THREAD: I wonder how much of our social issues are caused, at the root, by a growing (is it growing or just more visible now?) inability to handle negative emotions. We draw cultural boundaries around 'acceptable pain' and 'unacceptable pain.' Acceptable pain is stuff like
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And further, our internal experience of pain is heavily dictated by whether society approves of it or not, in the same way a hurt child might look to its parent to figure out if it should cry. Some ancient societies were chill with horrific coming of age rituals for kids,
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and the kids probably experienced those rituals in the same way we experience things in the category of "acceptable pains" today - annoyance but no trauma. Probably in a century circumcision will be seen as barbaric, but today circumcised men don't mind that much
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because the rest of society shrugs and goes "yeah, that's normal." My point is that, as a whole, our tolerance of suffering is 1. Arbitrary and influenced by incentives 2. Relative and dictated by society What does this mean?
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The vast majority of policy and regulation is driven by arguments around acceptable and unacceptable suffering. It's easy to present a frame that actually creates real pain by telling someone they should be feeling pain (which can be useful socially but not with policy!),
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and then that genuine experience of pain is used to fuel changes in the government. Weaponizing pain as an agent of regulatory change is a terrible way to run a government or guide a culture. There's obviously so many flaws - pains aren't weaponized equally, but rather by
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people with the power to weaponize them. Moving pains from the 'acceptable' to 'unacceptable' category might just increase raw suffering (tho ofc can still be useful but not in a weaponized context!). And nobody knows how to fight weaponized pain well, because it's actually real.
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In conclusion: I am extremely wary of any arguments for social or political change that stem from a pain too close to that gerrymandered boundary around unacceptable issues.
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End of conversation
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