I don’t have much choice in whether to consider pain good.
I assume you do this every time you exercise. Again, good doesn’t mean not-painful; a change in beliefs will flip some given from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. A searing pain is bad if you have no reason to endure; it’s good if you think the alternative is the gom jabbar. (Is this really so difficult or controversial a point?)
No, it’s just that to shore up your position, you have to diminish the point of the quote into triviality.
You can consider the long term effects of the pain to be good. You can be trained to get a dopamine release during a certain kind of pain. You cannot deem the pain itself good. A belief that the pain is good does not change the pain, and only exists through self-deception.
Pain is just pain; it’s neither good nor bad. Good and bad are only judgments, which are thoughts, and as such are determined by one’s mind & beliefs. I think this is a profound truth unappreciated by many, and by no means trivial.
Pain is the raw “quale” of badness. You can deem some future goal to be good, and worth the pain, but you can’t judge pain good, except in an abstract, meaningless sense, disconnected from any implications for your actions.
I think the quote originator, and Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, might say that you can instead think pain neither good nor bad, but simply there. Certainly, it is hard to act as if pain is good, but the idea is that the rational person can subordinate that reflexive reaction, after a moment’s thought (perhaps less with training) and move beyond it.
You can be trained to get a dopamine release during a certain kind of pain.
I don’t know if you were joking, but masochists only enjoy a very narrow kind of pain. It’s a misconception that masochists enjoy all, or even many kinds of pain.
I assume you do this every time you exercise. Again, good doesn’t mean not-painful; a change in beliefs will flip some given from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. A searing pain is bad if you have no reason to endure; it’s good if you think the alternative is the gom jabbar. (Is this really so difficult or controversial a point?)
No, it’s just that to shore up your position, you have to diminish the point of the quote into triviality.
You can consider the long term effects of the pain to be good. You can be trained to get a dopamine release during a certain kind of pain. You cannot deem the pain itself good. A belief that the pain is good does not change the pain, and only exists through self-deception.
And please burn every copy of Dune you have. ;-)
Pain is just pain; it’s neither good nor bad. Good and bad are only judgments, which are thoughts, and as such are determined by one’s mind & beliefs. I think this is a profound truth unappreciated by many, and by no means trivial.
Over my dry dessicated remains!
Pain is the raw “quale” of badness. You can deem some future goal to be good, and worth the pain, but you can’t judge pain good, except in an abstract, meaningless sense, disconnected from any implications for your actions.
I think the quote originator, and Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, might say that you can instead think pain neither good nor bad, but simply there. Certainly, it is hard to act as if pain is good, but the idea is that the rational person can subordinate that reflexive reaction, after a moment’s thought (perhaps less with training) and move beyond it.
Says the non-masochist.
The non-masochist also said:
I don’t know if you were joking, but masochists only enjoy a very narrow kind of pain. It’s a misconception that masochists enjoy all, or even many kinds of pain.