Pleasure and Pain

This article, that I came across on TPM's Facebook page, titled 'When Pain Isn’t Painful' by David Bain is a long piece of writing that's not very informative. After reading it, you're none the wiser about the topic and where they're going with it. 

I gather this undated article is one of the 'popular articles' rather than academic articles that has grown out of a Templeton project on the value of suffering which took place during September 2013 - May 2016 with 2 team leaders, Bain (author of this piece) being one of them, a postdoc and maybe another 'skivy' PhD or below. See here for the project description. 

Suffering is a topic that holds no interest for me in and of itself. It's only relevant in relation to my project on empathy. It's something religious people have a 'thing' about.

John Templeton (a republican evangelical Christian) did as well, so this project has to have that conservative Christian evangelical bias to it, since all Templeton funded projects must be in accordance with his views. I gather that he thought it made you more compassionate, 'grow' as a person, and most importantly, encourage spiritual development. I disagree with the first two and don't care about spiritual development. 

Christians glorify suffering because Jesus 'suffered' at the end of his life. But not throughout his life!! Furthermore, heaven, where everyone wants to go, is suffering-free but hell is full of suffering but no-one is queuing up for entry to that one. 

QED no-one wants to suffer in this life or the next, whatever the latter is.

According to the project description, the Templeton Foundation funding (led by a family dynasty, passed from father to son to daughter) was intended to go towards papers, conferences, a monograph and setting up a centre at Glasgow University named: Centre for Affective Experience. Has it set up yet? Not that I can see. But Glasgow Uni is 'into' the 'emotions'. It's a 'thing' up there in Scotland.🙄 

But the University of Glasgow does have a 20 year long overactive 'Perceptual Experience Centre' run by Fiona Macpherson which combines the disciplines of: psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy, human - computer interaction and artistic practice.

So here are some of my own thoughts, regardless of the article and project:

Enjoying pain or not being bothered by pain is an abnormality. It's a condition. Your survival instinct is on the blink causing you to lack respect for yourself.

As far as I'm concerned there's zero value whatsoever in suffering.

If you think there's value in suffering then you're potentially a danger to yourself and others because you may well cross-apply the suffering to those around you. You'll see nothing wrong with causing suffering or watching others suffer. Indeed, you'll get a certain satisfaction from seeing others suffer, seeing it as normal. 

I don't think suffering itself promotes compassion. Prejudices remain. As we see with Israel: Zero compassion with the suffering of Jews but plenty for Gaza who, to a person, hate Jews and wish them ill.

As for masochism, I don't understand why anyone would want to be a masochist; who is really just an inverted sadist; or its opposite, a sadist. Both are extremely unhealthy and are a sign something is seriously wrong. Hence, those who engage in S&M are acting out a trauma which may give them release but it's short-lived and potentially very dangerous. There's an underlying, unresolved trauma that needs attention.

Pleasure is not just the absence of pain it's a goal in and of itself. I totally identify that life is about the pursuit of pleasure but pleasure can mean different things to different people. But it doesn't involve suffering for suffering's sake. Suffering happens but if it's imposed on you it is morally reprehensible. Otherwise you don't recognise abuse when it's happening to you which is a problem in itself.