AN EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT

by Robert Daoust, 2002

Here is a brief plan to rescue a significant number of individuals affected or threatened by extreme suffering. I would like you to consider taking part in it, if you can and as you can.

The plan consists in realizing an experimental project which, by way of consequence, would give rise to a quite new kind of action about suffering. This action, hopefully, would bring a decisive complement to the excellent work about suffering that is done by so many organizations and people.

The goal of the project itself is simply to bring a solution to the suffering of at least three individuals. But suffering, in those cases, will have to meet three criteria : it will have to be extreme, avoidable, and uncared for.

The experimental project can be realized by 2 workers or more, aided from time to time by collaborators. It may take several months, and may cost a few thousand dollars. Three phases of work are necessary.

During the first phase, workers will have to define very precisely, just for themselves, basic notions or terms, so as to make them usable as tools for practical purposes in phase 2 and 3. What is suffering? What is a case of suffering? What is an avoidable suffering? What is an extreme suffering? What is a suffering that is uncared for? What is to bring a solution to a suffering?

During the second phase, workers will have to identify at least three cases of extreme, avoidable, and uncared for suffering in the real world.

During the third phase, workers will have to perform or  induce others to perform actions that will actually bring a solution to at least 3 identified cases.

Once the experimental project is over, it is hoped that its results will be good and will give rise to a wider application of its principles against excessive pain and suffering. Then, in the years to come, we and others would realize new projects or new initiatives based on this experimental model. If those are also successful, as we may presume, more and more interventions and policies concerning extreme suffering would take place. Soon, a significant number of individuals would be spared extreme suffering.

This is the plan. Please let me know your reaction.

(In another version of this plan, adapted for being perhaps submitted to the International Society for Panetics, suffering would have to meet five criteria : it should be avoidable (A), extreme (E), inflicted (I) by an organization (O), and uncared for (U). This undertaking could have been called the AEIOU project.)