There is a kind of argument offered to console people who are sorry or depressed, to the effect that they should not feel so badly because others are even worse off. In such arguments, B tries to console A for A’s suffering on the grounds that some other person or persons, C, have suffered equally bad things or even worse. Here, A and B may be the same person: people sometimes seek to console themselves. The point is to diminish A’s grief on the grounds that he or she is not alone in feeling it. If a person is grieving from having lost a job, well, there are others who have had the similar experiences or worse; they may have lost several jobs or never had a decent job in the first place. If she has been diagnosed with an illness requiring unpleasant lifestyle restrictions well, many other people are ill and many have worse diseases – terminal illnesses characterized by severe physical pain, for instance. I have often played the role of A in this scenario and that of B, and who knows, perhaps I have, without knowing it, played the role of C as well. Many in the audience could probably report the same thing, since Consolation Arguments of this type are rather common. A recent item circulated on the Internet and forwarded to me by David Hitchcock included the following, among others
