Today I got to wondering if it is coherent to speak of cognitive pain, of confusion, of not knowing what to do. In practice, of course, mental confusion is manifested emotionally through anxiety and fear. But formally speaking, can one call it pain? Self evidently, one must first define pain to answer this question.
[Much sloppy thinking is enabled almost entirely by the sloppy use of words. If one insisted, for example, on coherent and consistent definitions of “justice” and “fair” from leftists, their supposed philosophy–really a rhetorical habit–would be exposed for the muddled idiocy it is. But that is another discussion, one done well by Orwell and others].
Here is my proposed definition: “any disruption in what appears otherwise to be a desirable equilibrium.”
Your body, for example, is in equilibrium, UNTIL you stub your toe. That creates nerve impulses which you process as pain, and which in normal circumstances you would seek to avoid.
Emotions are more interesting. We ASSUME that our normal lives are relatively desirable, and feel pain, per se, only when something we wanted disappears: for example when we lose a job or loved one or a major election. But even before such things happen, we know intuitively that they are POSSIBLE, and that we must therefore include within our selves some sort of defense against them. We are not fully open. Very, very, very few people are fully open, in the way children are, and in the way Christ taught us to be. You’ve been stung once: why could it not happen again?
So, in contemplating this, it occured to me that the goal is to be in equilibrium in as many possible circumstances as possible. This means that it is much, much harder to cause us pain, and thus much easier to do without substantial defenses.
Early Buddhists took vows of poverty, lived as itinerant beggars, and only ate from roughly 4am until noon every day, fasting the other 16 or so hours. What could they lose? That is as limitless a life as one can imagine, if we understand the fear of loss as a limit.
In some respects, it is ridiculous that I allowed myself to get upset about the election. It is what it is. Why am I attached to things beyond my control? It is stupid.