Philosophy of Pain

Much of my navel contemplating and mind-hikes begin at the humble feet of any internet users best friend Wikipedia. "Pain," according to the vacuum of which Wikipedia is informed is, "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.^[1] It is the feeling common to such experiences as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone"." Yes, this refers to physical pain, but I'll make it our starting point all the same and be wary of falling into the trap of endless exploration of the types of pain humans can be subjected to.

My reason for consulting the definition is grounded in an intrigue over the consistent neglect of pain in the discussion of major topics. The philosophy of pain is nothing I have formally come across (although i don't doubt exists somewhere as a much discussed subject) and yet has increasingly proved an obvious oversight. Let us first consider morality shall we? The relationship between pain and traditional religion seems a lot more complex than the modern interpretations of morality, namely secularism, humanism and atheism. The Old Testament is full of examples of disciples suffering great physical pain in the name of God and at his service, with the aim of pleasing him, a consequence of which is securing a place with him in the after-life, which referring to a majority conception, is pain-free.In such moral traditions pain is always seen as an inevitable part of human life and experience, unpleasant but unavoidable so why not use it to prove your faith and why not use the promise of the end of pain to ensure commitment to God and the living of a 'good' life.

In modern traditions this meaning has been lost. Arguably understandable so as the idea of an after-life has been lost and the belief in our earthly lives as being the be all and end all of existence has taken over and the experience of pain has become synonymous with evil and wrong. To be harmed by someone is measured as a moral crime and the greater the pain caused the more severe the objection. Why? Many modern thinkers judge mass religion to be "childish" in there assumptions and yet our modern ideas seem more shallow in their perception of pain=bad / happiness=good. Can we really rely on our physical (and emotional) experiences of the world as guidance for a moral system? Logically it meets a measure of good sense: why not create a moral system which helps people feel good and labels feeling bad as the result of a moral wrong. And yet to me this seems to fall short and satisfies only the subjective nature of human experience. Many of us, to some extent enjoy the experience of pain - many artists need it to fuel their creativity, others use it as an excuse to fail to fulfil certain goals and expectations they have held for themselves which they have little tru motivation of desire to fulfil. I am definitely guilty of enjoy a good ol' wallow in self-pity fueled by the pain of feeling inadequate, it allows me to waste away my life instead of having to get up every morning and aim for the stars and risk failure.

The functions of pain always seem to be limited to showing an individual that something is not working properly and is not as it should be. But what of the other functions? Communication for example? Without devastation and causing of pain on a mass scale society would not have been driven forward in the ways it has been. Conflict is evolutionary. If we all sought above all to avoid experiencing pain and submitting others to it we may well have been frozen in a more primitive way of living, which arguably would greatly limit our experiences of those emotions in contrast to pain -joy for instance. And what of the creative capacity for pain? I've already mentioned those individuals who seem to need pain to create, think Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolfe etc. Then there's the aesthetic beauty in violence as Amartya Sen discussed in "The Beauty of Violence." Whenever an artist (particularly those of the visual arts) creates in homage to or out of a deep interest in violence, controversy surrounds it. This outs me in mind of Guillermo Vargas and his chained stray dog presented in exhibition in Nicaragua. Compliance with inevitable suffering seems unacceptable in many peoples eyes.

21/8/10

Making Mothers Out of Molehills

I came to Brazil this year to get out of my head and start living in the real world by doing something constructive and of worth. I can't argue that Brazil is any more deserving than alot of places in the world and neither can I argue that I have any specific skills that could really be of much use to the people over here that are really trying to solve the problems that Brazil has and make a positive change in society. All I am worth on a realistic stage is my physical labour, time (money) and my most valuable asset of being a native English speaker. Of course it bothered me at first that the most beneficial thing I can give to people is something that is so disconnected from me as an individual. Anyone in the world can be taught to be English from birth. I was just lucky. No, I didn't need to fly for 11 hours across the Atlantic Ocean to find someone who would want to learn my language skills, so I can't argue my trip is purely humanitarian. There are enough immigrants at home in Bradford to keep me busy for a long time on the English teaching front (which is future food for thought). So I guess I indulged myself in the choice of venue. I have family in Brazil so I could live cheaply, visit relatives and get to know my mother's home and feel a bit more a part of her family.

My first visit with the organisation I was to teach with was today. Turns out I won't be teaching as I'm only here for a short time and as such I wouldn't be able to teach them much. I felt useless and pathetically young and inexperienced. Fortunately though, they found a place for me among the younger girls, more or less as a guinea pig for them to practice their English on.

Grupo Primavera is an organisation offering complementary education for girls from a poor neighbourhood in Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. They teach them values and skills that make them employable and provide them with activities to keep them off the streets and keep them out of drug trafficking and prostitution. Lesson number one was why girls? I asked John the co-founder, a Chinamen with an American education and a history in architecture, why they only provided this for girls in the neighbourhood when in my mind it seemed that it was men who fed alot of the problems - namely providing and using prostitutes. He replied that aside from the fact that he found girls and boys to benefit academically from being apart during part of their adolescents, but also because women are the carriers of values. It is women who in their roles as mothers pass on their values and form the moral basis for the next generation. Particularly so in this neighbourhood, where despite 62% of the families (where Grupo Primavera girls come from) being nuclear, the men are often absent in raising their children and it is left to the mother to discipline and nurture the children, girls and boys alike. So in effect this was also a way of attending to the male population of the neighbourhood by providing the mothers with values that aided employment and a cooperative lifestyle.

Only minutes later I was reading 'The Constant Garedener' by John Le Carre and came across the sentence,
'Only the emancipation of African women could save us from the blunderings and corruption of the menfolk.'

I've been thinking recently about how the role of women as innate mothers has been suppressed in the political and cultural arenas. Women are built to nurture and care and heal, it's our biological purpose. But sadly over the years this has been undermined to become what's called 'being emotional' and seen in a negative light, particularly when it comes to politics. As such politics has become apparently emotionless and arguably I think inhuman as a result. When will we let the nurturers make big decisions on the political stage? In the meantime projects like Grupo Primavera could make waves in the areas of development and conflict resolution, by training girls from poor, devasted communities in the way of education and values and to begin making mothers out of molehills.

Estonia - 60 quid on the Euroline

My unhappiness throughout last year-my first year of University- can be traced back to the first inklings of the thought of Estonia. I had decided that that was where I wanted to go and that I needed to go. As soon as possible. I didn't know anything about it, I wouldn't know what to do or where to go, but for some reason in my mind it would be the making of me. If I could just leave everything and everyone I knew and run off on my own, completely alone if only for a week then life would be different for me. I would suddenly have the life experience I've always craved, plus the people skills I've always lacked, and most importantly I could sort every thought in my mind into clean, white, square boxes and find the answers to all of the questions we all have that take a life time to answer (if it's even possible). I just needed the time to think, to really think.

Now that I look back on it, the Estonia Plan was formed pretty early on in the term - certainly earlier than I'd have guessed. On appearances I was doing pretty well; I had thrown myself into the University social life as was deemed an absolute neccesity by my friends who'd had the University cherry popped the year before me. I met people on my course and made friends quickly, in fact by the fourth week I had in all but essentials moved into another flat down my corridor where two course mates were living and I was enjoying being extroverted and fun and altogether a bit weird with them. Plus we had the deep, philosophical relationships we all dream of having when going to University accompanied by a shisha pipe and candle-light. I'd launched myself into the societies and campaigning groups as promised to myself (and my mother). I even missed my first day of lectures to protest in Scotland and substituted the lecture hall for a police cell. On paper I had done all of the things I said I would do and for a time it worked; I was plodding along ok.
I started dreaming of Estonia soon before I got into a relationship with one of the people I spent most of my time with. We started to live even further in each others pockets and it was here I guess I started to become aware that I still wasn't happy. In being in a relationship I had sacrificed my alone time, which I hadn't realised how important it was to me until I had to give it up and I saw that I could barely function more than a couple of days without some escape from people. Essentially my room had become my Estonia for the first and last hours of each day. That time was when I was safe from people. I didn't have to care about what people were thinking or what I should be saying or doing and trying to distract my mind for the daylight hours. In my head my life was those hours I spent alone and everything else was obligation, it was what I needed to keep going so I didn't become totally adrift from the real world. But I haven't been living in the real world for a long time. I've been living so far inside my own head that during this last year I had become emotionally disconnected. I haven't enjoyed anything whole-heartedly in so long. I was governing my life and my new relationship through reason and thought alone. Nothing I did was out of emotional need other than the desire to please and make more of myself in some way.
Needless to say, the relationship didn't last. He didn't understand why I wanted to be alone and I didn't understand why I didn't feel that release at the end of the day I would have on my own if he was there. I didn't understand why I still wanted to go to Estonia -without him. I guess Estonia was the early warning sign that I missed.I began to realise that I had never let the front I put on for freshers week down. I was living my life as a different person and the only time I could let myself out was on my own in the privacy of my room and if my real self didn't get that R&R time I would get exhausted, like I was performing the matinee and evening performance at every show for a long run.
It's only in the past few days I've realised what Estonia really meant. It was me trying to run away again. Placing all my hopes on some future event that would sort out all of my problems just like I had done a million times throughout the past four miserable years of my life with all fruitless results. I shouldn't be aiming for Estonia I should be escaping it. If I'm going to begin to feel anything close to happiness any time soon I'm going to have to face the fact that it begins here, not in Estonia. Among the loneliness, the fear and the failings.

A shame when it's only 60 quid on the Euroline.