Quote Originally Posted by KariTheFox View Post
The life experiences the writing team had was probably "living in and being raised in a country that is heavily influenced by Buddhist beliefs" - which among other things, teach that suffering is an inevitable part of life. So the only sense that suffering is "good" is the fact that life is good. Suffering is a part of life, and allows us to feel compassion, so in that sense it's good. (Though really it's not accurate to describe suffering as good or bad in this framework, it simply is.)

I think a lot of western audience get tripped up because they're looking at the concept of suffering through a Western-Christian lens, where it is a punishment placed on mankind for its sins (hence all the framing about Venat "punishing" the ancients with death and suffering) when really, it's just that suffering is a part of our lives, and turning away from or denying it only makes it fester.
The problem with this is that the Venat directally inflicts this suffering on people and often some pretty extreme a vile things. So she does punish the people of Etheris for not meeting her standards, as far as we can see the Anicents lived rich full lives so there doesn't seem to have been a sudden need to make a world of disease, malnutrition and children freeze to death in the snow, there seems to be little effort in showing how such suffering made peoples lives better but we see a lot of how the suffering Venat inflicted broke people.