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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: feelin' no pain?   (pain vs. nothing)
Message-ID: <2500@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Mar-85 03:08:24 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.2500
Posted: Thu Mar 21 03:08:24 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Mar-85 02:04:43 EST
References: <5204@tektronix.UUCP> <1093@yale.ARPA>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: The Village
Lines: 36
Summary: 

In article <1093@yale.ARPA> folta@yale.ARPA (Stephen Folta) writes:
>	
>>       Snoopy's response was that most people would rather feel pain than feel
>>       nothing.  I think that he is about 180 degrees off.  The vast majority
>>       of people in our society would rather feel nothing than feel pain.
>
>I wonder myself whether most people would rather feel pain or feel nothing.
>I tend to think they would rather feel nothing.

My name was snuck through here a while back in reference to the original
comment-- Just for your information, the original reference goes back to (I
believe) Buckminster Fuller. Interested people ought to track down 'Living,
Loving, and Learning' by Leo Buscaglia for more on all of this. 

Pain, while not as pleasant as other feelings, is at least an indication of
life. Life, no matter how bad, always has the potential of improvement. The
alternative, nothing, has no alternative. If you feel nothing, how do you
know if you ever feel better? To not feel is to not really live.

Drugs and alcohol are not alternative. They may stop the feeling for a
while, but they also tend to cause long term overreactions in the opposite
directions. People who get stoned while feeling bad tend to feel worse
(look at the correlations between initial mood and bad trips in LSD, for
example). The only thing drugs can do is take you to the point of
nothingness, which isn't a solution, it is an escape. Eventually you either
need to face and solve your problems, or you die, because you always have
to take more of the drug to achieve the previous sensations. It may slow
down your collapse, but it doesn't save you-- just ask the people in the
alcohol detox wards, the drug rehab centers, the cemetaries....

chuq
-- 
Chuq Von Rospach, National Semiconductor
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui   nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

Be seeing you!