Hello, would you say that pain involves mainly "avoidance" while
pleasure involves mainly "confronting, embrace, facing or
(attraction)?"
http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/avoidance
Or would you like the idea that It may be that pain is a condition in
which nerve impulses arrive in a set of nerve fibres that are not
usually stimulated together. They come in combinations that were not
expected on a basis of previous experience, and hence pain is confusion
and pleasure is like musical harmony?
Programs of the brain.
J. Z. Young 1978
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198575459/
Despite its unpleasantness, pain is an important part of the existence
of humans and other animals; in fact, it is vital to survival. Pain
encourages an organism to disengage from the noxious stimulus
associated with the pain. Preliminary pain can serve to indicate that
an injury is imminent, such as the ache from a soon-to-be-broken bone.
Pain may also promote the healing process, since most organisms will
protect an injured region in order to avoid further pain. People born
with congenital insensitivity to pain usually have short life spans,
and suffer numerous ailments such as broken bones, bed sores, and
chronic infection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain
...Feelings of satisfaction are produced by stimulation of some of
these very areas----injury to which causes error of eating drinking and
sexual and other behaviour.....With electrode in some positions the
shocks have rewarding effects and are sought for as if they were
satisfying.......They give positive reinforcements or -rewarding
stimuli- causing an animal to come back for more
--Olds 1976 Hall et al 1977--
Jame Olds showed this by implanting wires into the brains of
rats......When the animals had recovered from the operation he arranged
that if they pressed a lever a weak electric current was passed to the
brain.....The rats soon learned to do this and evidently obtained
satisfaction from the shocks......They would press the lever over and
over again a 100 times a minute for hours at a time.....They would even
neglect food and starve to death while continuing to get the
reward.....More usually they showed pauses for eating drinking and
sleeping.
Marvin Harris - Our Kind - pg 172.........
Electrical stimulation of the portion of the brainstem known as the
septum produces sensations of pleasure in humans. In one male subject -
the electrical activity of the septum was recorded during orgasm and
showed a pattern of brainwaves similar to those found during epileptic
seizures__indicative of the synchronous discharge of a very large
number of neurons......Injection of a female subject septum with the
neurotransmitter acetylcholine produced intense sensations of pleasure
- culminating in repeated orgasm....These experiments leave to many
variables uncontrolled - and the exact pharmacology and neurophysiology
of the human addiction to sexual ecstasy remains one of natures best
kept secrets......But can the day be far off when one of the major
pharmaceutical houses announces that is is ready to market substances
that induce the mental sensation if not the physiological reactions of
orgasms?
If it were not for the intermittent nature of orgasmic highs - sexual
appetites might easily override essential life - supporting drives and
appetites and turn us into veritable sex junkies.....Natural selection
has made sobriety the norm and euphoria the exception....We need to
feel pain and anxiety in order to cope effectivly with the world
outside our heads.....And so natural selection has seen to it that we
get our biggest high only as a reward for stimulating the organs that
initiate the process of reproduction and not for stimulating our
fingers and toes......Through cultural evolution we have learned how to
defeat natures connection between sexual pleasure and
reproduction....Are we now on the threshold of learning how to defeat
natures connection between sexual pleasure and sex?";
OUR KIND by Marvin Harris 1989
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060919906/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Harris
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/fghij/harris_marvin.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/marvin_harris.html
Obviously it is useful to have avoidance responses and to learn what to
avoid. But what is the value to the individual or the species of the
intractable pains of cancer or neuralgia? Persistent and terminal pains
seem only to be an added burden, There is no merit to this suffering,
no lesson to be learned' (Melzack 1973, p. 202). But is this all that
can be said? The human way of life would not be what it is without the
threats that pain imposes. Should we recognize sin if there were no
pain? This obviously raises theological echoes. Religions have faced
the problem that seems at first a mystery for biology. How big a part
does pain play in our moral and social system? Perhaps it does have
some beneficial effects. A surgeon has said of the care of long-term
unconscious patients that those who attend them 'have been helped to
adjust to life and understand sacrifice' (Lewin 1976).
Programs of the brain.
J. Z. Young 1978
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198575459/
Sorry if this seems like alot of spam but it is pretty complex, it is.
