I regret my tone, since I was not aiming to shock. I think my own excitement and impressions of materialism, which I have only recently been introduced to, came out as a smug and pretentious. I am still impressed and shocked myself :) I am new here and I will hopefully get better at this. But still, I was trying to put an idea out there, which I see now I did so very poorly. I might as well get some practice and try to clarify:
Pain responds solely to stimuli and cannot be argued with. If your arm is severed, you could explain to your senses that you fully understand the implications of the injury and if your mind wasn’t pounding with unbearable pain that you could calm yourself and slow your heart rate and therefore increase your chances of survival, yet your screaming nerve endings wouldn’t give the slightest care. We know that pain lies deeper in the brain than language or reason. Pain is primitive. I don’t think I was positing that pain is ‘morally’ bad, just functionally stubborn. I guess that’s a different question. I’m stubborn too, it seems. Oh well, Thanks for humoring me! :)
I regret my tone, since I was not aiming to shock. I think my own excitement and impressions of materialism, which I have only recently been introduced to, came out as a smug and pretentious. I am still impressed and shocked myself :) I am new here and I will hopefully get better at this. But still, I was trying to put an idea out there, which I see now I did so very poorly. I might as well get some practice and try to clarify:
Pain responds solely to stimuli and cannot be argued with. If your arm is severed, you could explain to your senses that you fully understand the implications of the injury and if your mind wasn’t pounding with unbearable pain that you could calm yourself and slow your heart rate and therefore increase your chances of survival, yet your screaming nerve endings wouldn’t give the slightest care. We know that pain lies deeper in the brain than language or reason. Pain is primitive. I don’t think I was positing that pain is ‘morally’ bad, just functionally stubborn. I guess that’s a different question. I’m stubborn too, it seems. Oh well, Thanks for humoring me! :)