life is pain

My theory is you can't fully experience joy if you've never experienced pain. How could you know how good it can be if you don't know how bad it can be?

So life = pain and joy. Must have one to have the other.

Don't you think it's possible (though extremely unlikely) for someone to be born with severe depression, experience childhood depression, and then die before ever experiencing joy?

Initially I agree with this thinking. But I´m going to incide a little bit more from another perspective.

All right, I need a reference point to know "what is better or worse". How could I know it? I mean, I can be despair because of things that are painfull for me; but if I compare and I find similar situations and those people don´t consider them painfull for their own situation, which ranking do I use?

A situation can be bad thinking it is good by comparing it among others. So a situation isn´t good or bad, it´s better or worse than other.

A regard.

Priamus, good point. They say that if you lose a foot make yourself feel better by concentrating on the situation of a man with no feet. But that does not improve your limp a bit. The way we rank and categorize experiences gives them their "meaning", but if you never heard of "pain" and "pleasure" I think you would still grimace at the touch of fire and smile at the taste of sweet chocolate--even if they were empty or meaningless sensations they would remain undesireable and desireable ones.
On the other hand, for them to become undesireable and desireable means that they have now been categorized. The zen buddhist, however, is said to be able to experience the raw sensation beneath the cooked category. S/he can keep two separate, one a sensation the other a conception.

Has anyone ever reached a place where you felt pleasure and pain are sort of the same?

I mean, they are places on a continuum.

They both come from the same source.

Pain & Pleasure are like siblings.

Are they the same in many ways?

Sensory stimuli--thats it. Sensory stimuli. Are they the same?

A comparison EM, nothing more, you cover it well with your terminology, Sensory stimuli. I get that feeling when I smell a thick rasher of back bacon being griddled.

Duality vs. Nonduality
Pleasure vs. Pain

JLN (or anyone),

Any thoughts on Nonduality and how Pleasure & Pain are actually both just illusory sensory stimuli, touching us in different ways--but really they're kind of the same.

Can anyone tell me the difference between Pleasure & Pain?

And isn't it painful when the pleasure is removed? And isn't it pleasurable when the pain is removed?

I guess I want the full meal deal with supersize

Please note that I added a paragraph to my last post.

Extra, I WAS talking about dualism (the conceptual opposition of pleasure and pain) and nondualism (the absolute uncompared and unconceptualization experience of what we call 'pain" and "pleasure").
Their relationship can be seen in the way masochists conceptualize pain as pleasure. Sadist do the same, but their situation is weaker. For example (I repeat from another thread):

The masochist drops to the floor and beseeches the sadist to hurt him.
After some thought the sadist says "No."
After some writhing with frustration the satisfied masochist answers, "Thanks."
The logic of the relationship entails the advantage of the masochist.

JLN,
Got it.

I just had this thought: If Life = Pain is indeed somewhat true, a masochist should be pretty satisfied and content with life?

Sometimes I've had this weird flash: I've been going through a particularly painful part of life, and strangely I had this flash that I liked it a little. Feeling that intense pain. Weird. Like it made me feel alive. Do a lot of us have masochistic tendencies?

Do you need some masochism to be sort of fully alive in the given human condition we find ourselves in? A way to enjoy the pain of existence?
whew. I like that idea, for some reason.

Damn, does the above make me a masochist? Enjoying the pain of life?
Mathos seems to admit to some of this too.

Enjoying the exquisitely painful parts of life. Should I read up on that Sade M dude? Seems like someone has probably explored this in philosophy/psych/behavioral before? People who enjoy the painful parts of life?

E.M. I don't believe in massokeism.Anybody who can't talk their way out of that deserves all they get.

LOL. You speak of it as if its Catholicism or Judaism something. "Well, ever since I converted to masochism, things are very clear you see."

Well maybe it is like those two. Not as permanently painful though, one supposes.

Extra, I know people who are pessimistic as a self-empowering strategy. They always expect to suffer losses and the failure of projects, this way when they experience the losses and the failures they at least enjoy a sense of control--they predicted them. That's no masochism.
By the way, isn't "masochism" a form of eroticism?

Yes...expect the worst. You'll never be disappointed.

Is it not better to expect nothing?

Yes, much better. Why to expect the worst? If you expect something your life will be subordinated to those hypothetical expectations. If someone always expects the worst will lose control over oneself because the result is determined.

Yeah. Your mood will be low if you expect the worst, and you can have a false idea of the future. To expect things to always be good can also disappoint when the expectation is not fulfilled.

Thus, to expect nothing might be the best. Hope and expectations are not the same. Optimism can just translate to having a bright mood, while persevering problems.

If there were no rain,
We wouldn't enjoy the sunshine.

Define pain and pleasure so that we can grasp what you are talking about here.

I define pain as the opposite of pleasure - that which prompts movement (in the aristotelean sense) and pleasure as the cessation of pain.

What, now, do you mean?

TTF

p.s. I am inclined to see this as a funk as well - do NOT read any Proust for a while.