1966 — I realize the awful extent of suffering in the world. Extreme pain endured by innumerable beings in their march across life appears to me like a hopeless persecution perpetrated by inhuman forces which we must absolutely defeat.

1967-1975 — For a while, I seek to ease my desperation with thoughts such as these : each suffering is counterbalanced by a pleasure, pain is useful, fighting against it may hinder the development of a vigorous sensibility, every problem finds a solution when enough pains are taken… Then, I realize again that suffering is an unacceptable monstrosity in the lives of too many people and animals. I protest more and more against the prevalent social and political order. I look everywhere for a way out of our collective plight : in knowledge, in wisdom, in religion, in psychology, in art, in paranormal, in suicide, in refusing to think about dark problems, in attempting to live without money (source of so many ills)… During 74, I try to conceive a synthetic program of action that would integrate the many revolutions to do. Then I imagine a "General Store of Services" where everybody could find information and collaboration to solve his or her problem(s). From February to April 75, I attempt to implement such an idea in a community centre.

1975 — From September to December, I contemplate working in medicine. I take a blue-collar job in a hospital, and I examine the programs of study offered in health sciences. I wonder which of the many kinds of medicine I should choose as a profession. Besides, I learn that preventive activities are more effective than after-the-fact medical treatment : public hygiene measures, fight against poverty, biomedical research, prevention of accidents... To find an orientation, I take as a criterion the quantity of suffering that I could relieve, but then I must soon realize that there exists no large-scale inventory of sufferings, of their causes, or of their solutions! Could it be, after millennia of highly dramatic concerns about suffering, that no "central" place can be found in our societies to obtain information about it? From that moment on, I begin to dream of an enterprise that would look at human work concerning pain or suffering from a global, unified, systematic perspective. It seems to me of the utmost importance to create deliberately a theoretical discipline and a practical organization that would deal with the problem of suffering "as a whole". This idea of solution arouses my greatest hopes, but its high-sounding aspect prompts me to be extremely cautious.

1976-1977 — I begin to browse hundreds of documents in order to see how theorists and practitioners have dealt with the problem of suffering. I try to improve my conceptions and to present them in a text. I contemplate various ways to get involved in a global action against excessive pain in the world : working for the United Nations or the Red Cross; adhering to Buddhism; setting the example by getting involved in a fight against an eradicable problem such as leprosy; preaching for a new economic world order; dedicating myself to research in social or psychological sciences; managing a federation of humanitarian organizations; making a career as an engaged writer-journalist; becoming a flamboyant hero or an obscure practitioner of everyday charity… In September 77, I find the Encyclopedia of Word Problems and Human Potential, a monumental work of the Union of International Associations. At last, here is a large-scale inventory of what goes wrong and of what can be done. This is the first significant reinforcement that I find for my ideas and projects. Thanks to heaven, I am not alone. However, after two years of surveys, it is clear to me that the specific idea of a global approach concerning suffering has never been realized yet.

1978-1985 — I try to see what I can do in the Mont-Laurier area, taking it as a microcosmic model of the whole wide world. As most other past and future attempts, I give this one up after a while. Back in Montreal, I think about a humanitarian periodical, about an "agency for humanitarian priorities", and about an antalgology, i.e. a scientific discipline concerned with suffering and its control, but I have no idea of how such things can be started by someone like me. I become involved for a time in Amnesty International, in the Société québécoise pour la défense des animaux, in Synthèse (a monthly serial concerned with the activities of nonprofit associations). I take temporarily under my roof some homeless people with mental health problems, and four refugees from the South. During all those years, I pursue an intense psycho-spiritual search for finding a key to my life and to my humanitarian commitment. I get to know, in 84, the activities of the International Association for the Study of Pain : it is the second significant reinforcement in the perspective of my approach, though physical pain is only one among many forms of suffering.

1986-1988 — I produce in october 86 a sixty-five page manuscript presenting my conceptions. It is entitled L'organisation générale contre les maux (The Systematic Approach to Suffering), and it describes a conceptual framework in which can be organized theory, strategy, and practical action concerning suffering. I try afterwards to interest people to the manuscript or to the organization, but in vain.

1988-1991 — During three years, I turn to the study of the nervous system in order to understand the neuropsychological basis of suffering. In August 1990, I put on the trade register an enterprise called OMNES, for providing a certain legal frame to my research activities. From 88 to 97, I participate to the Foster Parent Plan of Canada, with a child in Haiti.

1992-97 — I collaborate with a half dozen nonprofit organizations. I am particularly involved, as a trustee and a volunteer, with "Fondation NDA", an association created by people with chronic pain. I continue to make plans for a kind of "strategic center for humanitarian action" that would, among other things, publish a continuously updated handbook presenting a global strategy to win the war against excessive suffering.

1997-98 — I get access to the Internet. I find on the Web, in April 97 and then in January 98, two new significant reinforcements, the third and fourth ones, in the perspective of my approach.
 

Eager to get into action on the Internet, I try from April to June 97 to develop an interest group around the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, but people who subscribe to it remain more passive than I expected. I take part then in an Internet discussion group at the New Civilization Network (July 97 to April 98), where I get to know Roan Carratu's conception of a "Geonet", a geodesic network of cooperators for transforming the world. Drawing my inspiration from this model, I imagine an "Algonet", a global program of direct actions to reduce systematically the number of cases of excessive suffering. I present the project to my correspondents and in a personal website (from November 97 to April 98). As always, people approve the idea but nobody wants to get involved! This time, I am determined to get to the bottom of the matter. From June to October 98, I redesign the Algonet project to make it more attractive, and I present it to nearly twenty organizations in Montreal, under the name "Agence stratégique de service humanitaire". In vain. At the beginning of December 98, I work at a "refugee camp" for homeless people, organized downtown by the group ATSA (Action terroriste socialement acceptable) in collaboration with the Canadian army.

1999 — Then, full time throughout 99, I think hard. In the huge set of activities concerning suffering, can there be an alliance, a network that could acquire means of management and of communication, and that could develop and implement a universal strategy against excessive suffering, a universal strategy of direct action, of structural transformation, and of research?

2002 — I work out the project SOS-Network, in the vein of Algonet and Agence stratégique de service humanitaire (see 1997-98). A related project is also thought up : Register for the Control and Prevention of Extreme Suffering Cases. Besides, I hope to form in Montreal, as a local chapter of the ISP, a group for research and action on suffering and pain. I intend also to create a chronicle on "What's new about suffering on the Internet" which would complement my Mediagraphy on Suffering. However, collaboration needed for all those projects remains impossible to find. I had thought that I would first find collaboration among ISP members or officers, but this organization seems paralyzed, as if it too, like me, was looking in vain for a way to realize its mission. I notice that since 1975 I failed not only in finding sufficient collaboration for my projects, but also in finding any "specialist" on suffering, in any field : medicine, psychology, politics, social service, charity, philosophy, religion... For instance, I'm looking in vain since years for a Buddhist scholar whose favorite subject would be dukkha, universal suffering, a subject which this religious doctrine presents as one of its basic concerns. I have the impression that there is in our societies a psychoanalytical resistance or a paradigmatic stumbling block that turns aside any endeavor seeking to tackle the problem of suffering "head-on". Terminologically, there is a problem with the word suffering, since it does not have a clear definition. For instance, it is identified with or opposed to the word pain. During a period that will have lasted from September 2002 to January 2004, I use the term "unpleasantness" to refer more precisely to the phenomenon with which I am concerned.