Exploration of Masochism

[TheEgoist]

I find the direction of this topic utterly ridiculous. If the truth wasn't painful why the hell would most homo Sapiens go to such great lengths to avoid it? Recognize that "they" not only lie to others, but also to themselves. Furthermore I am not too big on Plato myself, but that doesn't mean I don't, much less can't, find merit in some of his writings, providing of course that they are rational/logical. And on that, How is stating that something is so and so or such as such supposed to convince me, much less anyone, if you don't cite a reason why? What the fuck is this perceptual forums now?! I mean, damn I knew I was controversial but what the hell am I thinking barging into here trying to be productive, golly I'm stupid, somebody change my freaking mind and talk some sense!

The value of truth is not contingent on the fact that it is painful. The truth is a value in itself. I don't seem to find much pain while reading " Atlas Shrugged ". I was overjoyed with the truth, in fact. Some truth is painful, like coming to terms with a bad relationship, accepting that there is a lot of evil around you. But you aren't supposed to focus on the pain of it, but overcome the pain.

Also, your equivocation of Plato's " The Cave " with Rand's novel " The Fountainhead " is worrying and shows your obvious lack of knowledge when it comes to Objectivism which rejects much of what Plato had to say.

[musenji]

Let's try something a little less dramatic as not everyone likes throwing around heavy things as much as me. Perhaps your passion is music and you want to become a guitar virtuoso. When you start playing the guitar, it hurts your fingers. If you continue to play sometimes your fingers may even bleed. But if you allow that to dissuade you then you will never acquire enough skill to achieve your goals. The more you push through the pain in the beginning, the faster your fingers adapt after which point the pain is no longer a problem. Or you can be like Pete Townsend, one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, who thought nothing of shredding his hands during a concert (there's a notable picture of him holding up his torn, bleeding hand with a huge smile on his face).

Ooh, just in case someone out there reads this and is in the exact situation:

You can buy nylon strings, for one, if you're not playing electric. If you ARE playing electric, you can often lower the action (the strings--thereby reducing resistance against your fingers) or buy a different kind of string. I'd encourage making it as easy (painless) as possible on yourself, at first, given that it's possible to do so.

Townsend also destroyed his own guitars in concert...he strikes me as somewhat of a nihilist, albeit an incredibly talented one.

[~Sophia~]

Perhaps your passion is music and you want to become a guitar virtuoso. When you start playing the guitar, it hurts your fingers. If you continue to play sometimes your fingers may even bleed. But if you allow that to dissuade you then you will never acquire enough skill to achieve your goals. The more you push through the pain in the beginning, the faster your fingers adapt after which point the pain is no longer a problem.

Notice that in all of your examples, pain is an obstacle to overcome in a pursuit of a value. It is not a value, in itself.

The ability to feel pain is a value to the extend that it allows our body to message our brain (your volitional center) that something is wrong. It is designed to function as an emergency alarm or a stop sign.

Certainly in an ideal world this would not be the case, and one would feel only pleasure and happiness from the pursuit of rational values, but I'm sure we can all agree that this is not an ideal world and that many things are not as they should be

.

I am not sure what you mean by ideal world. This is the only reality there is. Mataphysical world is deterministic and not random. It became what it is due to a chain of cause and effect events. When it comes to man-made - one should not care what the irrational think.

As a result of this, I have learned that rather than an indication of a problem, pain may often be a signal that one is on the right track.

Outside of the context of reason it would have been very dangerous for you to listen to this signal alone while interpreting it as being on the right track. It actually most of the time means the opposite.

You know for certain that any time you ask them to stop, they will, if you ask them to kiss the welts and wipe your tears if you should happen to cry.

If someone were to wipe my tears away I would rather those tears to be a result of experienced pleasure and joy - not pain and certainly not pain purposely inflicted.

You have mentioned greater intimacy... this may not apply to you but I think that sometimes when people have been treating sex casually in their life - they require something else to reach the same experience of intimate and special.

you delight in the sensation of seeing just how much more you can take knowing that it's your choice.

Why someone would seek an obstacle? It is like purposely creating challenges for yourself, intentionally making things harder for the sake of nothing more than making it a greater struggle as if living did not create enough of them already. To me pain, evil, struggle, failure are things which should be granted little importance/attention in life, not dwelled in. Learn what you can and move on (what it is that you are learning if you are purposely influcting it for the sake of feeling it - not in pursuit of physical strength for example?). I would rather bring focus to joy, happiness, and success. It is a value judgment like any other.

Edited March 27, 2008 by ~Sophia~

[Inspector]

The value of truth is not contingent on the fact that it is painful. The truth is a value in itself.

Exactly, and the same can be said for everything else good that can come with pain: growth, correction of an error, triumph in a struggle, etc. The point isn't the pain itself, and the central idea of masochism - that pain itself is a positive - is a mistake.

The ability to feel pain is a value to the extend that it allows our body to message our brain (your volitional center) that something is wrong.

Exactly - Sieur Bertrand seems to be equivocating pain with the ability to feel pain. They are two very different things.

[themadkat]

Exactly, and the same can be said for everything else good that can come with pain: growth, correction of an error, triumph in a struggle, etc. The point isn't the pain itself, and the central idea of masochism - that pain itself is a positive - is a mistake.

Exactly - Sieur Bertrand seems to be equivocating pain with the ability to feel pain. They are two very different things.

I'm going to respectfully disagree and say that sometimes pain can be enjoyed for its own sake, although I'm going to distinguish between physical pain and psychological anguish as I have never enjoyed any kind of emotional suffering. I'm not sure if I can give a line of reasoning that will satisfy any here as to why physical pain may be enjoyable for its own sake other than to say it's tied into a particular state of mind and it's probably not for everyone.

I also want to say that I'm not in alignment with Sieur Bertrand's argument, as frankly I'm not even sure what the heck he's trying to say and I can't very well support something that makes no sense even if I tried. I'm trying to give an account for why physical pain may be enjoyable in itself under certain circumstances.

[musenji]

I'm trying to give an account for why physical pain may be enjoyable in itself under certain circumstances.

I think the issue may be that the qualification "under certain circumstances", insofar as those circumstances are delimited, negates the idea of the pain being enjoyable "in itself". The more you box in the context, the less intrinsic the enjoyment is.

[themadkat]

I think the issue may be that the qualification "under certain circumstances", insofar as those circumstances are delimited, negates the idea of the pain being enjoyable "in itself". The more you box in the context, the less intrinsic the enjoyment is.

Touche. But I challenge you with this question: do we (rationally) enjoy pleasure intrinsically, or as a response to its cause as well? I'm cautious of claims that something is intrinsically this or that, especially such contextually loaded things as pleasure and pain.

[musenji]

Hmm. Allow me to go back to your previous post for a second. It makes total sense that you've never enjoyed emotional suffering: when you speak of enjoyment, you're talking about emotional enjoyment, right? To emotionally enjoy emotional suffering would be a contradiction in terms, unless you want to get into the whole "stepping outside oneself" experience (which Roark actually did in the Fountainhead...that would be an interesting digression but bear with me for a bit).

In the same way, I would say that to physically enjoy physical pain is a contradiction, by definition. If you enjoy it physically, then it is not, in fact, pain.

However, it would be possible to emotionally enjoy physical pain--and that's what we're really talking about, right? The pain itself would be no source of enjoyment if not under very specific circumstances.

So yeah, I think the pain-pleasure mechanism is automatic...and it's not a function of rationality, because non-rational animals experience pain.

Though, I read a story once about a schizophrenic person who didn't feel ANY pain when she put cigarettes out on her arm. That was fiction, but I'm assuming it wasn't just made up...another possible digression point--whether it's possible to completely bypass the pain-pleasure mechanism, or to screw it up.

[Tenure]

In Nathaniel Branden's 'Psychology of Self-Esteem', he briefly discusses a bouncer at a nightclub who he counselled, as an example of why messing with one's pain/pleasure reflex is entirely possible, but isn't advised. The bouncer, to give the impression of being hard, trained himself to not feel any physical pain and to be completely emotionless when dealing with people at the club, so he could most effectively do his job. The problem was, of course, that by subverting his basic pain/pleasure reflex, he ended up not being able to normally feel pain or pleasure from other things (in short, he became sexually dysfunctional).

I'm not saying masochism will, in all cases, lead to this. Some people can just simply enjoy the endorphins and adrenaline and such released from the practice. The physical pain itself is a small price to pay, in comparison, for the overall pleasure.

[Inspector]

I'm going to respectfully disagree and say that sometimes pain can be enjoyed for its own sake...

I don't see as to how the argument you've presented so far supports that statement. So far, I see you saying that you can enjoy certain pain because you understand that it is tied to athletic growth. That isn't pain in itself. The other idea is that athleticism releases endorphins - which again isn't the pain itself. (The same can be said for capsaicin, by the way)

It seems to me that you're making the same argument as Sieur Bertrand. Note that I didn't say that there was anything wrong with enjoying some pain as connected to sexual conquest - I said the problem was with the idea of enjoying pain in itself. Which is something that neither of your arguments support.

Touche. But I challenge you with this question: do we (rationally) enjoy pleasure intrinsically, or as a response to its cause as well? I'm cautious of claims that something is intrinsically this or that, especially such contextually loaded things as pleasure and pain.

In response to its cause. To do so intrinsically would be hedonism.

Edited March 29, 2008 by Inspector

[themadkat]

I don't see as to how the argument you've presented so far supports that statement. So far, I see you saying that you can enjoy certain pain because you understand that it is tied to athletic growth. That isn't pain in itself. The other idea is that athleticism releases endorphins - which again isn't the pain itself. (The same can be said for capsaicin, by the way)

It seems to me that you're making the same argument as Sieur Bertrand. Note that I didn't say that there was anything wrong with enjoying some pain as connected to sexual conquest - I said the problem was with the idea of enjoying pain in itself. Which is something that neither of your arguments support.

In response to its cause. To do so intrinsically would be hedonism.

I want to clarify that even though I got to it in a roundabout way, I am specifically referring to pain in a sexual context. I'm not sure what you mean about conquest. For me that's not what it was about and frankly if I did feel it was about conquering me I probably wouldn't enjoy it. What I'm talking about is using pain as a mechanism to enhance or as a preliminary to other fun getting-off-related activities. I don't think this is something that would work for everyone. I'm disputing the notion that there is necessarily something psychologically wrong with you if you enjoy pain.

I agree with you that pleasure experienced purely and exclusively for its own sake is hedonism. That question of mine was referring to musenji who brought up intrinsic enjoyment of pain. I was trying to point out that I don't support intrinsic enjoyment of either pain or pleasure. Perhaps I was unclear in my original statements when I said enjoying pain in itself, since it makes it sound like I am arguing for some kind of intrinsic value in it. What I am trying to distill, perhaps unsuccessfully, is that it is the physical pain sensation which is sparking the enjoyment and it is not SOLELY an intermediary to the other activities - rather, it is tightly connected to it and it is a unified experience.

[Inspector]

I'm not sure what you mean about conquest. For me that's not what it was about and frankly if I did feel it was about conquering me I probably wouldn't enjoy it.

That's really a separate discussion which would be way off topic here. If not conquest, then some other form of sexual mock-struggle.

As I believe I have shown, the term "masochism" can refer only to the enjoyment of pain intrinsically. If there's something else going on, then what you have there isn't "masochism," as such. So while you have said so far that you are arguing for "masochism," you really aren't. And neither is Sieur Bertrand. (at least not in any argument he has presented so far)