‘Pain and Pleasure: Part 1’
CAERS Substack Article #73
Every living creature that has ever inhabited this planet, or ever will, seeks to maintain its existence. And each learns that pleasure implies that existence is more likely, and that pain is a warning that existence may be in peril. A full belly is more satisfying than an empty one. A painless, fully functional extremity is more reassuring than a painful, injured one. So, life’s fundamental default position, our ‘modus operandi’, is to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
However, with our powerful brains, humans are capable of much more than this simple attitude to life; we can ask questions about the very meaning of our lives beyond mere existence. But that does not mean that we must engage in such reflection; it seems that we can be content, even quite happy, to keep it simple by avoiding such sober introspection.
In this respect I have discovered over the years that there is a spectrum of approaches that we can adopt when it comes to our life plan. At one end we can make the search for pleasure and avoidance of pain our primary, or even only, goals. At the other end, we can seek truth and not be overly concerned with whether that produces pain or pleasure. I suspect that most of us lie somewhere in the middle of such a spectrum.
Given the blessings most of us experience daily, many of which were undreamed of a mere one hundred years ago, pleasure dominates our lives more than pain, or fear of pain, has ever done. In fact, it seems as though most things come with warrantees, guarantees or some form of insurance that, at least in theory, can free us of the need to worry about pain arising unexpectedly or lasting very long. Because we do not always realize this, it can be tempting to resist thinking about any real possibility of pain to the point that we actively dismiss anyone suggesting that pain could be on the horizon.
But we intuitively know, perhaps only at an unspoken, subconscious level, that pain is virtually inevitable in life. The deepest, most primitive parts of our brain are hardwired for the anxiety associated with this reality, so that even when things are going well, we still harbour a subterranean unease. It is no mere coincidence that anxiety is a common affliction today.
So, it should not be surprising that even twenty-first century Western society tends to use eons- old denial and avoidance as our go-to mechanisms for dealing with this angst. It is easy to find ourselves opting to follow a roadmap that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain, rather than one whose direction optimizes seeking truth. The latter has a tendency to be uncomfortable and risky; the truth is not always pleasant and its attainment often involves sacrifice, even painful sacrifice.
Whether we realize it or not, each of us on a regular basis is faced with the challenge of taking the ‘road less travelled’, the one that leads us to greater truths which is often uphill against a strong headwind. It is not a popular route; it is often one that is lonely because it flows against the currents of the various tribes to which we belong. The greater the potential for pain the less likely most of us are to seek truth, just as we are equally reluctant to put pleasure on the back-burner to seek truth as well.
Has it always been like this? Or is it possible that as we have been able to make our lives safer and more pleasurable that we now fear pain and avoid it even more energetically than we did when times were ‘tougher’? I have certainly found both personally and professionally there are two things that can inspire us to seek truth more aggressively and not be so consumed with pleasure and pain.
The first is when we experience genuine pain from which we not only survive but which ultimately makes us stronger. It is the ‘anti-fragility’ of which Nassim Taleb speaks that goes beyond mere resiliency and results in sometimes paradigm-shifting growth spurts that change us markedly for the better. When we face and conquer our pain and fear we are less likely to dread them going forward, and we become more willing and able to deal with them directly rather than running and hiding.
The second thing that can inspire such change is the passage of time. As we age, we can find ourselves less enamoured by pleasure and less afraid of pain because we find them very transitory and somewhat shallow. Truth, on the other hand, has a deeper and more satisfying permanency; it provides a more substantial foundation upon which to build a more meaningful life. This includes more meaningful relationships, ones that do not rely on aesthetic tastes so much as deeply-held values that are often acquired through the trials and tribulations of a life lived with integrity. It is common to feel that the arrival of pain in a relationship means that something is seriously wrong, when in fact it may provide an opportunity to re-evaluate and improve the foundation of that relationship. But the pain or potential for pain can scare us into prematurely believing that the relationship is best abandoned.
The process of seeking the truth, even if it will never be known in its entirety and even if it is painful and beyond our ability to change it much, can be the ultimate goal for us if we choose.
But many people understandably opt for a very practical approach to all of this: why seek truth if I can’t do anything about it anyway? Why torture myself seeking truth when I can focus on my own pleasure and pain instead? Perhaps that is the crux of the issue: how far beyond my own immediate pain and pleasure do I want my focus to be? The answer may explain why those who have grown through their pain see a truth that encourages them to focus more outwards in both time and space in the hope of alleviating their suffering and that of others through seeking great truths despite the presence of pain.
What would you say is the ‘modus operandi’ for your life—seeking pleasure and avoiding pain for yourself or seeking truth for the potential benefit of yourself and others? Throughout much of the pandemic we were only focused on one virus and it seemed as though everything else— our relationships, the rest of our mental and physical health, our spiritual needs, among many others—were put on the backburner, if they were on the stove at all. Our fear of one virus
seemed to overwhelm our search for greater truths and in doing so we may have lost part of ourselves, individually and communally.
We might well ask ourselves: at this point in time what is our modus operandi now? Have we learned anything about ourselves from the pandemic? Has our approach to pain and pleasure changed for the better or for the worse?
J. Barry Engelhardt MD (retired) MHSc (bioethics)
CAERS Health Intake Facilitator
Thanks as always, Barry, for your selfless reflective, balanced and thought provoking posts. I’m hoping to spread the word about proposed changes to the Canada Food and Drug Act. I just watched an urgent message from Paediatrician Dr. Susan Natsheh which was highlighted on Dr. Jessica Rose’s Substack. Deadline for action is tomorrow, April 26th, 2023. Please watch Dr. Natsheh’s message and consider responding as outlined in the video. Thanks for reading this. It’s time to pull together as much as we can and act! https://brightlightnews.com/doctors-urgent-message-to-canadians/
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