The Joy of Pleasure and Pain in a Constant of Time and Space

You know how they say lots of artists create masterpieces while on drugs? Well, I’ve just discovered an alternative way to reach higher intellectual states that let you see the light: Gastroenteritis. Yesterday I found myself in a situation where I was so weak I had to crawl to the toilet on my hands and knees, unable to walk. And in this moment of complete physical weakness I finally grasped Einstein’s concept of time and space being one: In my world, my time and my space had indeed merged into one single entity: my bed. And as I lay there, unable to speak or watch anything (thank you, Corpus Christi internet) I reflected upon the pain I was feeling and discomfort in general. And I made a little diagram of various things and how annoying or painful they are.

Diagram indicating the annoyingness and painfulness of things.

 

I discovered that most things causing pain also carry some degree of annoyingness but not vice versa. E.g. the word paninis is very annoying but causes only minimal pain. I then realized that I was painting a rather dark image of the world, including only bad things in my diagram. I thus expanded both axis to include the antonyms, which, for me, are joy and pleasure. Joy being more mental and pleasure relating to physical wellbeing.

                                                                                                                                                                                 

Diagram indicating the full spectrum of emotions evoked by things

I hence discovered that most things pleasurable also cause joy, but not vice versa. Here we can see how closely the mind and body are connected. As I like to argue, they are indeed one. Thus, things causing pleasure affect the whole body, thus also the brain and cause joy. However, what causes joy may only affect the brain – a part of the body. Wow. I also realized that I could not list a single thing that was pleasurable while being annoying. Maybe you can? I did consider Justin Bieber. But I do feel like in recent times people have started really liking him. So I’ve put a question mark.

Now. Here comes the beauty of my diagram. It enables us to calculate, for any give situation, your net state of pleasure/pain/anger/joy. Simply apply vector geometry. For example. Say you are on your period. You feel quite annoyed and your ovaries are in pain. If someone in front of you in the queue at Costa then orders two ham and cheese paninis, you can add those two vectors and reach a state of significantly increased anger, with your pain levels staying roughly the same. Cool right?                                                                                                                                                  

Adding Paninis to your period increases your anger levels.

Let’s try a different example. Many of us hate the sound of metal on stone, here described by the beautiful German term Krallen (claws) auf der Schiefertafel (on slate). Highly annoying and also painful. But we all love pink things. And you can see that, if the slate is pink, your anger is so strongly reduced that, while staying painful, the experience causes joy.                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

A pink slate turns anger into joy when claws are involved.

And NOW look at this: If it happens while you are watching Star Wars, the resulting vector shows that the experience will in fact be MORE beneficial than just watching star wars alone.

Watching Star Wars with claws on a pink slate is better than Star Wars on its own.

Wait. Maybe I’ve rated pink things a bit too highly. Or maybe this is all bullshit and I’m still high from all that gastroenteritis. And why is pleasure pointing downwards anyway? Maybe my state is not that intellectually high after all. I shall return to my warm fluffy time-space constant and have another round of reflection.