Pain

I don’t understand pain. It doesn’t help. The only use is to serve that you don’t stick your hand in a fire. Now I think this is pretty obvious, and after you burn yourself the first time, surely the point would be made.

And yet it afflicts everyone and makes them all suffer. Doctors think it shouldn’t exist. They have invented ways to get rid of it. As with most diseases, a cure is better than the illness, so it’s a nice idea to think of a treatment.

In terms of drugs; if you take too many of them, you get addicted. I have recently had a bad stomach ache. And paracetamol doesn’t seem to work. So getting addicted there would be quite stupid. But if it doesn’t work, why bother with them at all? Suffering even afflicted Jesus, and quite badly – and he was the son of God. Clearly someone messed up along the line somewhere.

I am doing a mindfulness course – something akin to sitting in a cave and achieving some level of enlightenment and bliss. This would seem to be the answer then, but I don’t think that is made to solve stomach pain (which I also have had.) Therefore I have done some research:

Relaxation techniques recognise that by doing a basic physical function you can regain control of your subconscious and redirect subconscious thought processes. Some very clever people have thought about it, including scientists (who are supposed to be clever.) Even Descartes and Nietzsche have given it some thought. Pain is apparently subjective – we all experience it differently – so to some pleasure can be pain. But I have yet to experience that.

We can measure pain though – through seeing when and how many pain receptors fire to certain stimuli. Thus we can measure how well analgesic drugs work. Yet philosophers think we cannot measure pain or experience it the same way as we can see an apple on a table. So what do we do apart from pray – for if the devil is the cause of all that is bad (including pain) maybe this might help.

You give somebody a strawberry and most people have a similar experience, but you give someone a painful experience and it can range from ecstatic pleasure to agony. Until we know what consciousness is, we won’t really understand what pain is. However there are two quotes that shine a light on it:

‘Everybody hurts’ says R.E.M.

‘Everything hurts’ says Michelangelo.

Bugger.