Limitation necessarily creates pain?

[Dylan Page]

I understand that things are limited and cannot do many things because of those limitations but I still don’t see why pain and the gazillion other kinds of suffering are necessary parts of life. What is pain’s function?  Why would it exist? It’s fundamentally, conceptually something that just should not exist. Joy and other positive feels are self justifying, meaning they need to explanation to be understood and valued. I’ve kept an open mind and generally can at least conceptually agree with most of what I have heard from Leo, but I have never heard as satisfying response justifying the existence of suffering. It seems that no matter what, even if a lesson is learned or an achievement is got, pain and suffering can always be replaced by joy and beauty and the experience will be overall better. Like, why would god make itself suffer? What’s the point? Sure we gotta experience limitation and go through all incarnations in order to be infinite and shit, but those reasons seem so ridiculously dumb for justifying suffering. If I was going to love everything infinitely, why make my creations suffer? It really makes no sense at all no matter where I look. 

[Spaceofawareness]

The purpose of pain is to ensure an organism doesn’t repeat a behaviour which caused it pain, so it essentially a slap on the wrist from nature, but, it is also an indication that you are still alive. There are other kinds of suffering which also have explanations. For example, if you feel your life is meaningless, also notice you will tend to engage in “seeking” behaviours, searching for “something” which you don’t know. If you lack meaning it is because the situation you find yourself in isn’t maximising your potential, so in this case you feel the need to go abroad, searching for something which satisfies this need for meaning and purpose.

From birth we as humans, and indeed all animals are averse to pain. It is natures way. Over time, we learn to manage pain, but we still have that same aversion to the pain. What you can learn to notice is that pain consists of at least 2 distinct things. There is firstly the raw physiological sensation of the pain, then, in reaction to this there is a suffering component, which tends to have a negative emotion attached to it. It is actually possible to separate the two, so that all one feels is the first component, the physiological sensation of pain. In normal operation, the suffering reaction will amplify the felt pain sensation, but, if you can simply observe the physiological sensation, without any distraction, then the suffering component will either be greatly diminished or completely gone. It is a kind of brain hack, and takes a bit of practice, but it does work. 

Suffering entails struggling against the source of the pain, wanting to stop it, but if this internal struggling can be suspended by applying complete observation, you will notice the difference.

[Dylan Page]

@Spaceofawareness ok and what about things like torture, where you can’t run away?

[Spaceofawareness]

@Dylan Page It’s natures way of saying, you “fucked up”, big time, so you pay big time. It’s not nice. And sometimes you didn’t fuck up, it was just really bad luck. But nature doesn’t care. All it cares about is if you survive to pass on your genes, so if a little pain can motivate you to survive long enough to do that, it will be the case.

[Dylan Page]

The idea that you can get “unlucky” is really fucking sad if it’s true. There should be no such thing as: you got unlucky so enjoy being tortured and raped for 30 days and then killed immediately after with no retribution. Justifying that with a sort of “god is all loving” claim just seems so hilariously contradictory. I’ve heard so many responses to the existence of pain like this and they just make me laugh with how poorly thought out they are. @Spaceofawareness

Edited January 31, 2020 by Dylan Page

[Forestluv]

12 hours ago, Dylan Page said:

but I have never heard as satisfying response justifying the existence of suffering. 

It seems like you have created a construct in which there is no justification that you will find satisfying.

[Dylan Page]

@Serotoninluv could you elaborate on that? I’m not sure what that means. 
There is no situation in which suffering is better than neutrality or positivity, even if you are learning a lesson from that pain. You could have learnt that lesson in a way that caused a good emotion, rather than a bad one. The seeming fact that struggle is necessary for growth is immediately concerning. Why should we have to suffer to learn and change? Why would god do that? Some would say it’s to learn empathy. My response is, we wouldn’t need to empathize with pain if nobody felt it. Why can’t survival be a pleasureful process rather than either a pain in the ass or miserable? All of these questions regarding pain have never, ever been justified to me in a way that is even remotely reasonable at all. All I’ve heard is “for love”. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that response? 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Dylan Page

[Leo Gura]

13 hours ago, Dylan Page said:

What is pain’s function?  Why would it exist? It’s fundamentally, conceptually something that just should not exist.

How about you actually contemplate why pain exists rather than complaining about how you know better?

Imagine the following scenario: you have God's powers to create baby from scratch. You've designed the whole baby and now you have one final design decision to make before it is born: Should it be able to feel pain? Yes or No?

If you select No, your baby will die within a few weeks.

If you select Yes, your baby will live to be 80 years old.

That is reality.

If you didn't feel pain there would literally be nothing stopping you from grilling your own arm for dinner. There would also be nothing stopping you from raping your own mother.

[Dylan Page]

@Leo Gura why is pain necessary for survival? Why can’t survival be fun? Many say the best lessons are the hardest to learn. Why can’t they be the easiest? Why include pain at all. God has infinite power, why couldn’t he make paradise? Why this constant battle. Why ignorance, why hate, why any of that. You can say “for love”, because god loves everything, but if god loved everything, why would he make his creations suffer? And I don’t mean to gender god, it’s for the sake of conversation. 

[Leo Gura]

@Dylan Page Contemplate!

Without pain, how would you know what could kill you?

[Dylan Page]

The basic message is that in any scenario, if pain were replaced with pleasure, it would be objectively better, given the same outcome, same lessons, same everything. The only thing that changes is the raw sensation. @Leo Gura

[Dylan Page]

Well, we could be born with knowledge of what we are from the get go, but in that case we would know that we are god and the illusion of self would become untenable. Given that we must stay in a shroud of ignorance pain is certainly an effective way of keeping us alive, but I can also conjure many other images of things being able to survive via positive motivation only. It would just require more ignorance and greater care. Like a baby bird in a mother’s nest, the babies most of the time don’t have a care in the world, they eat because they like it and they play because they like it. There is no suffering because it isn’t necessary. Why not make it like that for everything? @Leo Gura

Edited January 31, 2020 by Dylan Page

[Dylan Page]

@Keyhole well the possibility that we could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow and cease to exist permanently kind of destroys any hope for me that evolution is headed somewhere with an intelligent purpose. Maybe we are being shrouded by some karmic forcefield by god but I really doubt it. Also, anything formed cannot be objectively perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist except for in the realm of relativity. As I think about it more, the definition of “perfect” starts to become blurry, it’s hard to know what it even means. And to the “and we are also aware as well” point, like 99.9999999999999999^^^9999% of people don’t know that if it is true, so idk about that either. 
I will say though, on a side note, that that song is fire, lol.

Edited January 31, 2020 by Dylan Page

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Dylan Page said:

@Serotoninluv could you elaborate on that? I’m not sure what that means. 
There is no situation in which suffering is better than neutrality or positivity, even if you are learning a lesson from that pain. You could have learnt that lesson in a way that caused a good emotion, rather than a bad one. The seeming fact that struggle is necessary for growth is immediately concerning. Why should we have to suffer to learn and change? Why would god do that? Some would say it’s to learn empathy. My response is, we wouldn’t need to empathize with pain if nobody felt it. Why can’t survival be a pleasureful process rather than either a pain in the ass or miserable? All of these questions regarding pain have never, ever been justified to me in a way that is even remotely reasonable at all. All I’ve heard is “for love”. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that response? 

There is no need to justify your perspective that there is no justification for pain and suffering. Within the constraints of your relationship to reality, I can’t find a justification either. 

Last week, I watched a documentary on a serial killer. His perception about pan and suffering was very different than yours. In his relationship to reality, justification for pain and suffering wasn’t even necessary. 

[Dylan Page]

@Serotoninluv right, so why do I have to experience suffering then, I really don’t care about the serial killer, all that kind of person does is cause mass suffering for his own selfish motives. If I could exist without causing pain to others, I would. I try my best to be as kind and understanding as possible. Why did god make someone who loves to murder people? Why do humans like meat? Why is it that every time we take a step we commit mass genocide against microbes? It’s a pretty dogshit situation if you ask me. 

[Dylan Page]

@Keyhole I’ve never really been sure what people mean by awakening. I’ve had many, many epiphanies over the course of my life, but I’ve never like, become god or whatever people talk about, I feel like the definition isn’t clear on what awakening is, and so tons of people run around claiming they had an awakening when in reality ones awakening is something totally different to someone else.

[Forestluv]

8 minutes ago, Dylan Page said:

@Serotoninluv right, so why do I have to experience suffering then, I really don’t care about the serial killer, all that kind of person does is cause mass suffering for his own selfish motives. If I could exist without causing pain to others, I would. I try my best to be as kind and understanding as possible. Why did god make someone who loves to murder people? Why do humans like meat? Why is it that every time we take a step we commit mass genocide against microbes? It’s a pretty dogshit situation if you ask me. 

As I said, based on your construct of pain and suffering, there is no justification. If I were to create a movie about how there is no justification for pain and suffering, I would ask you to be the lead actor. 

Of course you don’t care about the serial killer’s perspective, because in your reality he is the bad guy. And you want to maintain immersion in your reality. 

From the killer’s reality, pain and suffering is good. He asks “why did god create police officers that love to stop murderers?”. He is sitting in prison for doing good. That’s a dogshit situation if you ask him. 

[Dylan Page]

@Serotoninluv I never said the killer was evil, I’m saying, why allow 2 beings with completely contradictory value systems exist within the same realm at all. I don’t care about my immersion in reality or my survival or perspective or ego or any of that shit, I’m talking about on a purely rational level. Put a and b into reality a likes to eat cake and b likes to watch people suffer as he smashes the cake in front of their face. Why allow them to live in the same plane of existence at all. 

[Moreira]

we need the darkness to appreciate light.

we need the pain and suffering to appreciate bliss and happiness. our mind works with references. Without bad how we know something is good?

and all is necessary.

 

[Dylan Page]

@Moreira we do not need suffering to know love. Feel love, it can exist on its own, just like suffering.