Unity in suffering, diversity in vision

What I wanted to say in my last post, was that the painful experiences of men are not much different. There are always the same dimensions of life (or human needs), physical or psychical, which are touched in such cases.
As far as there are cultural differences they are mostly differences of sensitivity within such a dimension. For example modern civilized people are rather sensitive to physical pain, but not very sensitive to insult or disrespect. In traditional "macho" cultures men are much less sensitive to physical pain but extremely touchy in matters of respect. That's partly a consequence of different ways of education.

On the other hand, human visions of a good or right life are much more diverse, and it would be dangerous to imply that our personal vision is in any way valid for others. That's why a lot of philosophers nowadays distinguish between the ideas about a good life
(which are valid only within a community) and the genuine moral norms (which are valid for everyone).
The frailness of personal visions has also been stressed by the philosopher Karl Popper (in his book about "the open society and its enemies"). Popper criticized utilitarianism which called for "maximal happiness for the maximal number of men" arguing that we can't build up ethics on imagined future happinesses; he argued instead to minimize (present, concrete) pain.