level of inconvenience.
These examples and there are many others show that suffering is integral to attaining good things that are more likely to contribute to a certain extent to happiness in life be it physically, socially or intellectually and overall this is the same requirement for all human endevours and not only on the individual level but also for groups whether families, societies, nations…etc.
Objections
But as for those who have an inverted sense of good, or that object by saying that these things are not necessarily good and it depends on the particular, I would say that each of their opposites leads to degeneration not only of the individual himself but also of his surrounding given that historically mostly the conservative societies that put the interest of the whole body of the nation over the interest of the individual are succesfull in maintaining order and promoting sustained cohesion although some would say that individual freedoms are lacking in such societies but that would depend the freedom one seeks and whether it is coherent to the finality of it, if it is the libertine kind of freedom then its finality which we are in the process of experiencing is fragmentation and a sense of alientation that plagues each one of us in the modern climate that is due exactly to our self-centeredness and ultimately the finality of this will come to complete abolition of structure and a reign of anarchy.
The Nihilistic Response
Now if they counter by saying that this degeneration itself is not necessarily bad and especially of those who by virtue of their nihilism see life as an evil, I would say that if they were honest of their opinion they would not be straining to argue intellectually but rather they would retreat to bestiality and crime or even of suicide given that they are part of this human life.
What this shows is that they live according to the contrary of the moral conclusion they have reached and that they stand no ground to argue aganst the proper ordering of human life and society and if they accept this contradiction then it is also a waste of time to consider their critiques since they are on a level of double incoherence.
The Problem with Utilitarianism
Overall I would say that given our limited capacity and lack of clairvoyance prevents us from accounting for the future consequences of actions which leaves long-term attempts of utilitarianism vulnerable given that we cannot know if an action prevents actual long-terms suffering as well as it is not be considered solely as a basis of ethics on account of that and on account of the incomputable nature of suffering and pleasure as well.
And also rejecting finality in ethics is paramount rejecting the whole concept of ethics itself since they rely on having a goal in mind which we work towards, and it is due to this that utilitarian accounts of ethics fail because generally the notions of suffering and pleasure are taken for granted and not rigidly defined since in essence they are personal experiences that cannot be fully abstracted.
My speculation is that these currents of thought in ethics rely on slogans that superficially sound good but practically meaningless as well as they are reactionary to previous tradition which one wants to break away from.
It is also worth noting that the problem of the human being is specially that he is locked in a cycle of pain and pleasure and that he is ceaselessly looking for a way out, to reduce morality to that dimension is to trap the man in his own prison cycling ceaselessly from pleasure beyond bound leading to suffering beyond bound which compel man to look again for pleasures which will throw him over again to the pits of suffering which leave one empty of any semblance of fulfillment and in a state of exhaustion and dissatisfaction which are indeed at work with addictions and overall with consumer culture and the newly introduced technological tools which fuel endless scrolling.