Does pain really make us gain?

[kalibex]

New Yorker article discussing recent research and findings regarding the benefits that painful group experiences offer for promoting social bonding, offering additional evidence that it may not be the easy, pleasant group experiences that get us headed in the direction of greater cohesiveness and even altruism.

“We tend to overvalue pleasure, but pain is a central part of what it means to be human and what makes us happy.” --Social psychologist Brock Bastian


_http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/pain-really-make-us-gain?intcid=mod-yml_

So...either we humans really are all masochists... ;) ...or it really does (and necessarily always will) take a real, persistent effort, pushing through the discomforts along the way, to Grow Up.

 

[Keit]

So...either we humans really are all masochists... ;) ...or it really does (and necessarily always will) take a real, persistent effort, pushing through the discomforts along the way, to Grow Up.

As the saying goes, no pain no gain. There are also many stories from the animal kingdom, where abused animals formed a strong friendship, when in Nature this would never happen. Here's one example.

Btw, the article was posted on SOTT. Thanks for sharing!

Speaking of discomfort, and how it prevents us from degradation, it reminded me of another famous experiment called "Universe 25", where in the previous century researcher John Calhoun created an utopia for rats. They had plenty of food, water and adjusted temperature. They had all the conditions for thriving, but instead there was a continuous stream of conflicts, sexual abnormalities, cannibalism and infertility. The rat society became very sick in every meaning of this word. There is also the following small fact, that reminded me of the optimal number of people in the tribal community:

In 1947 he began to watch a colony of Norway rats, over 28 months he noticed something, in that time the population could have increased to 50,000 rats, but instead it never rose above 200. Then he noticed that the colony split into smaller groups of 12 at most.

 

[Gaby]

So...either we humans really are all masochists... ;) ...or it really does (and necessarily always will) take a real, persistent effort, pushing through the discomforts along the way, to Grow Up.

Yes, pretty much like the research in Ponerology:

http://www.sott.net/article/290427-We-re-the-bloodthirsty-warmongers-not-evil-Putin

The most characteristic feature of such a period is widespread hysteria, like that of the quarter century in Europe preceding WWI. "Happy" times of peace are necessarily dependent on social injustice, and children of the privileged class learn early to repress ideas that they and their families are benefiting from the injustice of others. Such unconscious defense mechanisms cause these individuals to disparage the values of those whose work they exploit. These processes lead to an hysterical state of inhibited logic and reasoning. This rigidity of thought then gets passed on to the next generation to an even greater degree.

[...]

During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life's complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man's flawed personality, whether one's own or someone else's? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life's joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy.

Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called "happy" times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This, in turn, leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation's enrichment or involution regarding its psychological world view could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad.

During "good" times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts.

Btw, the article was posted on SOTT. Thanks for sharing!

While reading that article on SOTT yesterday, I thought how that same same quality has been used against people. When it comes to the mechanical properties of addictive and unconscious suffering, there are many ways to stay in sleep until enough is enough. This example came to mind:

Drugging America: The drug industry exposed
http://www.sott.net/article/226531-Drugging-America-The-drug-industry-exposed

Adam Omkara: And no one seems to questions this? Why don't you think there is more of this awakening or questioning? Representatives, psychiatrists, doctors, managers? Is there some desensitization process that comes into play that's very effective? Where does the disconnect come into play and how is it sustained?

Gwen: Yes, there is definitely a desensitization process. A re-programming if you will. The indoctrination is usually done at the home office during the initial training and is similar to how they do boot camp in the military. They tear you down physically and psychologically, reps are kept up late nights studying for exams, preparing presentations, filming videos, deprived of sleep, deprived of good nutrition, required to dress to the nines and constantly compete with one another as they are being watched and evaluated in the corporate fish bowl.

It's a very psychologically grueling, but effective grooming environment.

Then when they release you back into your sales territory, you have this false sense of bravado feeling like you're someone special who is going to go out and help the world. It's literally a brainwashing process.

What they are effectively doing is trying to weed out the mavericks and break the weak ones. The one's who can't handle the job long term and, therefore, will be a wasted investment.

Subverting human potential through our suffering is what all monotheistic religions are about. In that sense, I highly recommend the following video re-published on SOTT recently:

http://<iframe width="420" height="...=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Gurdjieff's unconscious vs conscious suffering comes to mind.

 

[Persej]

There is also the following small fact, that reminded me of the optimal number of people in the tribal community:

In 1947 he began to watch a colony of Norway rats, over 28 months he noticed something, in that time the population could have increased to 50,000 rats, but instead it never rose above 200. Then he noticed that the colony split into smaller groups of 12 at most.

That's interesting. That would mean that the tribe should have about 200 people, like a small village, and they should further be divided into houses with about 12 people.
I was thinking what is better to have, one giant house/castle or several smaller houses, and it seams that this research supports the latter. But of course those houses should be close to each other, otherwise it wouldn't be a close community. There could also be one big house for joint activities.

 

[Keit]

That's interesting. That would mean that the tribe should have about 200 people, like a small village, and they should further be divided into houses with about 12 people.

Something like this. Dmitry Orov also talked about it on SOTT radio, but his optimal number is even smaller:

Joe: What's the optimal size of such a community in your opinion?

Dmitry: A 150 people is the maximum. Well, the way these communities function is through direct democracy and all of the really important decisions have to be reached by consensus. So, you can imagine how difficult it becomes to reach decisions by consensus. So basically, talk things through until everyone agrees, with 150 people. Beyond that it just basically takes too much time. So, for instance, the Hutterites, when they reach that number, 150, they split in half. They draw lots to figure out which families stay and which families go. And they buy land, and they set up this new community with 75 members on this new plot of land. And they maintain links but only for as long as necessary and after certain amount of time if the new colony doesn't fail, if it provides for itself then it's set free.

 

[axj]

As the saying goes, no pain no gain.

I think the primary reason for that is that the emotional pain is already there due to the emotional wounding and trauma that everyone has. People usually try to suppress it into the subconscious as a learned automatic reaction, though of course it does not really work and the suffering comes up again and again in situations that trigger the wounding and the emotional charges.

There are also many stories from the animal kingdom, where abused animals formed a strong friendship, when in Nature this would never happen. Here's one example.

Btw, the article was posted on SOTT. Thanks for sharing!

This may actually become one of the positive results of the worldwide upheaval (Earth changes, etc.) - that people will form closer connection with each other, as well as increased cooperation. Especially in the individualistic Western societies this can be quite a big change.

 

[Persej]

Joe: What's the optimal size of such a community in your opinion?

Dmitry: A 150 people is the maximum. Well, the way these communities function is through direct democracy and all of the really important decisions have to be reached by consensus. So, you can imagine how difficult it becomes to reach decisions by consensus. So basically, talk things through until everyone agrees, with 150 people. Beyond that it just basically takes too much time. So, for instance, the Hutterites, when they reach that number, 150, they split in half. They draw lots to figure out which families stay and which families go. And they buy land, and they set up this new community with 75 members on this new plot of land. And they maintain links but only for as long as necessary and after certain amount of time if the new colony doesn't fail, if it provides for itself then it's set free.

Yeah, 200, 150, or some other 'magic' number. That could be the highest unit of communism level, that Laura talked about. They could share food, clothing, cars, and other things. Above that, sharing should work in standard capitalistic way (buy and sell).

 

[Psalehesost]

For more on the "maximum number", see: _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.[1][2][3][4][5][6] This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.[7] By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.[8] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150.[9][10] Dunbar's number states the number of people one knows and keeps social contact with, and it does not include the number of people known personally with a ceased social relationship, nor people just generally known with a lack of persistent social relationship, a number which might be much higher and likely depends on long-term memory size.

Dunbar theorized that "this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained." On the periphery, the number also includes past colleagues, such as high school friends, with whom a person would want to reacquaint themself if they met again.[11]

Note that in the study about rats, "the colony split into smaller groups of 12 at most." This may perhaps match the capabilities of the rat brain.

Continuing:

In 1992,[1] Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. Using a regression equation on data for 38 primate genera, Dunbar predicted a human "mean group size" of 148 (casually rounded to 150), a result he considered exploratory due to the large error measure (a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230).[1]

Dunbar then compared this prediction with observable group sizes for humans. Beginning with the assumption that the current mean size of the human neocortex had developed about 250,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene, Dunbar searched the anthropological and ethnographical literature for census-like group size information for various hunter–gatherer societies, the closest existing approximations to how anthropology reconstructs the Pleistocene societies. Dunbar noted that the groups fell into three categories — small, medium and large, equivalent to bands, cultural lineage groups and tribes — with respective size ranges of 30–50, 100–200 and 500–2500 members each.

Dunbar's surveys of village and tribe sizes also appeared to approximate this predicted value, including 150 as the estimated size of a Neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline's sub-specialization; 150 as the basic unit size of professional armies in Roman antiquity and in modern times since the 16th century; and notions of appropriate company size.

Dunbar has argued that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together. For a group of this size to remain cohesive, Dunbar speculated that as much as 42% of the group's time would have to be devoted to social grooming. Correspondingly, only groups under intense survival pressure,[citation needed] such as subsistence villages, nomadic tribes, and historical military groupings, have, on average, achieved the 150-member mark. Moreover, Dunbar noted that such groups are almost always physically close: "... we might expect the upper limit on group size to depend on the degree of social dispersal. In dispersed societies, individuals will meet less often and will thus be less familiar with each other, so group sizes should be smaller in consequence." Thus, the 150-member group would occur only because of absolute necessity—due to intense environmental and economic pressures.

There are also different estimates:

Anthropologist H. Russell Bernard and Peter Killworth and associates have done a variety of field studies in the United States that came up with an estimated mean number of ties, 290, which is roughly double Dunbar's estimate. The Bernard–Killworth median of 231 is lower, due to upward straggle in the distribution, but still appreciably larger than Dunbar's estimate. The Bernard–Killworth estimate of the maximum likelihood of the size of a person's social network is based on a number of field studies using different methods in various populations. It is not an average of study averages but a repeated finding.[16][17][18] Nevertheless, the Bernard–Killworth number has not been popularized as widely as Dunbar's.