"Thus comes the paradox that a species that has by far the fewest contacts with direct sources of pain… through language is able to suffer with a degree of intensity, constancy and pervasiveness that is literally unimaginable in the nonhuman world. Because of the {structure of language}, we can judge ourselves and find ourselves to be wanting; we can imagine ideals and find the present to be unacceptable by comparison; we can reconstruct the past; we can worry about imagined futures; we can suffer with the knowledge that we will die."
Wilson et al.( 2001)
International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Theory 1, 205-215
