Pain Is Not Required; Some Thoughts
No doubt a unique phase of human evolution will begin when humans behaviorally accept, on the brink of extinction, that Pain Is Not Required.
We are addicts and will have to suss out all the ways we create, endure, cannibalize, commoditize, enrapture and romanticize suffering.
Debra Lapatina
Humans can create joy, pleasure, love, discovery, humor, companionship. Humans can create violence, genocide, psychological torture and all manner of suffering.
As the creators of suffering, it is quite difficult to separate ourselves from it. The jailer, the torturer lives within. It is our very nature, our genetics, our evolution, our physicality.
I have been contemplating how we humans have Stockholm Syndrome regarding the jailer within. We have many ways of coping with the seemingly limitless amounts of pain we inflict upon each other. One of these is the ‘if you can’t beat it join it’ approach. We wax romantically about ‘the arduous journey’ we must endure. Our poets, writers, philosophers, gurus, saints and lyricists funnel their creativity into poignantly describing the transcendence of suffering. We blind ourselves with this distortion of beauty. If a psychopath is physically attractive, does that make them less of a danger?
“Stand up!” “Put yourself back together.” Until it happens again. And again. Until we are so wounded and beaten down that there is nothing left but to love your painful journey. I once saw a photograph of a long-stemmed rose torn into pieces and then taped back together. If the photograph is torn and taped multiple times then it will become a weak and barely recognizable image of a rose. I, for one, am bored to exhaustion by this process and see nothing desirable about it.
So, what else can you do but love this tidal wave of brutality? Even the answers and insights are shaped by it. Millions wear a crucifix symbolizing the horrendous death of one man. Just one more person beaten down to death. There are metaphoric rituals of consuming his flesh and blood while other religions prefer to state ecstatically that they are washed in his blood (Carrie is the image that comes to mind). What else can we do but worship at the altar of victimhood hoping somehow this will release us to an alternate ‘heavenly’ world. If such an advanced world exists then why, why, why would they let in the contaminating human race? The Earth can be described as a heavenly world, and she is literally rejecting us as I write this.
I do realize that life gives us disease, illness, and accidents and when someone suffers, for whatever reason, this must be recognized, validated, understood, shared. Realizing our often-lived powerlessness and dependence on each other is important. Acknowledging insightful coping is strategic in healing. But pain distorts our patterns of behavior causing some to act out and others to glorify the struggle. But both live in a prison defined by the jailer which is self-inflicted suffering. Our own genetics, our own minds are the wheelhouse for the cycle of abuse.
Reveling in the accepted belief that pain and suffering are required to create a superior human mind, a wiser or intelligent mind, or a more loving heart, is madness. I have no doubt there are many researchers examining this very issue, but we must stop our love affair with suffering. I do not, for one second, invest in the notion that my abusive childhood made me a better artist. I know I could have been an even greater artist if I’d had a loving and supportive family life. So, I don’t paint about my journey through a death-defying childhood. I paint about what it takes to go beyond that. The same as wrenching the weed, root and all, so it cannot come back.
Though really, it will be much better when we finally learn to subdue our proclivity for creating suffering. And I feel one of the ways to do that is to NOT idealize what we so readily accept as ‘the human condition’. It is not an either/or situation. Light is not good and dark is not evil. They are simply gradations of light. One does not obliterate the other as in a war. Both sides are simply variations on a theme.
We live with pain, we can create most of it, we inflict it, and we can stop it.
Pain is not required.
We are addicts and will have to suss out all the ways we create, endure, cannibalize, commoditize, enrapture and romanticize suffering.
Debra Lapatina
Humans can create joy, pleasure, love, discovery, humor, companionship. Humans can create violence, genocide, psychological torture and all manner of suffering.
As the creators of suffering, it is quite difficult to separate ourselves from it. The jailer, the torturer lives within. It is our very nature, our genetics, our evolution, our physicality.
I have been contemplating how we humans have Stockholm Syndrome regarding the jailer within. We have many ways of coping with the seemingly limitless amounts of pain we inflict upon each other. One of these is the ‘if you can’t beat it join it’ approach. We wax romantically about ‘the arduous journey’ we must endure. Our poets, writers, philosophers, gurus, saints and lyricists funnel their creativity into poignantly describing the transcendence of suffering. We blind ourselves with this distortion of beauty. If a psychopath is physically attractive, does that make them less of a danger?
“Stand up!” “Put yourself back together.” Until it happens again. And again. Until we are so wounded and beaten down that there is nothing left but to love your painful journey. I once saw a photograph of a long-stemmed rose torn into pieces and then taped back together. If the photograph is torn and taped multiple times then it will become a weak and barely recognizable image of a rose. I, for one, am bored to exhaustion by this process and see nothing desirable about it.
So, what else can you do but love this tidal wave of brutality? Even the answers and insights are shaped by it. Millions wear a crucifix symbolizing the horrendous death of one man. Just one more person beaten down to death. There are metaphoric rituals of consuming his flesh and blood while other religions prefer to state ecstatically that they are washed in his blood (Carrie is the image that comes to mind). What else can we do but worship at the altar of victimhood hoping somehow this will release us to an alternate ‘heavenly’ world. If such an advanced world exists then why, why, why would they let in the contaminating human race? The Earth can be described as a heavenly world, and she is literally rejecting us as I write this.
I do realize that life gives us disease, illness, and accidents and when someone suffers, for whatever reason, this must be recognized, validated, understood, shared. Realizing our often-lived powerlessness and dependence on each other is important. Acknowledging insightful coping is strategic in healing. But pain distorts our patterns of behavior causing some to act out and others to glorify the struggle. But both live in a prison defined by the jailer which is self-inflicted suffering. Our own genetics, our own minds are the wheelhouse for the cycle of abuse.
Reveling in the accepted belief that pain and suffering are required to create a superior human mind, a wiser or intelligent mind, or a more loving heart, is madness. I have no doubt there are many researchers examining this very issue, but we must stop our love affair with suffering. I do not, for one second, invest in the notion that my abusive childhood made me a better artist. I know I could have been an even greater artist if I’d had a loving and supportive family life. So, I don’t paint about my journey through a death-defying childhood. I paint about what it takes to go beyond that. The same as wrenching the weed, root and all, so it cannot come back.
Though really, it will be much better when we finally learn to subdue our proclivity for creating suffering. And I feel one of the ways to do that is to NOT idealize what we so readily accept as ‘the human condition’. It is not an either/or situation. Light is not good and dark is not evil. They are simply gradations of light. One does not obliterate the other as in a war. Both sides are simply variations on a theme.
We live with pain, we can create most of it, we inflict it, and we can stop it.
Pain is not required.