26. Pain's Remains

This is a good chapter - it helps us think a lot about what pain means and what its consequences are, beyond the physical but the emotional and ethical.

When we grow up we learn that pain hurts. We touch something sharp and cut ourselves, the bacteria on the outside start to attack and our nervous systems reacts by sending pain signals to the brain. Kids cry, adults not so much. We touch something hot and we reflexively jerk away the offended hand. Apparently, the reflex happens before the brain can tell you it hurts (I read this in another book). So pain is important in letting us know what hurts the body.

If hurting is suffering then idea of ethical treatment of animals holds sway. Killing animals is not nice but we do it for food, protection and maintain the balance of some predator/prey numbers. There are some arses who kill for fun and those guys deserve to be shot in the knees. Vegetarians probably have a field day rubbing it in, that were bad people to eat meat. It's also harmful to the environment it seems, to eat meat. I try to ensure its quick when I get that roach. Not hurt the animal so much. Like in those movies where the kid is crying as farmer dad has to put down the hurt horse.

The kid in that movie is shattered emotionally. Just like people who have fallen out of love, it hurts. That pain of loss or rejection stays with you for a long time. The hearts tears and the brain etches the scar of that pain forever. Time heals all wounds but the scar remains. So what that pain does is that it helps us learn about what hurts the heart. Pain that may help us with future interactions or cause us to shun contact.

So is having no pain good? The story somehow justifies not having the memory of pain but harm is being done to the body (so that it can heal later). Not using anaesthesia is a great thing. But it is worrisome that someone could do something to you and you not feel it. It somehow makes us less human i feel.

Remember that guy in the Bond film who got hurt in the head such that he couldn't feel pain? Some Russian dude. He was a baddie and he would grab hot metal to prove a point to his minions and victims. Feeling no pain made it easy for him to hurt other people. It made him robotic and clinical in his mission. Heartless perhaps.

If the memory of pain and how our brain processes memories is more relevant to the experience of pain and the learning behind pain, then yes, different creatures would "feel" pain differently. But I guess that how we evolved up the evolutionary ladder - to recognise pain and treat it; to remember pain and not repeat what caused it; and not to inflict pain on others. Some of us haven't evolved, clearly.