Front Office

Last update: 2024-12-19

Welcome to the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering!

If anything on this page prevents you from endorsing the need for this World Center, please let us know your reservations. If everything meets your approval, please let us know too. Your feedback will be a great help. You may contact us at admin@aboutsuffering.org.

Let’s be clear from the start. Our Center’s mission is to optimally minimize, on a global scale, the occurrences of consciousness that we consider too unpleasant. We think this can best be done by systematically addressing the problem of suffering from a central place that collectively enables the development of a new, specialized field of theoretical and practical knowledge. For us:

• “Suffering” refers to any occurrence of consciousness that is felt as unpleasant.
• “Excessive” denotes that our concern is not about all suffering but only about that which we consider too unpleasant.
• “Control” is used rather than reduction, prevention, or abolition because we seek to minimize excesses of suffering “optimally”, which might involve admitting excesses in exceptional situations to achieve what we consider a greater good.
• “Center” emphasizes that a common place of reference is required for all interested parties.
• “World” indicates that our Center’s field of action is global, including all excessive suffering on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the universe.

The Center, which is coming into existence under this webbook’s^[1] cover^[2], will soon be operating on a much larger scale, with many people, lots of equipment and billions^[3] of dollars. We are confident in this expansion because:

1. The idea of establishing a central place to systematically address the problem of suffering in the world is good enough…
2. … to bring a few dedicated persons to elaborate a first scaled-down version of the Center that is interesting enough…
3. … to attract at least one high-level manager (or charismatic promoter?) who can present a development project convincing enough…
4. … to involve at least one high-level funder who can invest enough…
5. … to pay for the workforce, facilities, and equipment sophisticated enough…
6. … to operate departments for research and interventions powerful enough…
7. … to realize the best possible control of excessive suffering in the world.

Question — What benefit will there be in a full-fledged World Control Center?

Answer — Sentient life on our planet will move from a historically high level of excessive suffering to an incomparably more tolerable level. We are confident in this achievement because:

1. Like other natural phenomena, excessive suffering can probably be mastered to a large extent by a game-changing professional initiative specifically dedicated to it.
2. Such an initiative can provide a powerful body of theoretical and practical knowledge about suffering, its various kinds, its numerous causes, its different degrees of prevalence or urgency, the various ways to handle it, the people and organizations concerned with these matters, etc.
3. A new discipline devoted to suffering can also provide the terminology, classification, metrology (measurement, monitoring), methodology, bibliography (documentation, information, referral), and general synthesis that are to be used in practice and that would allow people from various areas to collaborate much more efficiently for the alleviation of suffering, be it in major spheres of human activity such as healthcare, social affairs, economy, politics, religion, law, art, literature, philosophy, ethics, news media, environmental studies, education, science, history, war, crime, work, sport, interpersonal relationships, personal life, etc., or in more specialized fields such as medicine, social service, social security, insurance, economic development aid, human rights protection, animal welfare, judicial punishment, disaster relief, certain parts of the biological or psychological or social sciences, Buddhism, effective altruism, the United Nations system, etc.^[4]
4. Specific practical actions by the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering can only be imagined now, but they will revolutionize our relation to suffering. For example, as a result of a multi-billion dollars research program on the social, political, and cultural determinants of suffering, the Center might suggest that governmental and intergovernmental organizations adopt a law that will produce various economic, health, environmental, and peace-making benefits thanks to the implementation of a universal income that prevents millions of occurrences of excessive suffering (see a preliminary draft on this topic by the Algosphere Alliance). For another example, a research program on the psycho-neural nature of suffering and its technical control through sophisticated hi-tech tools might allow the introduction of a gene modification that would cut down billions of occurrences of excessive suffering (see on this topic the pioneering work of The Far Out Initiative).
5. Three reasons justify why humanity’s top priority should be for compassionate workers from all areas to join forces and develop a common field of theories and practices explicitly aimed at controlling excessive suffering. Firstly, much can be done to radically reduce excessive suffering on Earth if we strive to deal with it comprehensively and systematically. Secondly, the global alleviation of suffering is in itself an emergency, but it also has the extremely important side-benefit of fostering a future more conducive to happiness and progress, especially in the face of the Global catastrophic risks that threaten us. Thirdly, our extinction is not the least of these risks: it must be stressed that a foremost reason for preserving humanity’s future is that we are the only known species capable, perhaps, of controlling excessive suffering in the universe.

We may add that we are promoting this World Center because:

• We value the alleviation of suffering, scientific knowledge, and technical mastery. We believe that suffering is a natural phenomenon that can best be mastered by a discipline dedicated explicitly to its study.
• We hope that an initiative like this can constitute a game-changing advance, an important world first, a historic breakthrough.
• Our initiative is a prerequisite “to organize the alleviation of suffering, steadily and sustainably” as proposed by the Algosphere Alliance.
• A global control center can help reduce the suffering that pushes the world away from happiness, toward deterioration and even self-destruction.
• The needs associated with suffering in the world are immense. They constitute a huge economic demand that calls for the provision of many new resources, goods, and specialized services. The World Control Center has the potential to generate a new large-scale economic prosperity based on the alleviation of suffering.
• A few researchers across the world are currently working on the systematic study of suffering, but they cannot go further in their pioneering work and succeed to a sufficient extent without the help of paid workers and expensive tools that would be an integral part of a World Center.
• The systematic measurement of suffering and its mapping across time and space could serve as a compass for governance systems.
• If someone is concerned with a personal problem of suffering, for herself or others, the Center could help them through a personal reference service such as this Information and Referral Centre (which could be expanded to the whole world), and more generally through something like the project Alleviating MY Suffering, which could provide coaching or useful orientation on all aspects of personal suffering-alleviation (lifestyle, economy, relationships, health, ethics, civil life, etc.).
• If someone has a valuable idea for eradicating a cause of suffering, the Center might welcome and assist that person by all possible means.
• Generally speaking, our Center would be the only vehicle capable of informing each specialty of a whole range of relevant information. For example:
  • If a medical or social service specialist is looking for ways to make their work more effective in terms of concrete suffering-alleviation, the comprehensive approach of the Center would allow them to get a contextual map showing theoretical and practical paths that would otherwise remain invisible.
  • If a decision maker or a policy planner needs to evaluate the pros and cons of an intervention in terms of suffering-alleviation, and thus make a dramatic difference in the fate of many individuals, then what, if not the kind of disciplinary approach that is proposed here, could provide relevant analyses?
  • If an investor is made to worry about the serious infliction of suffering involved in the pursuit of a profit, the Center could provide a technical assessment and propose alternative ways of doing things at an affordable cost.
  • More broadly, the bibliographic section of our 3rd department would process the world literature on suffering and systematically pass on the fruits of its work to interested parties.

Help wanted:

• Everyone’s help might be precious. Do you have any questions? Can you suggest how we could improve? Do you know someone who could help us? Would you like to contribute in any way?
• We need help with current management and with future high-level management.
• We need help in writing all the chapters of this webbook.
• Other ideas for contribution:
  • Come up with a first scaled-down version of the Center that is interesting enough: how to do that?
  • Adopt a terminology and a classification scheme.
  • Evaluate, summarize, synthesize, or interrelate documents and propose the best ones for further study or implementation in practice.
  • Suggest research programs. General synthesis? Measurement (see Preparatory Notes for the Measurement of Suffering)? Compilations of data by artificial intelligence? Other use of artificial intelligence (ask specialists in Effective Altruism?). See Implementing Knowledge Management.
  • Suggest practical interventions. Monitoring service? Collective letters to authorities? Referral center? Strategic cash transfer?
  • Have the support of numerous and/or influential persons and organizations (as associates or not).
  • Link up with Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, International Association for the Study of Pain, World Health Organization, Algosphere Alliance, and other organizations.
  • Find a legal status for the Center: Swiss corporation (neutrality)? Other possibilities?
• We need funds which can be roughly estimated as follows:
  • 500 thousand USD for the preliminary development phase to cover management, personnel, and equipment costs.
  • 20 million USD for the full-scale starting phase of the Center.
  • 20 billion USD to operate the Center once it is entirely up and running.

The World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering is an enterprise developed by Associates for the Control of Excessive Suffering (A.C.E.S.). For more details, see our Administration Notebook.