on pain
I had a teacher in middle school that bragged about having high pain tolerance. Why this came up I can’t remember, but it probably had something to do with the mitochondria being powerhouse of the cell. She used to tell a story of stepping on a nail as a child, it going clear through the top of her foot, and yet not realizing it until there was blood tracked everywhere in the house and her mom was screaming bloody murder. Naturally, living without pain caused issues for her. Pain is the body’s way of telling you to either stop something or do something. It’s quite useful. Living without it is almost like living a truly sober life. You’re on absolutely nothing, not even the worst drug of all.
Yes, pain is a drug. Didn’t you ever have a cutter friend? Or see the waitress with the neat little razor lines on her arm as she serves you ice-cold effervescent corn syrup? Maybe at least you’ve heard one of the old pop emo songs on the radio that simpers about the scars on his muse’s body and how much he adores them. These poor souls are addicted to pain, or at least the rush and release that comes with feeling like they are the ones that get to control it. Taking a razor blade gently to the inner thigh really isn’t all that different from taking a needle. Pleasure and pain have always been twins.
Pain is such a devious drug—the real gateway to the harder stuff. How many people go from pot to heroin? Perhaps a few, sure. But how many people go from a root canal to fentanyl now? More than we’re comfortable as a society to admit. Or, if not physical pain, a heartbreak, broken family, and harsh social environment all give hefty doses of emotional pain that, whether we are able to perceive it or not, can drive us into our own little personal interior drug den where the toilets are backed up and overflowing with fluids, there’s takeout rotting on the corner of the bed, and rats pitter-patter within the walls of our mind gnawing on our insulation and wiring. Sometimes it happens to the degree where these things overflow and become a person’s external environment. Next thing you know, it’s leaching out to the community and you end up with used needles in the streets and dazed fent-zombies greeting the children getting off the bus.
In his 1940 book, “The Problem of Pain,” C.S. Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” But some people unfortunately just don’t have ears to hear. The world, or rather society, doesn’t make it any easier to listen. In the midst of all the acid rain of material reality falling on our heads, there’s a lot of talk about pain. How to decrease it, what increases it, what unforgivable harm you’ve perpetrated and pain you’ve caused by way of your ancestors against certain groups—especially those oppressed BMW and Cadillac drivers—the list goes on in perpetuity.
We are born into this world through the painful travail of childbirth. The particular nature of this pain creates a cocktail of adrenaline, oxytocin, and endorphins at levels higher than any other natural human experience. Naturally then, the modern way to handle this is to stab momma with an epidural of the strongest dope possible, making her too numb and out of it to even push—that way the doctor gets to charge a bonus $15k to cut the child from her belly. It’s a boy!! Now give us another $5k and we’ll cut the tip of his dick off for “hygiene” purposes. (It’s worth it, we promise, girls just don’t like the way it looks, trust us). Also don’t ask to take lil Jimmy’s foreskin home as a souvenir, we’ve already contracted it out to Johnson & Johnson. Somehow we’re surprised that this same industry has moved on to cutting off whole genitals as a “cure” to gender confusion.
People have always harnessed pain. The bridle and bit for the horse. The rod for the child. Ritual sacrifice for the masses. You didn’t think people ever stopped did you? Pain has been refined in such sophisticated ways and on such a large scale that is difficult to even fathom—made even more difficult by the intentional obfuscation of this reality. Today the Wikipedia page for brainwashing says that “the CIA’s MKUltra experiments failed with no operational use of the subjects.”
Case closed, everyone! The CIA’s admitted illegal human mind-control program was a disappointing failure. They would never lie to us about that or anything, much less intentionally cause people pain. It’s just beyond the pale to even consider that such a program could have been successful and even developed into more advanced ways to control entire populations of people through trauma.
The average upstanding member of the human race understands this by nature. If you were to spout this nonsense at them, they rightfully stare back at you, mouth a tad agape, with a look of confusion. No, you bigot, this is not a “fluoride stare,” it is the reasonable response to the ravings of someone who has had too much to think, a little too overactive of an imagination. You really should not bother these model citizens—it pains them. The game is on, after all, and the wings are getting cold.
Have you ever had a conversation where the other person despite everything you have said being cordial and civil, begins to act as if physically pained by the nature of the discussion? There is something more to this than mere polarization of politics and culture. Something deeper, more primordial at play.
Have you heard the recent phrase “words are violence” or even better, “silence is violence”? Is this true? For the people that say it, it certainly is. How can this be? One way or another, their tolerance of pain has been so fiddled with and conditioned that just engaging in certain thoughts becomes a painful experience.
The default of mankind’s relationship with speech as expressed in the children’s rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” enables civil discussion about any topic no matter how controversial or even outright terrible in subject matter. And sure, even in civil discussion, some words may indeed sting or have some bite to them, but that “pain” can point towards something worth developing an understanding of or at least correcting as a matter of fact.
Yet today’s default for speech is the opposite. It is like if my middle school teacher felt a nail stabbing through the top of her foot any time she even took a step barefoot.
A society that views speech as a literal sword that inflicts violent pain is a society that is in its death throes after having long lost any grasp on the proper understanding of the problem and reality of pain. It only makes sense that we are also a society with a methadone clinic in every city, increasing suicide, and all our other ailments. We have lost all sense of what pain is, what pain means, and how pain can control us.
Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on us sinners.
fin part I