Pain : A Great Teacher

[petrushkagoogol]

• Infants that are learning to walk fall numerous times, yet persist.
• Kids with their first bicycle bump into numerous objects as their skill levels improve.
• Athletes train hard everyday in the gym to remain competitive, and very often pull muscles or have soft tissue injuries. (like anterior cruciate ligament injuries).

Nociceptors seem to have an identity of their own, that acts as a life guide and teacher. (Remember your first caning in school). Even as a child our parents use the rather ambivalent maxim "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Pain is used even on kids as a kind of reinforcement learning. (machine learning).

 

Indeed, the paradox here is the motivator is Pain (not Pleasure), and efforts to reduce it. This remains true throughout life, and serves as a modulator.

 

This is something like a bulls-eye that we try to achieve consistently, but some degree of failure is inevitable.

 

Pleasure can be increased by reducing pain, but I doubt it can be a life-driver.

 

A person at every level of society experiences pain -

• A janitor has low self-esteem
• A CEO has issues with tension and depression

Too much pleasure, causes cold-turkey like withdrawal, when the stimulus is attenuated, and leads to pain.

 

Is not pain then a great systemic driver for homo sapiens ? 

Edited May 1, 2018 by petrushkagoogol

[Maine farmer]

 

A janitor has low self-esteem

Perhaps some, but not all.  I have known proud janitors.  

 

This reminds me of a time when I was in college and one of my classes got a tour of a local sewage treatment plant, and the guy giving the tour was one of the happiest and proudest people I ever encountered.  You should have seen his face light up when one of the students asked if we could look inside the scum tank!

 

As for pain, people all perceive pain differently.  It is far more complex than you indicate.

[exchemist]

Perhaps some, but not all.  I have known proud janitors.  

 

This reminds me of a time when I was in college and one of my classes got a tour of a local sewage treatment plant, and the guy giving the tour was one of the happiest and proudest people I ever encountered.  You should have seen his face light up when one of the students asked if we could look inside the scum tank!

 

As for pain, people all perceive pain differently.  It is far more complex than you indicate.

I remember as a 6th Form student thinking how cool sewage treatment plants were. And I still remember the TV programme about the Beckton Sewage Works, that processes about half of London. The plant manager made a point of filling a glass from the main outfall into the Thames from the works and drinking it on-camera. 

 

And of course nowadays they even generate electricity from the methane given off by the fermentation tanks.

 

I'm told, too, that sewage plant workers are never without a good supply of beautiful fresh tomatoes. The seeds pass through the digestive tracts of thousands of Londoners and germinate in the ideal growth medium provided at certain points of the process!  

[sanctus]

Buffy quoted this here once, but liked it so much never forgot:
To learn you have to suffer. Question is how much do you wanna learn?

[petrushkagoogol]

Buffy quoted this here once, but liked it so much never forgot:

To learn you have to suffer. Question is how much do you wanna learn?

 

Learning without earning compounds the misery ... ask the unemployed and under-employed 

[JMJones0424]

Learning without earning compounds the misery ... ask the unemployed and under-employed 

 

Now you've invoked something that has almost nothing to do with the original claim.  It is not the case, at least in the US, that the unemployed or underemployed are so because they have failed to learn an economically useful skill.  It may be the case that there exists no job in their area that requires their skills.  And it may be the case that in order to move to an area that does require their knowledge, they must abandon social ties that are stronger than employment alone.  It may also be the case that they are unable to pay for the education that would enable them to learn to be employable in their community.  It may also be the case that, regardless of what they choose to learn, there is not an available job for them to take without moving.

 

Your claim ignores many different instances that could explain why people are unemployed or under-employed.  The ranks of the unemployed are not solely made up of those that studied basket weaving.