The problem of evil, particularly in the form of asymmetrical and undeserved loss, frequently arises in therapeutic contexts — especially when individuals face life events marked by profound grief, perceived injustice, or existential disorientation. These experiences often generate a sense of being targeted by fate, forsaken by order, or excluded from the equilibrium of moral fairness. The psychological impact is not limited to sadness; it extends to disillusionment with reality itself.
In this article, we explore how such experiences can be understood and processed through the Axiomatological framework — a metaphysical-ethical including Structured Internal Value Hierarchies (SIVHs), moral responsibility, and the narrative comprehension of cosmic order. By shifting the focus from emotional catharsis to metaphysical alignment, Axiomatology offers a new lens for interpreting grief: not as a chaotic rupture in meaning, but as a high-stakes confrontation with the structure of value itself.
Causality and the Symmetry of Evil: Limit-Case Suffering
Across the arc of lived experience, there is no shortage of events — causal nexuses — that appear unjustified, unnecessary, or even cruel. But among these, some stand out as limit cases of suffering: moments where the felt asymmetry of loss becomes nearly unbearable. Perhaps the most harrowing of these is the prolonged and painful death of an innocent child — especially when it is the only child of a family, and the narrative of life is stripped of all regenerative continuity.
Such a situation generates a grief that is not merely emotional but ontological. It presents itself as a collapse of the very structure of reality. For the parents, the suffering is cosmic in its imbalance: their child, who has done nothing to warrant such pain, is subjected to terminal illness, relentless physical suffering, and irreversible departure from life’s unfolding possibilities. This is grief with no proportional cause, the very definition of asymmetrical loss.
From the Axiomatological perspective, this is not merely a psychological trauma — it is a tearing of the moral fabric of being. While clinically speaking, other cases of child loss (such as stillbirths or early infant death) also belong to this register, the developmental trajectory of the dying child — with their smiles, words, and gradually forming self — adds narrative density to the tragedy. Yet Axiomatology does not rank pain by cognitive maturation alone. Any interruption of a child’s narrative — at any stage — disrupts the cosmic sequence of value realization, and thus must be taken seriously as metaphysical rupture.
Such suffering becomes archetypal. It is a collapse that resists resolution through psychological technique or linguistic comfort. Any genuine response must be cosmological in scale — capable of explaining not only the human psyche but the nature of objective reality, causality, perception, and consciousness itself.
Interventions that ignore this scale — that reduce the loss to biological misfortune or existential randomness — leave the individual with no other option than to adopt a worldview of passive fatalism. Life is then interpreted as a deterministic unfolding, where personal responsibility dissolves and the self becomes a bystander in a universe devoid of narrative coherence.
But within the Axiomatological framework, such an outcome is suboptimal. The dissolution of responsibility is not merely a coping mechanism — it is a metaphysical error. Even amidst chaos and pain, there remains the possibility of narrative orientation. The key lies in restoring value continuity, not through denial of grief, but through alignment with a larger narrative cosmology that re-integrates the self into a meaningful order.
Collapse of the Structure of Reality: Suffering as a Sad Symphony of Pain
The painful death of an innocent child is not an event that can be reduced to a single emotional category or even to discrete emotional stages. Unlike griefs of lesser magnitude, where emotions may appear in distinguishable phases or intensities, this kind of loss initiates a total collapse of the structure of experiential reality. It is not a wave of sorrow, but a symphonic unraveling — a multidimensional, continuous lamentation that pervades every layer of consciousness.
In such moments, feelings do not occur in concentric circles or in sequenced stages. Rather, they converge and entangle, producing a visceral totality that overwhelms temporal structure. The moment of discovering the child’s fatal diagnosis, the long agony of witnessing their suffering, the helplessness of not being able to transfer their pain — all of these are not sequential but co-present. The parent’s perception of time becomes saturated with ongoing loss; every occasion is infected with both memory and foreknowledge of suffering.
It is precisely here that process theory, particularly in the Whiteheadian tradition, offers one of the few metaphysical accounts that resonates with the viscerality of this actuality. According to process thought, reality is not composed of enduring substances but of occasions of experience — each carrying forward the prehensions of the past, and each becoming part of an unbroken stream of becoming. In this view, the grief of the parent is not a static feeling or isolated trauma but a series of interlocked experiential occasions, each impregnated with pain, dread, guilt, helplessness, and existential rupture.
From the moment knowledge of the child’s fate enters the field of awareness, the parent’s subjective continuity begins to disintegrate into a dark, recursive symphony — a lament that loops endlessly, where each new event carries with it not only the weight of its own sadness but the echo of previous sorrow and the anticipation of coming agony. There is no clean separation between past, present, and future emotions. There is only continuous prehension of pain, a fusion of moments where the self becomes a vessel of compounded loss.
This kind of suffering destabilizes metaphysical orientation itself. The world no longer appears as a coherent, ordered field of action, but as a dissonant system in which moral symmetry has failed. The “universe,” once a place where meaning was at least potentially extractable, becomes an active participant in the violation of innocence. One does not just mourn the child — one grieves the structure of existence itself.
The Symphony of Grief: The Soundscape of a Parent’s Collapse
Grief as the Monotonous Background Rhythm
There is an underlying grief that never ceases — a monotonous, rhythmic pulse like a low gong echoing through the entire structure of one’s consciousness. It does not fluctuate like other emotions. Instead, it remains — enduring, persistent, unchanging — droning beneath all other affective states. When louder emotional experiences pass, this tone returns with greater clarity, like a bass note uncovered by the silence of a fading crescendo. It is not just sadness. It is existential permanence — the background hum of absence, always there, barely noticed when the pain spikes, but all-consuming in stillness.
Guilt and Self-Blame as the High-Pitched Cut
Occasionally, into that steady rhythm pierces a high-pitched, physically unbearable sound — the auditory symbol of guilt and self-blame. It is the mind’s desperate attempt to make sense of asymmetry by searching for causality. But when the victim is an innocent child, and blame cannot rationally be placed upon them, the entire mechanism of symmetry backfires. It redirects itself inward.
Unbidden, the mind retrieves episodic memories that resist suppression — every failure, every harsh word, every moment of inattention, of misinterpreting innocence as defiance, of meeting need with coldness. These memories come with vengeance, cutting through the body with the sharpness of moral failure. The siren of guilt is not just emotional — it is somatic collapse, producing waves of nausea, physical collapse, a total dissolution of the identity of a “good enough” parent.
Rage, Protest, and Entropic Anger as a Thundering Beat
Rage enters like a thundering percussion, chaotic and accelerating. It builds from mezzo-forte to fortissimo, then to forte fortissimo, until it becomes deafening. This is pure entropy given a target. It may be doctors, fate, society, the universe, God — anyone or anything that stands proximate to the suffering. It is unstructured chaos with emotional velocity, destroying whatever lies in its path: property, relationships, finances, self-worth.
These moments are like Heideggerian bursts of uncanniness — they rupture the everyday, revealing an abyss behind every surface. And then, as quickly as they erupt, they vanish — only to return again, in irregular but inescapable rhythms. This is madness in waves, impossible to predict, impossible to resist.
Silencio: The Mystic Silence of Numbness and Powerlessness
Then comes Silencio — not the peaceful absence of sound, but the terrifying inability to hear. This is not serenity. It is existential muting — a fog that descends suddenly, often in quiet hours or during daylight sleep. It brings with it the sensation of being cut off from all subjectivity, unable to feel, unable to discern whether one is asleep or awake, alive or already posthumous. The body becomes weightless and cold. The soul becomes uncoupled from the real.
This silence is not rest. It is energetic shutdown, a metaphysical coma, the inability to participate in existence. It may last minutes or hours. It ends as abruptly as it begins, leaving the sufferer even more disoriented by the contrast.
Fear, Anxiety, and Hollowness as Random Trumpeting Chaos
At irregular intervals come sudden trumpets — blaring sounds of fear, anxiety, and dread. They are sometimes solo, sometimes a cacophony, like a chorus of overlapping alarms, each trying to out-signal the others. These trumpet-blasts are the sound of a hollow future: fear of the child’s body decomposing, fear of the funeral, the social rituals, the meaningless condolences, the unbearable solitude.
Sometimes, the fear is existential — “What if I feel relief when it’s over?” or “What happens to me when my only structure — caregiving — disappears?” At other times, the fear turns outward: “What is my child feeling right now? Do they fear death as much as I do?” This uncertainty metastasizes into pure horror, with the trumpets descending into dissonant, clashing notes that mimic insanity.
Injustice and Envy as Long, Echoing Screams
There are moments when the whole symphony becomes dominated by a long, high-pitched wail — the sound of cosmic injustice. It begins like an ultrasound — high and inaudible — but slowly becomes sickeningly audible. Why do parents who show carelessness or apathy have healthy children? Why do children full of rage and malice thrive while gentle souls are extinguished?
This is envy without malice — envy as existential protest. It is the feeling of becoming the central figure in a parody of justice. The inner cry — “Why my baby?” — becomes a refrain, echoing off the broken walls of reality, unanswered, intolerable.
The Internal Death of the Parent: A Hollow Wind
Finally, there is the internal death — a sound like wind blowing through an empty metal vessel, echoing with the finality of meaningless survival. The child’s death is not only the end of a life — it is the death of the future, the death of the part of the parent that existed only in relation to the child.
This death creates a child-shaped hole in the soul that nothing can fill. The motivation for education, relationships, career — it all becomes nonsense. The future becomes an open coffin, and the parent has already stepped inside, involuntarily.
Love, joy, purpose — these become illusions. The parent becomes a ghost, moving through life with no trajectory, no telos. No symphony to follow. Only the echo of a wind that never resolves into melody again.
Scratching the Surface of Infinity — With an Apology
"Well, that must be as bad as it gets," say those who have never been there.
The ones who have — they don’t say anything.
They simply fall silent.
Yes, we may try to describe it — try to shape it in words, outline it in metaphor, map it in sound. We may compare it to symphonies, storms, silence, sirens. But these are only marks on paper. At best, they are shadows projected from something far more immense.
What it was — and is, forever — cannot be captured. It is eternity rupturing into the finite, a tear in time that does not heal but transcends, leaving everything else pale and unspeakable in its wake. There is no language vast enough for it. No vocabulary broad enough to fit its scale.
In Exodus 20:4–5, the Second Commandment reads:
"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath..."
Perhaps this is what it meant.
There are infinite phenomena — ungraspable, sacred realities — that must not be imaged. Not because they are forbidden in some punitive sense, but because they exceed the symbolic capacity of representation. To image them would be to profane them, to betray the truth of their magnitude.
And so, if this essay has done anything, it has only scratched the surface of infinity.
And for that, we must end with an apology — not for writing, but for the presumption that something so sacred could ever be reduced to form.
Toward the Therapeutic Alliance
There is nothing worse than this, and yet — it cannot be described.
How is that possible?
This paradox becomes the first and weakest signal of something resembling agreement — the fragile beginning of a therapeutic alliance. It is not an insight, nor a solution. It is a mutual acknowledgment of the impossibility: the impossibility of measuring, feeling, understanding, or even coming close to comprehending the magnitude of this loss.
And that — that is not nothing.
That is something.
It may be the only thing worth affirming in the beginning.
It is something a genuine helper — someone committed to the sacred, silent work of accompaniment — may gently propose:
“We can agree that this cannot be understood. And I will never attempt to place anything beside it.”
That single agreement becomes the beginning of trust. It is an ethical boundary, not a therapeutic technique. It is a form of reverence. And from this reverence, alliance may be born.
Indeed, even this entire symphony of metaphors we have traced — this attempt to “compose” the suffering — is, in some sense, an insult.
It is a failure.
It is a weak human attempt to render the infinite into a form.
And I confess it openly: this effort should make us uneasy. From a therapeutic stance, it risks disrespect. Not intentionally, but inevitably.
The suffering is too sacred for depiction.
It is the blood of Christ, poured out.
It is the scream within the hollow skull of the living-dead parent, and it does not end.
The Foundation of the Alliance: Humility, Not Intervention
In such moments, there can be no therapeutic agenda, no comparative loss, no offering of strategies. Any attempt to bring the therapist’s own suffering into the room — even with the best intentions — becomes counterproductive. The client does not want a co-sufferer. They do not want a competitor in pain. They do not want someone to sink or sing with them.
What many want — and what many have explicitly asked for — is a father.
Not biologically, not patriarchally — but archetypally.
Someone strong. Someone calm. Someone unmoved by the waves.
Is this “sexist”? Perhaps, in a modern framework. But honesty matters more than ideological decorum. And honesty shows that in the presence of ultimate suffering, the archetypal emerges — not the socially constructed.
Archetype, Not Empathy: The Transpersonal Role of the Therapist
Jung wrote that in the shock of great suffering, personal identities collapse, and archetypes rise. The Wise Old Man. The Divine Mother. The Crucified God. These are not psychological tools — they are transpersonal realities that stabilize the psyche when nothing else can.
In this, Axiomatology and Jungian thought converge.
The person of the therapist is not the solution.
The presence of the therapist only matters insofar as it points beyond itself — to a narrative archetype, to a cosmological structure that gives suffering its context, not its justification.
In Axiomatology, healing is never found in technique alone.
It is found in narrative identification.
The helper becomes a pointer, not to a method, but to a story — one aligned with cosmic order.
A story where grief is real, where loss is infinite, but where meaning is not entirely dead.
Thus the therapist must not try to “rescue.”
They must become something far harder:
A silent witness to a sacred story,
A vessel for the unbearable,
A living bridge pointing to that which transcends all comprehension.
Use of Narrative Cosmology in the Context of Loss within Axiomatology
Within the framework of Axiomatology, understanding loss requires more than emotional processing — it demands a reorientation to the logic of occasions and the continuity of value-laden experience. In this metaphysical view, each present moment is not isolated but carries with it the prehended weight of all previous occasions — emotional, ethical, narrative. To engage with the future responsibly, one must not bypass the past. There is no regeneration of potential — no access to moral agency — without complete acceptance of what has been.
This is not something one can simply "will" into being. Acceptance of deep loss — especially limit-case suffering — cannot be manufactured, sped up, or outsourced to ideology. Therefore, Axiomatology stands in stark opposition to many modern coping frameworks that trivialize grief by offering shallow closure.
On one hand, there is the Western self-help narrative that urges individuals to “make peace with the past and move on”— often in the form of premature forgiveness, forced positivity, or the valorization of resilience as denial. On the other, there are Eastern-derivative spiritual trends — popularized versions of Taoism, Buddhism, or yoga culture — which suggest that suffering can be dissolved by “celebrating the seasonality of the soul” or “accepting its dissolution and probable return in another form.”
Both offer momentary relief — and in the early stages, that can feel like survival. But ultimately, these frameworks often function as epistemological anesthesia: they numb the truth without transforming it. They offer solace without synthesis, and thus rarely produce enduring realignment.
In contrast, Axiomatology insists on confronting the stark and irreversible truth of suffering. Only by fully integrating the loss into one’s narrative structure — not bypassing it, not symbolically dissolving it — can one reclaim the capacity for future-oriented responsibility. Narrative cosmology does not erase the past. It honors it, gives it form, and — in rare cases — sacramental meaning.
A Three-Step Model of Dealing with Grave Loss through Axiomatology
Rooted in Narrative Cosmology as the Core Tool of Practical Axiomatology
Step 1: Acceptance of the Fact of Death
The first step in the Axiomatological process of confronting grave loss begins with the acceptance of death as a fact. This is not yet an existential integration, nor a spiritual synthesis. It is the initial confrontation with the raw, irreversible reality: the child will no longer walk through the door. There will be a final departure, and no return. The door, once a symbol of cycles and continuity, becomes one-directional.
This fact alone carries transformative force. It is not yet grief in its full form — it is the beginning of metaphysical rupture. For many parents, especially those who have not yet faced death closely, this may also mark the collapse of a larger illusion: what Axiomatology calls the Happiness Delusion (HD).
The Happiness Delusion is the culturally embedded but metaphysically flawed belief that the goal of life is to maximize personal pleasure, satisfaction, or emotional well-being. This belief, integral to childhood and reinforced by much of modern culture, cannot withstand the existential pressure of profound loss. In the moment of facing a child’s death, the narrative foundation of HD crumbles.
In its place emerges the first real question:
How can death and suffering be accepted as fundamental elements of life itself?
This transition is critical. If the parent remains bound to HD, their entire psychological structure will resist reality — leading to denial, avoidance, or disintegration. But if they allow the suffering to initiate transformation, a deeper mode of life becomes possible: one that recognizes that the essence of life is not happiness, but sacrifice, not comfort, but meaning-bearing endurance.
In this regard, Axiomatology echoes the existential insight offered by Irvin Yalom:
“Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.”
(Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death)
While Yalom frames this as an existential call to live authentically, Axiomatology pushes further. The confrontation with the actuality of death — especially in its most unbearable form — is not just an invitation to authenticity. It is a mandate to abandon illusion and begin living in accordance with cosmic reality.
From here, life must be lived occasion by occasion, not in pursuit of happiness, but as an unfolding narrative of meaning through structured suffering. The parent is not asked to let go of pain — but to begin replacing the expectation of happiness with the acceptance of a sacrificial cosmology.
Step 2: Feeling of Injustice — Cursing God as an Option
The Book of Job and the Limit of Human Suffering
The second step in Axiomatology’s model of dealing with grave loss is the acknowledgment of radical injustice. It is not merely the death of the child that torments the parent — it is the collapse of any belief in a just world. Nothing about it is fair. No lesson justifies it. No moral calculus can explain it. And therein lies the deepest challenge: the realization that the structure of life is not transactional.
There is no built-in symmetry, no divine contract to guarantee justice in this lifetime. That realization alone can be more destabilizing than the loss itself. And it is here that we must turn to one of the most harrowing and misunderstood texts in sacred literature: the Book of Job.
“Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.’”
— Job 2:9 (ESV)
Job had lost everything: his wealth, his children, his health, his future, his friends. What he did not lose — and this is key — was his faith in God. But it is often missed by readers that Job did not know what we know. He had no awareness of the wager between God and Satan. From Job’s perspective, there was no context, no higher narrative, no explanation. There was only brutal, unrelenting loss.
This is what makes Job’s situation so archetypal. As Jung writes in Answer to Job:
“Suffering is not explained; it is a mystery to be endured. And in its depths, one encounters the divine.”
Jung is right. When stripped of theological overlays, Job becomes a man abandoned to inexplicable suffering — much like the grieving parent. And here arises the real test: when the world has taken everything, including all meaning, why not curse God and die? His wife’s suggestion is not shallow — it is a brutally honest question that emerges at the metaphysical bottom.
This is the rock-bottom of human suffering. Where nothing remains: no answers, no justice, not even the rationality to process the pain. It is not a moral failure to consider cursing God — it is a natural, human reaction to overwhelming injustice. It may be, paradoxically, the most honest theological position one can take in such a moment.
And yet, Job does not curse God. Not because he knows something we don’t — but because, at the very edge of despair, he refuses to destroy the ideal. This is what Axiomatology refers to as the Cainian threshold: the point where suffering becomes so absolute that the final step would be to destroy all remaining ideals — the idea of family, marriage, goodness, or God Himself.
That final step is a metaphysical descent into hell. It is no longer suffering within reality — it is the rejection of value itself. It is the willful annihilation of narrative, meaning, and future. And it is this binary — to destroy the ideal or to uphold it in silence — that forms the ultimate moral decision.
Taking upon oneself the role of Job is absurd. It is not about stoicism or heroism. It is about continuing to live without reason, refusing to tear down the last pillar of the soul when every other structure has collapsed. And in this refusal — in the silence that follows the desire to curse — something holy begins.
This is what Yalom indirectly meant when he wrote:
“Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.”
What saves us is not comfort. What saves us is not cursing — not crossing the threshold into hatred, cynicism, or nihilism. It is the choice to not destroy the last sacred thing left.
In the context of Axiomatology, this is often the turning point. When all illusions have fallen, and suffering reaches its highest pitch, the only remaining orientation is vertical — back toward the ideal, however shattered, however silent. That return — often in complete darkness — marks the first glimmer of metaphysical resurrection.
Step 3: Acceptance of Suffering and the Choice of Meaning
Upholding the Ideal Beyond the Collapse of Life as Known
The loss of a child cannot be understood as separate from the meaning of life itself. It is not a detour from the human story — it is a microcosm of its most tragic and sacred truth. When the parent has passed through the collapse of the Happiness Delusion (HD) and resisted the temptation to curse the ideal, the question that remains is this:
Will I allow suffering to destroy meaning, or will I choose meaning through suffering?
This is not a romanticized sentiment. It is a brutal, conscious act of value reorientation. The decision to uphold eternal values — family, fidelity, faith, giving, friendship — even after the apparent destruction of their symbolic form, becomes an act of metaphysical defiance.
Many parents describe a strange form of relief, even clarity, once they release the internal pressure to be happy. When they recognize that happiness is not the purpose of life, and instead see the narrative shape of suffering as something cosmologically legitimate, the weight of confusion lifts. From this position, they can choose suffering — not as a curse, but as a conscious alignment with a higher value.
The temptation, of course, is to let the ideal die with the child. That is the Cainian response: to abandon meaning when reality feels unjust. The same temptation arises after divorce — when some men become sugar-daddies, surrendering the ideal of marriage, or women become sugar-babes, trading family and fidelity for image and self-preservation. In a similar way, a grieving parent may be tempted to bury not just the child, but the symbolic value of family itself.
But that is exactly what must not happen.
In the Axiomatological framework, to keep the ideal alive — even in its symbolic absence — is the greatest act of love and existential loyalty. This is not denial. It is alignment with cosmic narrative. The parent does not protect themselves from grief; they protect the sacred structure that gave the grief its moral weight in the first place.
Here, we return to the story of Isaac (יִצְחָק / Yitzhak), whose name means “he laughs.” Isaac was born of impossibility — Sarah, ninety years old, laughed when she heard God’s promise. And God responded, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” The child born from laughter was also nearly sacrificed — and yet, in the unfolding biblical arc, he was not destroyed. Isaac became the quiet continuity of the covenant.
Likewise, in Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, the protagonist Isak endures the death of his child without bitterness, without transformation into cynicism or withdrawal. He remains rooted — a man whose ideal of family, land, and structure survives grief, even without joy. He does not laugh. But he does not curse.
To accept suffering without letting go of the ideal — to preserve value in the ruins — is the final act in this model. It is a quiet victory, but it is not insignificant. It is what Axiomatology calls a narrative resurrection: not a reversal of death, but the restoration of value orientation, forged in pain, upheld by love, and redeemed through loyalty to what matters most.
Liberating Conclusion: There Is No Happy Ending
Losing a child is the most excruciating form of suffering. And in the face of that, the hardest thing is not enduring the pain — it is not letting go of the ideal. The temptation to collapse into despair, cynicism, or moral apathy is enormous. But those who hold on — not to outcomes, but to values — sometimes find themselves shocked by a strange and unexpected realization: even after everything has been taken, the ideal remains.
It is in this moment, paradoxically, that something faintly luminous appears.
Not happiness. Not peace. But a glimmer of hope — fragile, flickering, but real.
A moment of silence. Eyes filled with tears.
And in that silence, a spark.
Some parents describe this moment with reverence. One father, standing at the edge of everything, said:
“One needs a hill to die on… and that one seems to be a good one.”
That is not sentimentality.
That is the spirit of Abraham, the innocence of Abel, the crucified faith of Christ Himself.
It is the act of dying on the hill of the ideal, not because it guarantees comfort, but because it is the only thing left worth dying for — and therefore, the only thing left worth living for.
Is happiness guaranteed by walking this path?
No. Not even close.
There may be years before a genuine smile returns.
But what is guaranteed is meaning — and a form of strength the modern world can hardly comprehend.
This meaning is deeper than what can be conveyed in lyrics, even from voices like Ronan Keating or Eric Clapton. It is not about closure. It is about waking up each day, carrying the weight, and demonstrating to the world that everything can be stripped away — the child, the future, the joy — but not the faith in values.
Not the belief in family, in loyalty, in sacrifice, in truth, in God.
And maybe, just maybe, that is enough to go on living.
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