Pain?

[Kaniaz]

I wasn't exactly sure where to put this topic. It's kind of dream related, but not strongly. Oh well, if the moderators see it would fit in better somewhere else, I'm sure they'll move it. We've all experienced pain. It's not a nice feeling at all. But what makes it not a nice feeling? I mean, why is it such a horrible pain? I know it's supposed to be, because it's your body telling you to stop doing whatever it is you are doing to hurt yourself (or be hurt by something else), but what makes pain...hurt? It's hard to explain. I've had times where if I focused completely on something else, people could turn my arm round so many times I should scream out like a hippo; but I didn't - I could feel pain; but it kind of didn't hurt... But I knew it was there. (God, this is hard to explain oo) Also, isn't pain always worse when you know its about to happen? Like when there's a really hot radiator that's gonna burn you, you kind of find it scarier and it hurts more? But when you do it accidentaly, it's not as bad? I know this is true for some folk at least; a poor guy said it in his autobiography (he was beaten about by mean parents as a kid...joined criminal groups in London, etc etc), how when he knew his parents were going to beat him, it was worse than being beaten without knowing it was going to happen. Oh well, hope you understood that. O_o

[jacobo]

on the pain thing... my hand was crushed by my car last wednesday. it was sudden and unexpected... it still hurt like a bitch. my car set on fire, i was pre-occupied with putting out the fire... but my hand still hurt like a bitch. -- would it have hurt more to have known that 2 tons of steel was going to crush my fingers? maybe? i'm not about to test that out on the other hand though. also this could go in philosophy... but i'm not sure and the move button is all the way at the bottom and i'm sooo tired.... so i'll just leave it for now.

[Ev]

Yes, same question was troubling me before. Pain is a bunch of messages, sent to your physical brain. then why we dont want to feel pain? Because we are afraid of pain itself. (it's really hard to explain). Basically the feeling of pain, even tho it's unpleasant, is not too bad. Once you feel the pain, you know you cant do anything about it(dont think of pain killers), and it kinda gets better.... Other times, I could focus on pain and feel nothing but it. Very strange, I was trying to understand it Yes, anticipation of pain is MUCH worse then pain itself...

[CT]

yeah I get what you mean by the fact that you can ignore pain, with some strong willpower you can. (depending on how severe the pain is)

[Truthbearer]

I think I understand your point... It isn't dream related so far but we can easily male it dream related. Many times during dreams we can convice ourselves that if we do something it won't hurt and when we try it, it doesn't. If dreams are real enough to make us experience everything like though it was real, I would presume we use the same principle to avoid pain as to ignore it. Does that make any sense?