Delving into the World of "Pain": Understanding, Experiencing, and Reacting to “Pain”

Pain as Resource: Cui bono?

My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims. Still, understanding the complexities, this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don't want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: "The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know'what justice is.” [Zinn, 10]

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.” [kierkegaard]

THE POET PROCLAIMS HIS RENOWN            
The span of heaven measures my glory.            
Libraries in the East vie for my works.            
Emirs seek me, to fill my mouth with gold.            
The angels know my latest lyrics by heart.            
The tools I work with are pain and humiliation.            
Would that I had been born dead.                              
–from The Divan of Abulcasim el Hadrami (twelfth century)
[Borges]

https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/10/the-cities-suing-big-pharma-over-opioids/542484/

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