PyramidHead
Contributor
We didn't get to decide that for ourselves, unfortunately. My thinking on the matter is probably clear by now.
Yes, although it's still a relevant and interesting (albeit tangential to this conversation) question that we can still ask ourselves now.
When speaking about pain/pleasure, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty, neurophysiological roots of the two phenomena you need to understand a few things:
1) The brain is structured in a way that actively avoids pain at all times
2) The level of 'stimulus' that every brain needs to not be bored is different
What this means in terms of pain is that 'contentedness' arises when all of our needs are being met, whatever those needs are. For one person that could mean dancing at a rave until 3 am after having a nice dinner, for another person that could mean having a tea and sitting in their back yard.
Further, this means that the example you've presented is a bad one because 12 hours of the most excruciating pain imaginable does not have a corresponding opposite of 'unimaginable pleasure'. Some better examples would be:
- Would you put up with 3 really annoying years in school where you experience a fair bit of pain and stress, for 30 years of life security
- Would you put in three months of excruciating hard work, to get a lottery win in return and spend the rest of your life not working
That was the point of the example. It was to show that pain and pleasure are not symmetrical. In both of your counterexamples, you demonstrate my point: to make up for 3 annoying years, you need 30 of life security. To make 3 months of hard work worth it, you have to get a lifetime of financial freedom. You didn't set up either example so that the timespans were equal, you had to vastly skew them towards the not-pain end, and that reinforces what I was trying to say.
Once you frame the problem like that, you realize that life isn't made up of a fluctuation between pain and pleasure, it's made up of a fluctuation between pain and lack of pain. And in (many) real life scenarios, at least in this century, most people experience contentment for the vast majority of their lives, with the odd moments of extra stress / pain.
I cannot register in words how utterly unbelievable I find that statement. I suggest that it is not the product of much serious introspection and observation, but I could be wrong. Indeed, I would have to be very wrong, because I believe the exact opposite of what you say is true. Almost no-one is content, anywhere, in any century. Humans are pathologically dissatisfied, otherwise psychology as a field would not exist, nor would most music, art, poetry, or much of political discourse. Given how easy it is to experience negative sensations, how efficiently they persist and overwhelm our plans, compared to how much effort is required to deal with those sensations so we can function socially, it cannot be the case that most people are without extra stress/pain for the vast majority of their lives. Unless they are the recipients of uncannily good luck, humans must constantly divert resources to isolating, sublimating, or otherwise distracting themselves from suffering, which comes perfectly naturally and without any invitation at all. I would say that the average person, even in developed societies, is generally working more than they would like, less comfortable than they would like, not as healthy as they would like, not as far from old age as they would like, not as beautiful as they would like, and on the whole teetering on the edge of what is acceptable in all of those areas. And again, a point that often gets taken for granted but shouldn't: simply doing nothing for a moderate length of time, unless carefully planned in advance, causes the average person's life to collapse entirely.
So, again, it comes back to whether you consider a predominantly contented life valuable. Personally, I tend to think that life can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but there are other times when I'm absolutely awe-struck by the beauty of the universe, and being a part of it, and I'm incredibly glad to be alive.
I envy you those experiences. I used to feel that way from time to time. Music can bring me there occasionally. But to come full circle to the topic at hand, I know too much now. It could be a phase, it could be a hat that I'm trying on. And nobody can prove that their view of life's value is the correct one. It's like when religious family members ask me how I can look around at the splendor of God's creation and not believe in a divine creator. Too late. I can't go back to thinking like that anymore. I know too much now.