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The Pleasure-Pain Syndrome
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In web design, as in graphic-related design since the 1500's, it is traditional to use a standard block of text called "lorem ipsum" when you're trying to see how the page will look graphically and you don't want to be distracted into reading the text itself. The standard block of "pseudo-text" reads:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
The text above, somewhat shortened and corrupted, comes from a quotation of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", section 1.10.32, by Cicero, written in 45 BC. The original text interests me not because it is at the root of the standard piece of dummy text, but for what it says (H. Rackham, 1914):
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
The copyright date is 45 BC, were such ancient works to be under copyright, but I'll take this to be a straightforward statement of the obvious in our day. Let me repeat the last sentence: "But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?" There is a real flaw in this way of looking at things.
Certain selections of the Philokalia suggest an understanding that imply this statement to be based on a philosophical error. Physical pleasure and pain are tied together, and trying to experience pleasure with "no annoying consequences" is like trying to withdraw money from your bank account without making your bank balance any lower. It's a get-rich-quick scheme that boils down to poor math skills. It is a sign of confusion to try to separate the sugar rush from the sugar crash.
There are certain points where we are warned of the pleasure-pain syndrome: the warnings children are given about street narcotics is not that they fail to deliver pleasure, but after delivering pleasure they deliver all the pain that comes with it. It's kind of like Disney's Aladdin, where Aladdin goads Jafar into wishing, "I wish to be an all powerful genie!", and then tells him, "You wanted to be a genie, you got it! And everything that goes with it!" Shackles appear on Jafar's wrists, and he is sucked into a lamp's "itty bitty living space"—if anything, a sunny and optimistic image to compare with "everything that goes with" addiction to street drugs.
The passages in the Philokalia adapting and elaborating St. Maximos Confessor's teaching make highly emphatic claims about the pleasure-pain syndrome. They very emphatically state that Christ, who was born of a virgin, was conceived without any trace of physical pleasure (sexual or otherwise), and born without pain: a sufficient Redeemer, in other words, needed to be conceived and born outside of the pleasure-pain syndrome. He took the redemptive effects of sufferings he would not earn; other writers have stated that sinless Christ couldn't have died of ripe old age, but in order to die would have to have a "borrowed" death imposed from outside as occurred in the Crucifixion. Mankind entered the pleasure-pain syndrome in a fall to pleasure and sensuality, and to be rescued from drowning, we need a Savior with one foot solidly planted on the dry land of the shore. This is the extent to which that work frames both our destruction and our salvation in terms of the pleasure-pain syndrome.
Jonathan's Corner
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The Pleasure-Pain Syndrome
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