"Neurons which fire together wire together"
It suddenly struck me today that pain pleasure are merely habits of mental association.
For example if rainy weather makes you gloomy it is simply because the stimuli causes the gloomy neurons in the brain to get activated, and this association was somehow created (in childhood, or through evolution) and simply being strengthened, by reuse.
Similarly if someone fights with you and you feel angry it is simply cause of this habitual wiring of the brain. These associative circuitry has gotten strengthed (by repeated use) to the point to become automatic.
Today I had to achieve many tasks and deadlines to meet, while work was getting nowhere. I was starting to get stressed when I realized that missing tasks and getting scolded by the boss is not what makes unhappy, it is the mental association. Thus realizing this fact I started to mentally associate getting scolded with happiness and in fact I had never been so stress free under such circumstances before.
Thus it should be possible for a buddha with sufficient control over his mind to say activate the happiness or pleasure center with whatever situation, effectively ensuring a suffering free existence.
Similar is the case with the ego, the feeling of constant threat from the world and the ideas of taking great care of the body mind complex (as well as self glorification and justification) is just a neuronal wiring (associative habit), possibly through culture or evolution or whatever. Break the wiring and no great effort remains in life.
Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
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RalphPL
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
Imagine the pleasure of a day-long-orgasm!
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
i think this has limits though. If someone punches you in the face, do you think you have the control to nullify the pain? or get kicked in the groin?
Amor fati
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
When people get injured they are meant to feel agony, not pleasure, otherwise they wouldn't be alive for too long and wouldn't pass on their defective genes.
As for dealing with stress: You convinced yourself that getting in shit with your boss was actually something you wanted to do (or were indifferent to) and hence the stress, which was the result of having lots to do to NOT get in shit from your boss, was alleviated. You basically told yourself that it didn't really matter if you finished your work. Why get stressed about something that doesn't matter? I don't think this counts as rewiring your neurons though.
As for dealing with stress: You convinced yourself that getting in shit with your boss was actually something you wanted to do (or were indifferent to) and hence the stress, which was the result of having lots to do to NOT get in shit from your boss, was alleviated. You basically told yourself that it didn't really matter if you finished your work. Why get stressed about something that doesn't matter? I don't think this counts as rewiring your neurons though.
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
I think that pain is kind of evolutionarily hardwired with the agony centers in the brain. It seems that this wiring can be broken with practise, but to do that is not recommended for two reasons.Faust13 wrote:i think this has limits though. If someone punches you in the face, do you think you have the control to nullify the pain? or get kicked in the groin?
1) To break it you would have to recreate the situation, and the recreation of the situation would damage the body
2) If you break it then you may get no signal to indicate catastrophe in the body.
It is like breaking off your car's trouble indication mechanism from the engine. Of course there would be no signal of impending engine failure but why on earth would one do that.
Yes but this would eliminate (most/all) of the psychological suffering associated with living in the world.
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
Basically I realized that I was in a loop of suffering, being brought upon me by the past. The fear center in the brain was hardwired to this kind of stimulus (deadline pressure). I guess this came from childhood, when the teachers instill this fear in you for not finishing assignments in time. Thus the easiest way to eliminate this suffering is not to push yourself extra hard to finish all of these tasks, but to break these two bunch of centers firing together. One way to do that is to try not to energize the fear circuitry any more by simply waiting through not letting it feed upon itself. Also you can try to stimulate the pleasure circuitry so that they become associated over time (ie pressure and pleasure). The latter is what I did and it was a real difference.WhorlyWhelk wrote: As for dealing with stress: You convinced yourself that getting in shit with your boss was actually something you wanted to do (or were indifferent to) and hence the stress, which was the result of having lots to do to NOT get in shit from your boss, was alleviated. You basically told yourself that it didn't really matter if you finished your work. Why get stressed about something that doesn't matter? I don't think this counts as rewiring your neurons though.
The interesting fact is that this experiment told me that we are much more free than we imagine, and often the best way to fight suffering is not eliminating the (so called) external cause. But a simple associative diengagement of the neuronal centers.
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Ryan Rudolph
- Posts: 2490
- Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2006 10:32 am
- Location: British Columbia, Canada
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
Faust 13 wrote:
There was a documentary made about him called: SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
His entire life was an illustration on how he actually enjoyed torturing himself in any way possible. He would do random painful acts to himself in public and film himself doing it - one of the worst ones was he actually had a nail hammered through his penis in front of the camera, and he didnt seem to feel pain. From what I read, he actually had a small smirk on his face.
The brain is entirely plastic, and it can rewire itself if it is under certain circumstances. In Flanagan's case, many of his stunts were sexually related, so I imagine that as a chronic CF victim, he probably allievated his pain through creating eleborate sexual fantasies where he mastered his CF demons so to speak, and then when he actually inflicted sexual pain on himself, his rewiring allowed him to feel pleasurable results instead of painful ones.
Overall, there is something incredibly haunting about his life, from what I read about the documentary, it is a very powerful film. Apparently, he realized the truth of his entire life near the end, and he seemed quite defeated psychologically.
He was actually quite infantile near the end, his longtime girlfriend left him, and she was a motherly figure in his life, and he regressed psychologically reliving many horrible CF experiences of his childhood that he spent his entire life trying to overcome with his masochistic stunts... very powerful...
Here are a few links for those who are interested in his life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Flanagan
http://www.amazon.com/Sick-Life-Death-F ... 718&sr=8-1
It is definitely possible to condition the brain to feel any type of pain as pleasure, it is just a matter of rewiring through conditioning. Bob Flanagan is the notorious example that comes to mind, he suffered with chronic CF as a child, and he was in such agony for long periods of time, that his brain eventually rewired itself to feel painful experiences as pleasurable ones.i think this has limits though. If someone punches you in the face, do you think you have the control to nullify the pain? or get kicked in the groin?
There was a documentary made about him called: SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
His entire life was an illustration on how he actually enjoyed torturing himself in any way possible. He would do random painful acts to himself in public and film himself doing it - one of the worst ones was he actually had a nail hammered through his penis in front of the camera, and he didnt seem to feel pain. From what I read, he actually had a small smirk on his face.
The brain is entirely plastic, and it can rewire itself if it is under certain circumstances. In Flanagan's case, many of his stunts were sexually related, so I imagine that as a chronic CF victim, he probably allievated his pain through creating eleborate sexual fantasies where he mastered his CF demons so to speak, and then when he actually inflicted sexual pain on himself, his rewiring allowed him to feel pleasurable results instead of painful ones.
Overall, there is something incredibly haunting about his life, from what I read about the documentary, it is a very powerful film. Apparently, he realized the truth of his entire life near the end, and he seemed quite defeated psychologically.
He was actually quite infantile near the end, his longtime girlfriend left him, and she was a motherly figure in his life, and he regressed psychologically reliving many horrible CF experiences of his childhood that he spent his entire life trying to overcome with his masochistic stunts... very powerful...
Here are a few links for those who are interested in his life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Flanagan
http://www.amazon.com/Sick-Life-Death-F ... 718&sr=8-1
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Ryan Rudolph
- Posts: 2490
- Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2006 10:32 am
- Location: British Columbia, Canada
Re: Pain/Pleasure mere habits of association.
Maestro wrote:
The only function I see that dopamine serves is perhaps keeping the mind sharp by learning a new skill or studying a new subject. The dopamine acts to strengthen the pathways of the neurons, keeping the mind vital.
The main problem I see with the Buddha is that even his mind starts to decay and breakdown with age, so I suspect that one must always be trying to learn new skills and new ways of thinking to keep the neuron pathways strong.
One thing I have just learned is that the neuronal brain maps are actually competitive, and they compete for space in the brain. For instance: if there is a sexual fetish brain map, a guitar playing brain map, and a reasoning brain map, and suddenly one starts to reason more, and ignore the other two inferior activities, then the dying brain maps will fight to keep their importance in the brain by generating heightened urges and demands.
Each brain map generates an enormous amount of hormonal production and release in the glands and the genes, and the body gets very accustomed to this activity, and when the operator suddenly decides to halt certain forms of production, and lay off some workers, well, things can get a little contradictory. Essentially, two areas of the brain are set into competition with each other, and what makes the battle so difficult is that inferior activities like music and sex give the brain enormous bursts of dopamine to strengthen the neuronal connections, whereas rational conclusions give you very little quantities of dopamine usually. Dopamine pickings are slim for team rationality, so isnt as much incentive to help strengthen the neuronal pathways there, and take over the space of the inferiors.
Happiness in this sense is not the realm of the Buddha. This type of happiness that you speak of is the result of mechanistic releases of dopamine into the brain. Surges of dopamine are released into the brain when you snort a line of cocaine, fall in love with a woman, have an orgasm, eat chocolate and so on.Thus it should be possible for a buddha with sufficient control over his mind to say activate the happiness or pleasure center with whatever situation, effectively ensuring a suffering free existence.
The only function I see that dopamine serves is perhaps keeping the mind sharp by learning a new skill or studying a new subject. The dopamine acts to strengthen the pathways of the neurons, keeping the mind vital.
The main problem I see with the Buddha is that even his mind starts to decay and breakdown with age, so I suspect that one must always be trying to learn new skills and new ways of thinking to keep the neuron pathways strong.
One thing I have just learned is that the neuronal brain maps are actually competitive, and they compete for space in the brain. For instance: if there is a sexual fetish brain map, a guitar playing brain map, and a reasoning brain map, and suddenly one starts to reason more, and ignore the other two inferior activities, then the dying brain maps will fight to keep their importance in the brain by generating heightened urges and demands.
Each brain map generates an enormous amount of hormonal production and release in the glands and the genes, and the body gets very accustomed to this activity, and when the operator suddenly decides to halt certain forms of production, and lay off some workers, well, things can get a little contradictory. Essentially, two areas of the brain are set into competition with each other, and what makes the battle so difficult is that inferior activities like music and sex give the brain enormous bursts of dopamine to strengthen the neuronal connections, whereas rational conclusions give you very little quantities of dopamine usually. Dopamine pickings are slim for team rationality, so isnt as much incentive to help strengthen the neuronal pathways there, and take over the space of the inferiors.