Michael McMahon

http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/03/self-immolation-tibet-dalai-lamas-silence-costing-lives/

Thanks very much for all of the replies by the way.

The experience of pain can encourage solidarity. Pain of course viscerally hurts. So I find it ridiculous any notion that some are "selfishly" dead or that the mentally ill are "arrogantly" in despair. As I've said before I'm not at all criticising society. I'm merely disagreeing with a few comments one sees around the web.

Though rare, there has actually been suicide by burning. The poet Sylvia Plath died by putting her head into an oven. Self-immolation by Buddhist monks as political protest for instance has been documented. People who've made suicide attempts are sometimes left with disabilities. There have been cases of the terminally ill dying by suicide. To understand cowardice it may be best to first look to the opposite concept; bravery. I've frequently read that bravery is not the absence of fear but overcoming fear. So there is an element of fear in all death irrespective of how people respond to it. Personally I don't understand how WW1 analogies are helpful given the amount of controversy over the actual purpose of that war. Even knowing you are going to die doesn't always lessen the pain. In fact in the death penalty debate the uncertainty of inmates in death row is often cited as increasing the inmates' pain. Elderly death is obviously still very painful even though they've had up to 80 years to prepare for their death. We all have the same pain fibers so technically deliberate injury and accidental injury would both be highly painful. For people who make such an argument about relatives who find the body of a suicide victim your burning example perhaps wasn't good.

It's not so much about who was in the most pain but that there is pain in all death.

Well I think there's a difference in tone between reassurance and ridicule. I agree that we should by all means try to reason the person out of it and strongly encourage them to live; to remind them that the pain is temporary and it will eventually go away. But if a patient just cannot deal with the immense stress and pain they're under I wouldn't try to physically stop them killing themselves. I'm didn't say suicide prevention itself is being turned into taunting but just some opinions you read about online. People suffering from schizophrenia, for example, may have delusions. Pointing out the errors of their logic is certainly helpful. But I don't think "ridiculing" the person will solve it. It could easily backfire and make the person more guarded and defensive and less likely to seek help. Mental illnesses can be quite different. There are bullying victims who may contemplate suicide; chronic back pain sufferers, depressed individuals and so on. Each may require a different strategy in order to help them and prevent suicide. I'm not sure what you mean by your dying examples. I'm afraid there are many different methods of suicide.

I think the mental health service should maintain it's stance on suicide prevention efforts. But unfortunately some people have been advocationg a sort of suicide deterrence. Trying to stop suicide by stigmatising suicide victims is a recipe for disaster. Mental illness obviously does not discriminate. Indeed there are many different types of mental illnesses and therefore many different reasons as to why people die of suicide. Suicide and mental illness are very much related so telling people to get help while simultaneously stigmatising suicide would be very dishonest. The method of suicide is ultimately the same cause of death as any physical illness. For instance, I imagine blood loss by deliberately cutting onself would be just as painful as having your arm accidentally cut. So to call it cowardly serves only to downplay how painful other deaths are. Suicide is not selfish as death is the end of you (in this world at least). Reducing suicide stigma would allow potential victims to alert their relatives beforehand. This would reduce the shock and suddenness of it resulting in less grief. In conclusion taunting suicidal people out of suicide would not be helpful. Thankfully mental health awareness and understanding seems to be going very well. But we must avoid any type of callousness or sadism that a few people appear to be advocating.

https://www.aconsciousrethink.com/4920/7-reasons-wary-overly-nice-people/ In relation to the issue of forwardness, I don't know what this author is trying to say. Should we prefer avowedly evil people instead? I suppose it might be necessary to express anger under certain circumstances. But in other contexts if someone opts not to scapegoat you and is always nice; I'd tend to view that positively.

Well lets take one instance of pride: being overfamiliar to others. I don't necessarily think it's rude to be too friendly in being a bit presumptuous. If someone is requesting too much of your time, for example, the onus is on you to be assertive and politely say no.

I'm no expert but I seem to think it's good that everyone is different. In a collective sense there can be a synergy gained. Some people are refreshingly humble and others perhaps display a more prideful ambitiousness. Humility might serve to make one more understanding. But the sensation of pride can reward us for being cooperative and achieving our objectives. Obviously rudeness or condescension is never acceptable but that's a very different issue. So I don't quite agree with this idea of false humility as I suppose it's the thought that counts. People can change depending on the context. I don't think there can be a perfect type of personality. What do you think?

I suppose different factors might affect personality. Spiritual beliefs like mysticism or atheism might impact your personality in subtle ways. Certainly beliefs like morality and evil would affect your character. How social one is may be dependent on early childhood relationships or the pursuit of solitary activities. Autistic traits might be relevant in this category. Cultural background, language, education etc. will affect identity. Personal willpower or obsessive traits might trickle down to your mindset. In terms of evolution I imagine each personality has different pros and cons which is one reason why were all different. For instance, perhaps obsessiveness might end up being useful if applied to a productive activity but not in the actions of those with OCD.

Hi. Thanks for your advice about the books. I haven't yet I'm afraid but I must try read them.

Hi again. How pain works is not fully understood. But I was thinking what if by severely overloading a certain pain response in the short term, that painful sensation might then be hampered and restricted in the long term. There are many different aspects of health such as stamina, tone and strength. Maybe reducing one might help increase another one. There's a lot of information about psychological sensitisation and habituation. So while chronic pain hurts in the short term maybe in the long term one might get habituated to it and have it may have a partially analgesic effect.

I think the high place phenomenon is a manifestation of obsessive thought disorder. The stakes are very high as if you fall you could die. This aggravates the symptoms of those with anxiety problems which temporarily and partially leads to obsessive thinking. I think full-blown obsessive thought disorder is caused by infinite regress. It's impossible to actively ignore anything. The mind is not a computer. If you try to ignore something your subconscious will keep checking to see if your ignoring it. In doing so it inadvertently reminds you of the thought. This is what leads to infinite regress and a downward spiral of autocatalytic anxiety. I don't think there's a simple solution. One has to try to instinctively, unintentionally and passively forget it. The difficulty is the lack of control over our subconscious mind.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4459752/ Hi I found an article about epigenetic mechanisms in chronic pain syndromes. I think chronic pain is a simulated stress test for recovery purposes. I mentioned how chronic pain might cause changes deep in the genes. But maybe it's the epigenome that's involved instead. Perhaps recovery takes place on the cellular level. I understand that epigenetics is about gene expression and not the actual genetic code.

While I think pain has healing properties it is clearly limited in what it can achieve. Some organs like the heart never rest. Therefore the amount of pain necessary to repair it would be insurmountable. Some body parts are possible to live without such as an arm or a leg. This I imagine places a limit on how much pain the mind can use to repair them. Too much severe intense pain and there's a risk of amputation. Too much long lasting mild pain would be disabling. And then with chronic pain there's a risk of suicide. I think for these reasons we don't fully see the healing powers of pain. But like I said before I'm not a biologist or evolutionary scientist.

I appreciate your replies. Yes rest is of course very important to recovery. I just don't think that it's the primary function of pain. We'll have to agree to disagree.

I don't think the only function of pain is to make you rest and cut down energetic activity. You're body could force you to rest by deliberately weakening the body part or temporarily paralysing it. It could do so without the sensation of pain if this was the sole objective. Modern health services have obviously improved a lot in how it treats mental illness. But in evolutionary history chronic pain patients could not have taken sick days off to rest. Pre-historic societies would of lacked the resources to facilitate it.

I think pain probably serves multiple roles. I agree with you that one function is to report body damage, identify threats in the fight-or-flight response and to just act as a general deterrent to getting injured. However if this was the only purpose of pain it would definitely be overkill. If you've got a sick stomach for instance you cannot fix it with your bare hands. Therefore it would be futile to keep getting alerted to it by pain signals if this was its only function. It must have healing properties too. The exact mechanism of consciousness and hence pain is obviously still a mystery. But we can still make inferences. I think some mental illnesses may be your subconscious mind taking a huge risk. Let's take a depression. The most efficient way to determine if your life has meaning is for the person to find a solution to overcoming despair. The solution they find could vary from anything like hedonism to helping others. It's still a sort of stress test I suppose.

Very unfortunately many chronic pain patients die by suicide so it actually is erroneous enough to stop people reproducing.

Thanks for your reply. I will look into the modulation of the nervous system thanks. Well whatever about my theory chronic pain must serve some function. It's hardly the case that evolution messed up so badly that some people suffer seemingly endless pain for no reason whatsoever. All emotions including pain are adaptive. It couldn't be that their subconscious mind becomes sadistic and subjects them to pointless torture.

Hi, my name is Michael McMahon. I'm inquiring about the function of chronic pain. It can be a very strange illness in that it cannot be observed by someone else or any medical device. But the pain can still be severe for the patients. I was reading about the different theories into its nature. The slight problem I have with the overactive immune response hypothesis or the central sensitisation theory is that pain seems to be an evolved and adaptive response. Could chronic pain be a type of biological stress test? A stress test is where a device is tested to its breaking point to see where it fails and what needs to be done to fix it. Maybe chronic pain could be where the brain deliberately simulates organ failure to see what has to change in order to modify the body part. Science is reductionistic which has obviously been a very successful outlook in many areas. But in some respects the human body is almost infinitely complicated with lots of interdependent systems. This means that in order to change one system the body must make alterations to many others in order to compensate. One brutal but efficient way to do this would be to test the organ to failure so that the body and the genes could check all the different systems to be modified and hence design a blueprint for organ repair or strengthening. This would explain why chronic pain is invisible; because all the physical changes are happening deep in the genes. It would also account for why the pain could be so excruciating. Organs can never rest (if your heart for instance stops beating momentarily you die), so the only way to simulate their failure is to induce extreme long lasting pain to compensate for it. Another point is that it could explain why it happens in seemingly healthy and fit individuals. This is as the pain could be preemptive in nature if the body senses that an organ is not strong enough to withstand anticipated stress and heavy loads or demands. However, I'm not a biologist. It is only a hypothesis.