Hi,Wise Turtle of Sophia Lake, talk about pleasure and Pain.
And O. Turtle answered:
When things are said to be a dichotomy it does not only mean they are opposites but they can also be a synergisms, and pleasure and pain are good examples of that. One cannot exist without the other and they work in concert. In human experience nothing is truly neutral. One can say I’m not happy or sad, I am feeling no pain or pleasure, but if we look closely there must be some feeling, and if it is not pain it has to be pleasure.
Without pain life would not evolve, and pleasure would not exist because you can’t have one without the other. It is pain and pleasure that drives change. We change in the seeking of pleasure and then avoidance of pain which forces us to change.
Thus, without pain and pleasure we would not exist because we would have never evolved. So, one could say then that pleasure and pain are life, and even the purpose of life. Why would we even want to exist if it was not for pleasure, but we can’t have pleasure without pain? However, not all pain is necessary. Pain that is self inflicted from indifference and a negative attitude is not necessary. If one engages with life and learns the tools that help them self grow/evolve, and if one is smart enough to try and understand the cause of the pain, learn from the pain, some pain can be avoided.
The pain from disease is a warning sign. Your body is tells you something is wrong. It is like the “Check Engine” light on a car, and one needs to listen to it.