Why can’t we control out own sensations ? Why is our brain not able to just turn off the feeling of pain for the moment ? “I got it, something is bad, now stop hurting !” Or to just fall asleep whenever we want to.
In: Biology
Pain is a much more basic thing than thinking. Being able to experience pain stops us from making things worse, even if we can not think. That goes for animals, and babies, and anything else.
Thinking is much more advanced and is not related in any way to those older systems, such as pain. They are not connected. So you can’t control them by thinking.
Your brain can shut this stuff off when it gets bad enough. Your brain can cause you to disassociate from a very traumatic event so you don’t recall it or panic during it.
Also adrenaline and opiates created by the brain can mask pain for a short period of time.
[removed]
Because “you” don’t exist. Your consciousness is something your brain makes up after the fact to explain things.
Some people actually have conditions where these mechanisms don’t function properly. This is often hugely disadvantageous, leading to much greater injury, because it allows the individual (knowingly or otherwise) to exceed the limits the discomfort would place on them. Tearing a muscle, or failing to treat a cut. Babies with no sense of pain can significantly damage their eyes simply by curiously poking at them with their fingers.
By that same token, if we could switch them off at will, we could cause ourselves harm for convenience. This is a survival risk.
We can’t be trusted with a majority of our own body. If our brain gave our conscious selves complete control, a moment of curiosity could stop your heart, or put you into a coma.
Suffer enough pain and you’ll be able to deal with it a lot easier, you still feel it though, technically you can almost stop yourself smelling and you can reduce what you can hear, you can even block out hour vision. Touch and pain seem difficult.
I’m not helpful I know, sorry.
Because we’re not intelligently designed by an engineer.
We’re a happenstance collection of shit that worked and managed to survive long enough to aggregate this far.
Five minutes of comprehensive engineering would accomplish what billions of years of blind evolution cannot and will never achieve.
Pain is, broadly speaking, a healthy response in that your nervous system is working properly.
Having said that, there are dissociative conditions where a person cuts themself off from the situation they’re in, thus allowing them to survive the kind of pain they’re going through. It’s pretty terrible tbh, I wouldn’t want that ability even though I have some painful experiences regularly.
Usually this type of thing happens to people who experience traumatic events: rape, child abuse, torture, etc. The person just sort of leaves their body while the trauma occurs.
So while it may seem like being able to shut off pain sounds like a good thing, it’s typically anything but.
This is what you see happen in people with leprosy. The disease doesn’t cause anyone’s limbs to rot off, but it does deaden touch and pain receptors, so people continually get injured because they can’t sense it happening. Pain is good for us, generally speaking.
Latest Answers