RE: The Purpose of Pain
January 27, 2021 at 4:18 pm
(This post was last modified: January 27, 2021 at 4:48 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
If we wanted to get super meta, I think that our tendency to overestimate the value and efficacy of pain as a learning tool while simultaneously underreporting or not genuinely considering it's adverse effects towards the same is, itself, a way to minimize and avoid pain. It is more bearable, we imagine, if it has value.
Maybe so, but what value? We don't all respond to pain the same way, so maybe some of us do learn from pain or we do sometimes learn from some pain..but what? Are we learning the right lessons and is pain a particularly good setting to figure those out in? It's hard to see it as reliable in any of those contexts - and here again I'd compare it to our explicitly pain avoiding setups for kids. They do show a reliable effect and benefit. We have the the advantage of a thinking and plotting and planning and comparing brain, though, to help us instantiate these sorts of situations in reality. I'd tend to agree with Sal, that if pain is a teacher it's not a very good one. Fine, for the product of unplanned monkey sex back in the day.
I'd push back on it being an excuse for creating a sorry ass existence though. They think the meatgrinder is the best god could or would do, and it's good for us. In reality, they're not using it to assert a god or a sorry existence, it's been used to excuse and enforce the sorry state of our peers - but never ourselves, mostly enforced by ourselves, for all of human existence. So much so that a pessimistic view of life that is thoroughly amenable to the idea of the soul forge as a natural or supernatural thing operating in reality has become pretty common.
We suffer, and we want it to mean something.
We see suffering, and we want it to mean something.
We cause suffering, and we want it to mean something.
We suffer and see suffering and cause suffering, because we want suffering to mean something.
I'd refer to The Prophet, Luda, as to all that pain has ever meant. Move, get out the way.
*and speaking of a painless existence - especially in response to earlier comments about pains necessity and utility (and other interesting things we do), people who live in a painless existence now often volunteer to do things that they know will cause them pain. No lofty goal required. It just might be fun. If there were no pain in our "normal existence" - there would still be people who signed up for some. If there were a trigger, people would turn it on and off. Even more so if it were the only way to learn in heaven...which I hope isn't the case - and doesn't exactly leave us thinking that soul forge ideology makes any sense from any angle. This is the meat of a loopy belief that some soul forgers actually do hold. That what excuses a creator for his role in this, whatever that is, is that we have made some agreement that we no longer remember.
Which is just, chefs kiss...... cuz now we're amnesiacs, too....and it seems like we may have lost knowledge as a consequence of pain, rather than gained whatever unreliable amount we might expect to acquire, out of something that may be nothing more than a little vr skin party.
Maybe so, but what value? We don't all respond to pain the same way, so maybe some of us do learn from pain or we do sometimes learn from some pain..but what? Are we learning the right lessons and is pain a particularly good setting to figure those out in? It's hard to see it as reliable in any of those contexts - and here again I'd compare it to our explicitly pain avoiding setups for kids. They do show a reliable effect and benefit. We have the the advantage of a thinking and plotting and planning and comparing brain, though, to help us instantiate these sorts of situations in reality. I'd tend to agree with Sal, that if pain is a teacher it's not a very good one. Fine, for the product of unplanned monkey sex back in the day.
I'd push back on it being an excuse for creating a sorry ass existence though. They think the meatgrinder is the best god could or would do, and it's good for us. In reality, they're not using it to assert a god or a sorry existence, it's been used to excuse and enforce the sorry state of our peers - but never ourselves, mostly enforced by ourselves, for all of human existence. So much so that a pessimistic view of life that is thoroughly amenable to the idea of the soul forge as a natural or supernatural thing operating in reality has become pretty common.
We suffer, and we want it to mean something.
We see suffering, and we want it to mean something.
We cause suffering, and we want it to mean something.
We suffer and see suffering and cause suffering, because we want suffering to mean something.
I'd refer to The Prophet, Luda, as to all that pain has ever meant. Move, get out the way.
*and speaking of a painless existence - especially in response to earlier comments about pains necessity and utility (and other interesting things we do), people who live in a painless existence now often volunteer to do things that they know will cause them pain. No lofty goal required. It just might be fun. If there were no pain in our "normal existence" - there would still be people who signed up for some. If there were a trigger, people would turn it on and off. Even more so if it were the only way to learn in heaven...which I hope isn't the case - and doesn't exactly leave us thinking that soul forge ideology makes any sense from any angle. This is the meat of a loopy belief that some soul forgers actually do hold. That what excuses a creator for his role in this, whatever that is, is that we have made some agreement that we no longer remember.
Which is just, chefs kiss...... cuz now we're amnesiacs, too....and it seems like we may have lost knowledge as a consequence of pain, rather than gained whatever unreliable amount we might expect to acquire, out of something that may be nothing more than a little vr skin party.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
