[Serious] The Purpose of Pain

[Angrboda]

I spend the vast majority of my time not having negative emotions.  Aside from those who our hypothetical god has graced with clinical depression or terminal clumsiness, suffering is an alarming and temporary difference in our everyday lives.  Most of the negative emotions I do have, are things like being pissed that my tea is too hot or cold or sweet...or not sweet enough.

We already learn and adapt and grow outside of pain, and spend a considerable amount of time ensuring that our children -can- learn without that barrier in place.

I believe it was Sam Harris who pointed out that consciousness is always in the process of trying to change what it's feeling and experiencing. If we're sad, we want to be happy, if we're anxious, we take steps to become calm, if we're bored we seek excitement. Something is driving that, whether there's an all-encompassing name that describes all instances of it or not. The Buddhists refer to Dukkha, or disquiet and disturbance of the mind, which may be similar. And Sartre's conception of consciousness posited that what we are, the in-itself, is constantly seeking to negate what is for what can be. Sartre may be a bit literal in his conception, but there is a definite sense in which we are driven by the things we are not. So "suffering" may be the wrong word, but the human mind has, and likely needs, something to goad it out of whatever complacency it has when things aren't ideal or optimum. Failure is a necessity in a universe with entropy. So the mind has to have signals to itself to facilitate fighting back against the inevitable failings. If there isn't some sense in which what we imagine we could be is better than what we currently are, then why would we make any effort to change?