You're living in the matrix

Most people never go through pain.

The reality is that the poorest people in America are living better than kings in the Roman Empire. Technology has progressed to the point where almost no 1st world human is required to kill an animal if they want to eat. Because of this, we have become shallow and weak. I’m not excluding myself from this. If I was teleported into the middle of the Roman Empire, I’d be dead within 2 days. Most 1st world people are exceptionally weak, both emotionally and physically, relative to people 2000 years ago.

The problem is that the effort people are required to put in has decreased as technology has increased. We no longer need to go hunt or farm for 12 hours a day just to get by. We don’t need to build a shelter out of mud, sticks, and grass to stay out of the rain. You can find an apartment for $1000/mo or less, which, for most people, will be well within their salary if they budget right.

This decrease in effort has led to a exponential rise in mental and physical health issues. People are more depressed, anxious, and overweight then ever, especially in the US. 40% of US citizens are obese. Not simply overweight, but obese. As for mental health, the average Gen-Z adult has more anxiety then an asylum patient in the 1920s.

This is insane to me. We live in one of the greatest times in the history of earth. We have the greatest capability for growth, and yet we don’t grow. We sit around, scrolling through Instagram Reels and TikTok. We complain about depression and anxiety. We eat junk food and don’t exercise. We accept the default path society gives us consisting of high school, college, and a $30k/yr job till you retire at 70 with barely any savings. But there are people out there who reject the default path and carve out their own. And as we’ll soon see, this can only done through pain.

Let’s dive in.

Hey Siri, define pain

To start, we must define pain. It’s quite a tricky think to do if you think about it. It’s not simply a negative emotion, because otherwise sadness and anger would be counted as pain. Both sadness and anger come from some sort of pain. Pain isn’t a physical thing, but it feels physical. It’s one of those weird emotions that crosses both the physical and emotional sides of the brain. Both external and internal chaos can cause pain, in both dimensions. It’s both primal and transcendent. It’s deep but also shallow.

You could define pain as your distress signal: it tells your brain something is wrong. At first, this definition seems to work. It covers both the emotional and physical sides of pain. The problem is that physical and emotional pain come from different triggers. Just because someone hurts you, resulting in emotional pain, doesn’t mean something is wrong. You’re not going to die from mockery, for example. From an evolutionary perspective, feeling happy is not necessary for survival. You can be sad, angry, or hurt and still survive. Hundreds of thousands of people do it every day.

I would define pain as a signal from your brain that something needs change. You might say: why does it need to hurt? The answer is simple: humans are stubborn creatures. We need something motivating to make us change. Joy is not motivating. Pain is the only emotion that will make someone take action.

Pain is relative

Each person is sensitive to different things. Most of my family members hate metal music. I love it. For some people, heavy music is going to make them squirm. For others, they’ll head bang until the sun goes down. This doesn’t just apply to music though, it applies to pain. Because no two people’s brains are the same, we each have differing levels of dopamine reception. The same places in your brain that control joy and pleasure also control pain. (That brings up an interesting paradox, but I won’t get into that now.) Therefore, different people have different sensitivities to pain. These sensitivities are also in different places. For one person, calling them names might trigger pain. For someone else, you might need to scream. Each person is different.

This is important. What is painful for you might be easy for someone else. What hurts for someone else might be like a tap on the shoulder to you. Maybe the most motivating pain for you is getting slapped in the face. This is both physical and emotional pain. Maybe for someone else getting slapped in the face would just cause physical pain, and it wouldn’t be as motivating.

The purpose of life is pain, not joy

What’s the purpose of life? (I’m jumping around a lot, but it all leads up to a point.) Some people might say to make the world a better place. Others might say enjoying yourself. But if you explore the motivations of every action ever you’ve ever taken, you’ll see that the reason you make those actions is because you believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that it will bring you some sort of joy. And most of the time, you overestimate what that joy will actually be.

What brings the most joy? I believe it’s self development to an extreme. Reaching your potential. Why? Well, how do you feel when you’ve done something exceptionally hard that you knew you needed to do? Relief? Exhaustion? Sure, you feel all those things, but you also feel joy. Most people won’t register this as joy. They might say it’s pride or relief. But when you examine the feeling, you’ll see that it’s joy. It’s the same joy you feel when you become super motivated to do something, just deeper. It’s the same joy you feel when you do what you set out to do. It’s the same joy you feel when you have improved yourself and you look back at how far you’ve came.

Now what is the only way to improve? The answer is pain. When a doctor is removing a cancer, they need to physically cut out the tumor before healthy tissue can grow back. The same is true for self development. Your old self needs to die before you can improve. This can be single attributes, but it can also be your entire being. For some attributes, you can change them by choice. For others, you need to go through extreme pain to change. Examples are vices like anger, lust, or jealousy. These can’t be completely removed through daily choices. You can start, but you won’t be able to finish them without going through extreme pain. Just try. You’ll find the same result I did.

So if the purpose of life is joy, self development leads to joy, and pain is required for extreme development, then we can distill the purpose of life to pain. This idea is only as useful as it is though: I would advise against taking this to an extreme. Don’t search out pain, that would be stupid. But when pain comes your way, don’t run away. Don’t bury it. Use it to break your old self and develop.

You’re living in the matrix. The only way to escape is to realize that pain is required for growth. If you embrace the pain that comes your way, you will have the ability to grow faster then everyone else. You need to choose, but the choice will now be available.

See you in the next one.
— Luke