GOOD PAIN, BAD PAIN

The relationship of pain to virtue and vice

Pieta, from the Borghese Chapel of the church of the Trinita dei Monti, Rome

Pain cannot be avoided. The good news is that there is Good Pain and Bad Pain - and seeking to avoid both makes everything worse.

Today I will talk about pain in the physical, moral and psychological sense.

What I laughingly call my life has been an education in this matter and here are some of the lessons I have reluctantly learned.

In brief

• Seeking to avoid pain brings bad pain.

• Embracing the good pain banishes the bad.

What is the difference and what can you do about it?

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They do.

CONTENTS - INCLUDING MENES xDDDD AND BANEPOSTING:

• A PAIN-FREE LIFE?

• GOOD AND BAD PAIN

• GETTING PUNCHED IN THE FACE

• LIFTING OUT OF MISERY

• LIFTING THE SOUL

• SIN AS SELF-HARM

• MENTAL HYGIENE

• PAINFUL TRANSITIONS

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THE DREAM OF A PAIN-FREE LIFE

I am told Fernando Cervero’s book “Understanding Pain” is considered a classic by knowers of such things.

In it, he said our society has progressed from the notion that pain is “a test of character” and “must be endured with fortitude”¹.

Instead, he says modern society is “moving towards thinking that there is no reason to suffer pain and it is perfectly rational to get rid of it”.

Cervero adds in his chapter A Pain-Free World that “moral and religious” concepts of the merits of suffering pain are an obstacle towards an ideal - a pain-free world - which he says may never be reached but remains rationally desirable.

His analysis also warns of the cycle of dependence to which chronic pain-avoidance may lead, noting the problem of prescription opiates as one example.

Avoidant behaviour is addictive.

Cervero does stress that he is referring to the goal of removing chronic pain which blights people’s lives.

Yet in so doing he appears to dismiss the fact that there can not only be Good Pain, but also the question of whether a life spent in avoidance of pain can be a better life - or good in any sense.

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Take the no-pills pill.

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GOOD AND BAD PAIN

Having suffered life changing injuries myself, I am aware of what it is to live with chronic pain².

How do I remain an irritatingly cheerful (if novelty-sized) person?

I have replaced Bad Pain with Good Pain. Training in several disciplines has made me stronger, and altered the way I perceive, anticipate and even feel pain.

The pains from my injuries are still present but are mitigated by disciplined action. When I am inactive for some reason, they return, though diminished, in body and in mind. Yet I now know how to deal with pain.

Cervero says that the perception of physical pain - and the relation of pain to brain - is a crucial factor in understanding pain.

Though he notes electrical therapy, deep-brain stimulation and surgery as non-druggy remedial therapies, he appears to be a DYEL faggot.

“Bro, Do You Even Lift?” was abbreviated to the snarkronym “DYEL” to describe a so-called man who does not.

Since I began training in weightlifting I have been in a different sort of constant pain. Deadlifts, squats, bench and overhead press all make you ache. This is called DOMS - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, and it can make you waddle like a saddlesore cowboy.

Yet over time this pain is combined with increased bone density, muscle strength and size, as well as improved sleep and improved brain and hormonal health overall. You heal faster from the hurt you suffer.

Lifting weights with a barbell has changed my relationship to pain. I no longer seek to avoid - but embrace - pain.

Before I did this I practised fighting arts for many years, and continue to do so whenever I can.

This too changed my relationship to pain.

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“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” - Mike Tython.

Mike Tyson is a pigeon fancier of repute. In fact, his outrage at pigeon persecution sparked his first fight.

I have been punched in the face a lot, a fact which has enriched my dentist.

Aside from being struck in the face, on the bones and in the tender parts, Japanese martial arts teach nerve strikes and soft tissue manipulation.

This results in quite the education in pain. I have suffered extreme pain so arresting as to blind me temporarily, for example, and have found that different types of pain are experienced in different ways. New ones are always rather shocking. I can describe these in words, but there is little point.

If you would like to find out what I mean I would recommend you remember the words of my teacher, who said,

“To feel is to know”.

He would then proceed to transmit knowledge into my person³. It often arrives as a sort of jolt, a spasm of instant understanding if you like.

Here the Boss asked me “How does that feel?”- when he suddenly introduced Mr. Knifey into our exchange. He then asked me what I would do next. I bravely ran away.

Yet the shocks these pains send through the electrical system of the body appear to have a very beneficial effect. People who train in Japanese pyjamas tend to be very cheerful, and also seem to live relatively untroubled lives in the matter of pain, despite being frequently assaulted, terrified and even injured.

There is a lot of nonsense around the martial arts.

It is however true that being expertly mullered with artful precision functions as a sort of exuberant massage.

Research does show that bones do strengthen from percussion, whilst retaining their flexibility, and despite many naysayers my hands have not become arthritic from doing knuckle pressups.

In brief, this all hurts and has made me stronger and more indifferent to pain.

Ultimately this sort of thing leads to the acceptance of mortal frailty and death, which is the basis of the reality of the human condition. In most - not all- people, it also fosters the correct reverence for life. This makes you joyous rather than nasty and resentful, as all forms of pain become more of an interesting challenge than a dreadful nemesis to be avoided at all costs.

Yes, this is a real picture of the real Iron Mike in his real meme t-shirt. He is lol, as well as being a hard knock.

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LIFTING YOURSELF OUT OF MISERY

Weightlifting savages who (correctly) believe that deadlifts etc. will fix you have adapted the pain cycle somewhat:

Here we can see the correction of the personal doom cycle. It shows how the avoidance of real and imaginary pain leads to a self defeating doom loop.

Predictably, the menes have memed this timeless formula:

If you avoid lifting weights to make sad head voice quiet, you may also develop man-breasts or worse - become a jogger.

These avoidable, tragic and painful fates await the weight-avoidant.

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Lifting the Soul

The correction of the habit of sin is painful. We sin because we like it, as my former parish priest once said.

If we understand sin correctly it is an appealing pathway to self harm.

Neurally, this pathway is paved with the kind of virtual rewards which foster bad and repetitive habits, in a similar way found in the addictive design of many digital services.

Beyond social media and games most of our economy is based on addictions. Food, gambling, porn, shopping - the less self control you have, the more you consume, which is better for the economy if not for you.

Self control is the fruit of discipline - the art of obeying commands given to the self.

If you do not like lifting weights try jumping into cold water. It is always a shock, always makes you feel very alive afterwards, costs nothing and trains you to ignore your mind - which always tells you not to do it.

This is a helpful skill. It gives you the power to ignore your feelings - when you feel like a spot of sin. It makes you indifferent to the poison of the crowd, and frees you from attachment to praise and blame.

In short, it gives you the power to be less bad.

Christ chose to suffer. He did so to redeem mankind. Why? We love to sin and He loves us. Let us try to be less bad.

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SIN AS LIBERATION - INTO NOTHING

Sin is appealing but is self destructive.

Modern progressive wisdom says the notion of sin is itself a sort of pain which should be done away with. It sees sins and the idea of sinful behaviour as stupid taboos restricting the liberties to be otherwise taken in life.

The works of the Marquis de Sade are an illustration of the nullifying tedium produced by a life of self indulgence. No sensation thrills the deadened nerve of the libertine. This condition is called “affectlessness” today. It describes the blank expressions and barren inner lives typical of digitally overstimulated children of all ages.

Correctly understood, the commands of the Church to avoid sin are the basic rules for a healthy and happy life. Remember also that sin offends God, and if you do not believe in Him, try doing so as a thought experiment on yourself.

It is very healthy to consider that you are not the be-all and end-all.

It lifts a considerable weight from Man, which allows him to look up from himself for a change.

It makes Man a considerable something, rather than a sinful nothing.

NB Displaying this meme to your wife may result in sudden understanding of the third panel.

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MENTAL HYGIENE

No one is taught mental hygiene in school, where we are put on notice to wash our hands but never the contents of our heads.

Most thoughts are not even thoughts. They are second hand sensations broadcasted into us, impressions and fantasies, fears disconnected from real danger. This last is the essence of anxiety - another modern plague.

Things like fighting, rock climbing or risking your neck bench pressing bring real danger into your life in a (hopefully) controlled manner.

Everyone feels the same fear when doing these things, but doing them habitually habituates you to fear. You learn to ignore it, as it is a dangerous distraction in itself.

Anxiety - or fear without danger - is as much a poison to the mind as anger, which is also dissolved in any physical discipline involving self mastery. These activities also boost testosterone, which despite its bad rap as the “toxic male” hormone is as necessary for good sleep and vitality in women as it is in men.

In fact, low test levels probably explain much of the epidemic of mood disorders including depression today. The best remedy is not testosterone replacement injections, but lifting weights on the regular.

I have finally persuaded my wife to do so, with a kettlebell, and five minutes a day with that is quite sufficient to reap the physical and hormonal benefits of weight training.

Pain is not only unavoidable, it is a part of the process of renewal and rebirth. Ask any woman who has had children about this.

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If you would like me to help you lift weights to get less bad I will do so free of charge. Email me at frankwrighter@pm.me with DYEL in the subject line.

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“Good people are evil”. Got it.

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Detransitioning is painful

The liberal global system is being put to sleep, and there are tears towards bedtime. Try to remember it is an economic system which uses mass culture to advertise itself.

Of course, it is a diabolical system of sin which hates Christ, and so teaches that virtue is vice, and vice versa.

The return of nations in place of its international marketplace is a painful detransition, and like that of the trannies, involves the recognition that what you were doing to yourself was self destructive.

You may have got a lot out of it, but it sterilised you as it enchanted you with the spiteful fantasy that everything was and should be about yourself. It is painful to accept the values it sold you were the wages of sin, but it is better to suffer this and live than celebrate your own spiritual and national suicide.

The return to reality is painful because it involves accepting that you were bewitched, and invested your time, money and the meaning of your life in things which turned out to be wrong or even wicked.

In fact, you were destroying yourself and everything of value in your life.

To accept this is to accept the basic reality of the human condition.

We get things wrong, and we like doing things which are wrong. We do not like being found out, and we have discarded the practice of principled behaviour.

Virtue demands sacrifice, usually of self indulgence. You have to be strong to be good, and both of these things are often painful. A pain-free life is unlikely to be a good life - its goal more like a living death - by convenience.

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Refusing to go mad is painful

My face when

Is it so hard to refuse to go Satan’s Window Shopping in every spare moment⁴? Yes. I have limited my own exposure to digital lunacy and though it is good for me it hurts.

I want to go insane and stay up late, my face glommed to the permanent blue-light emergency of Twitter.

(People who call it X are the kind of people who wear sunglasses indoors).

If I have been remiss in replying to your comments it is because I try to take my own advice and stay off the internet as much as possible.

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Taking good advice is painful

I do not like taking good advice and try to believe it does not exist for this reason.

I have learned the hard way that it is real. The fool’s errand of my life has been punctuated by the disaster of doing as I saw fit, instead of fitting myself to the facts.

This can be called the fact-value gap. There is what is, and there isn’t what we think should be. It can never be closed, but that does not stop us from trying.

This may explain why I have always loved this book.

Mr Twit was a twit. He is not the only one.

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Being a Twit is painful

I have been a twit for much of my life. I believed one thing after another, as to do so made me feel cleverer than the people who did not.

I am a good example of how being good with books and words does not prevent but can promote the Twit Life.

I used to be too clever for God. Since I recovered my sense of reality and turned back to Him, my life has been far less regrettable.

We are proud of our mistakes and defend them with our lives. We spend our lives in this vainglorious campaign, so we never have to accept ourselves as we truly are.

This rots us from the inside, as all our efforts are to contrive a compelling outside. This face and its makeup is what we seek to preserve, thinking the loss of face would be a certain death. And it would be.

Losing face like this kills the old self. It is extremely painful. For you.

But it is better not to wear the mask.

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If you would like your real friends to avoid sham pain and get into the good stuff instead, consider sending them this:

If you believe that funding grifters like me is a good thing, then you can do that here too:

God bless you all and have a blessed Holy Week.

Christ died for our sins.

1. Chapter 10 A Pain Free World, “Understanding Pain”, MIT Press, 2012

2. I have rehabilitated myself and others through strength training. You can do that too. Even if your debility cannot be “cured”, it is better to be strong and injured than not.

3. Being the enthusiastic and scientifically minded sort I decided to test the capacity of my teacher by hiding in a car park and attempting to mug him after training.

I remember my face meeting a windscreen with surprising celerity. When I returned to the world of the wakeful, I was surrounded by the laughter of my friends.

They were not laughing with me.

4. I like to call the internet Satan’s Window - as a joke. Like all the best jokes, it is basically true.