Pain [SFI-3]

This is the first of two “Sermons For Individualist” about pain and pleasure. They can be summed up as follows:

It’s only pain; pain never killed anyone.

It’s only pleasure; pleasure never fed anyone, clothed anyone, or earned anyone a penny; but the pursuit of it has cost many people their entire fortunes and their lives.

When my boys were young I used that line about pain, “it’s only pain; pain never killed anyone,” in a slightly teasing manner whenever one of them tried to use some supposed pain as an excuse for evading something they were supposed to do, or to gain attention, or as a lever to get their way. I never used it to minimize real pain, of course, and they always knew I was concerned for any truly bad experiences they might have, but also knew I had no patience with using pain or discomfort as an excuse.

There was another more important point about pain I wanted them to learn. Pain is a not an essential part of our values or principles. I do not mean that pain is never serious, even, in some cases, debilitating. I mean that the purpose of our lives is not the avoidance of pain, and that such pain as we experience is an exception and an indication of some wrong which needs to be corrected, but apart from the actual experience of pain, it is unimportant.

There is something about the character of pain that most do not notice. The experience of pain can be very intense and distracting, but when pain is gone, it’s actual experience cannot ever be fully recalled. We can remember that some experience we had in the past was painful, but can almost never remember exactly what the pain felt like.

It is very different from pleasure. When we recall pleasurable experiences we can often recall exactly what that experience was like, and actually have pleasure in that recollection. We can enjoy the memory of pleasure, but we do not suffer when we recall pain we no longer have and in fact may have pleasure in the consciousness of the fact we no longer have that pain.

In Terms Of Values, Pain Is Irrelevant

There is a passage in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged where Dagney said to John Galt, “We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?.”

Many people find that passage mysterious, but it is, in fact, profound in its simplicity. What Dagney is talking about is pain in all its varieties. Ayn Rand explained it this way:

What Dagny expresses here is the conviction that joy, exaltation, beauty, greatness, heroism, all the supreme, uplifting values of man’s existence on earth, are the meaning of life—not the pain or ugliness he may encounter— that one must live for the sake of such exalted moments as one may be able to achieve or experience, not for the sake of suffering—that happiness matters, but suffering does not—that no matter how much pain one may have to endure, it is never to be taken seriously, that is: never to be taken as the essence and meaning of life—that the essence of life is the achievement of joy, not the escape from pain.

The issue she refers to is the basic philosophical issue … the most fundamental division among men … between those who are pro-man, pro-mind, pro-life—and those who are anti-man, anti-mind, anti-life.

It is the difference between those who think that man’s life is important and that happiness is possible—and those who think that man’s life, by its very nature, is a hopeless, senseless tragedy and that man is a depraved creature doomed to despair and defeat. It is the difference between those whose basic motive is the desire to achieve values, to experience joy—and those whose basic motive is the desire to escape from pain, to experience a momentary relief from their chronic anxiety and guilt. [The Letters of Ayn Rand, To R. A. Williams, a fan, August 29, 1960]

Ayn Rand said about this passage, “… this is perhaps the most important point in the whole book, because it is the condensed emotional summation, the keynote or leitmotif, of the view of life presented in Atlas Shrugged.”

Not To Be Ignored

To say that pain is not essential, that it is irrelevant, or unimportant does not mean that actual pain has no significance or should be ignored. All pain is an indication of something wrong, and means what is wrong needs to be discovered and corrected.

We use the word pain to cover a broad range of experiences from physical pain to the entire repertoire of emotional suffering. How we deal with pain depends on the kind of pain it is.

Dealing With Physical Pain

Physical pain is an indication of something wrong with our bodies. The entire subject of dealing with physical pain is very large of course, but there are general principles for dealing with all physical pain.

The first step in dealing with physical pain is always ascertaining the physical cause of the pain, discovering what is physiologically wrong—the trauma, disease, or other physical problem.

The second step is taking whatever measures are possible to repair or correct the physiological problem which is the cause of the pain.

The third step is dealing with continuing pain, that is after the cause of the pain has been established and whatever corrective measures are possible have implemented, any remaining pain that interferes with one’s ability to live and enjoy their life, since it longer has any use as an indication of something wrong that needs attention, ought to ameliorated in any way possible.

Dealing With Emotional Pain

Since all feelings and emotions are physiological responses to the content of consciousness—what we think, what we know, what we value—those emotions we regard as “emotional pain” are usually those that are in response to our consciousness of some loss, or problem, or fear, for example. The entire subject of dealing with emotional pain is also a very large one, but, like physical pain, there are general principles for dealing with emotional pain.

Painful emotions run the gamut from anxiety to grief, but unlike physical pain, the cause of emotional pain does not have be discovered, because it is directly associated with whatever our minds are conscious of that is the cause of those feelings. We do not need to discover the cause of our feelings of grief when a loved one passes away, or the cause of disappointment, frustration, and perhaps, “sense of unjust treatment,” when losing a job unexpectedly, or the cause of our feelings of anxiety when anticipating a serious operation. We already know the cause; it is our consciousness of our loss, our disappointment, or the approach of something potentially risky or painful.

The mistake that most people make about dealing with emotional pain is confusing it with the way we deal with physical pain. Emotional pain is, like physical pain, an indication of some wrong, but the thing that is wrong is something we are conscious of external to ourselves, and the “wrongness” of that thing is determined by our own thoughts and values.

If our values and thinking are rational and objective, then what we have identified as a “wrong,” will be a correct identification. If one we love passes away, and we are conscious of losing someone we love, someone very important to us, the emotion of grief is exactly how we should feel when being conscious of such a real loss—the emotion of grief is a totally appropriate feeling to the actual case. To lose a loved one and not feel grief would be an indication of a psychological problem.

So long as one’s values and thinking are rational, any painful emotion resulting from one’s consciousness of an undesirable or bad event or circumstance is an appropriate one, and any attempt to alleviate such appropriate painful feelings (with drugs or therapy for example) is an attempt to evade reality.

There are things can, or should be done about unpleasant or painful emotions. Here I will briefly discuss three of them.

1. The first thing is to determine whether the circumstance, situation, or fact about which we have painful feelings or emotions can be changed or rectified, and if it can, to make the change or plans to do so. That alone will often change how one feels about such things almost immediately.

   The opposite of this must be avoided. Remember, it is our consciousness of a bad or unpleasant thing that causes the painful emotion. Dwelling on and constantly thinking about how bad or unpleasant a thing is will only amplify the bad emotions.

   In the case of a death or permanent loss, no direct action can change the situation, but our own thinking about that situation can eventually be changed.

2. Complete honesty about painful emotions and the circumstance, situation, or fact about which we have them is absolutely necessary. Any attempt to evade the fact one has such feelings or the true nature of that about which one has them will only prolong, and possibly increase the unpleasant feelings. A frank, explicit, and direct analysis of exactly what one feels and what those feelings are about are necessary if they are to be dealt with.

3. All emotions involve perspective, how we think and evaluate things in both short and long term views. In most cases any fact or situation which are a source of emotional pain are temporary. At the moment some event happens or loss occurs, it is all we are conscious of, and the accompanying emotion may well be overwhelming, but everything in our consciousness diminishes as we become conscious of new and different things, and the emotional force becomes less as those things are less prominent in our consciousness. A loss which seems the only important thing at the moment, cannot possibly have that same importance a year from now.

Our perspective on all things is the result of how well we rationally and objectively understand the relationship between all the things we know and are conscious of, how those things are important to us, and what we can do or not do about them. Ultimately the only cure for emotional pain is a ruthlessly objective application of reason to all we are conscious of—far from being a cold way of dealing with things, it is the source of the richest and must fulfilling emotional experience of life.