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34/ So why does this drive exist? There are four broad theories to consider: Disease/pathology, Darwinian, Jungian, and Buddhist.
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35/ Disease/pathology theory would treat desire to cause pain as a potentially fixable condition due to genetics/chemicals/lead for eg
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36/ Darwinian theory would take the other extreme, point to cats torturing mice, and say desire to cause pain is completely normal, adaptive
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37/ In between we have Jung, which would be some obscure thing about sadism being really about torturing your own shadow, a kind of growth
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38/ And finally, the Buddhist version, which is kinda similar to Jung in spirit. You'd say desire is the root of all pain
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40/ The Darwinian explanation is null hypothesis that I think explains the majority of cases. This is "normal" adaptive pleasure-from-pain
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41/ The Jungian explanation probably covers most of what we could consider consensual S&M relationships and many martial arts
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42/ And finally, Buddhist explanation I think only explains mutants who *don't* want to cause pain and uncomplicatedly seek to avoid it
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45/ Part 1 of my tweetstorm could be called "The civilizational project of/for/by natural-born Buddhists is misguided."
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46/ Let's talk prescriptions. The prescription for the Darwinian explanation is: do nothing, we like it this way even if we don't admit it.
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