WritingsMar 31, 2025Source article

Pain, Pleasure, and Redemption

Pain and pleasure move in cycles: a high gives way to pain, redemption recognizes that the high did not last, and rest returns the nervous system toward equilibrium.

A philosophical discussion on the pain pleasure cycle

I wish I had a photo for you. Wait one sec I’ll find one!

Orange and green cosine waves illustrating pain and pleasure cycles — The pain pleasure cycle using cosine cycles

The highs and the lows are pretty common for most of us. We get excited when we’re excited, and absolutely pissed when things aren’t going our way…

But at least that’s the common knowledge around why Uncle Dan gets mad, freaks out, has ‘bad days’, almost as if bad days are a random event, not actually caused by something.

You see, if everything in nature has cycles, and Newton could predict the motion of the planets around the Sun, then why are we somehow outside of this? Are we really that special?

The Pain Pleasure cycle is something I’ve studied intently. And philosophically speaking, many intelligent people have also. We know from studies that the same circuits running pleasure run pain. Pain is both a signal of distress, and a lack of something.

It is said that after the pleasure seen during the High phase, an addict experiences “Redemption”. After a raging bender of a night, we wake up the next day thinking ‘never again…’.

But what is the logical basis of this? I believe its caused by a firm understanding, that after the high wears off, we simply notice our body. How do we feel? If there is pain, we then assume a causal relationship. And the simple answer: “it didn’t work”.

So the redemption is agnostic of what caused the high. It is simply an understanding. That the high did not last, in fact the pain resumed. In a very scary and logical way, the high did not ‘work’. Because the pain has either resumed, or it has showed up.

It is fascinating also to point out that if we run a horizontal line through the cycle, that is our equilibrium. And that is exactly the nervous system healing itself.

Orange and green pain and pleasure cycles crossing a horizontal equilibrium line — Running a line in the middle of the cycle, we get a horizontal line where our nervous system is at ‘equilibrium’.

So the high amplitude is the ‘high phase’, and the lower part is the pain phase. The slope up is the gain from the high. The peak is obvious. The slope down is when you are reaching ‘redemption’. At the lowest point, the pain sets in, and we realize ‘whatever that was, didn’t work’, and ‘i’m in pain again’. The redemption is ‘I won’t do that again, because it clearly doesn’t work, and i’m still in pain.’

The equilibrium is actually a phase in itself. We see animals use this. Its called resting. I know, shocker in a society that is always on the run. Watching a TV show has become a sage like practice, where staying off our phone at the same time means your a zen master. Sitting through an entire movie now means you’ve achieved Nirvana.

Orange and green cycles interrupted by a flat resting equilibrium phase — A reasonable ask of someone, highs and lows all good, just get some rest for God’s sake!

The equilibrium phase is the sweet spot.

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