Quote:
Originally Posted by ZHereford  In the Virginia Tech shootings there were brave people, including a brave teacher, who chose the pain of death and leaving life and his family to protect others. He chose the ultimate sacrifice over personal pleasure. His values guided him over his personal pleasure. You may say that it was a pleasure for him to give up his life for a cause, but I would disagree. Pain/pleasure were not part of the equation. Values and principles were. He put aside personal pleasure in order to act according to his values and principles. |
The trouble is, as Steve pointed out above, 'pain' and 'pleasure' as concepts are so abstract that you can't really define them in an objective fashion - what is painful to one person is pleasurable to another. So in this example you could say that the teacher in this case was going down the pain route deliberately, while you could also argue that his death was the ultimate pleasure - to sacrifice oneself in defense of others, giving one's life
and death meaning - many cultures consider this kind of death superior to dying of illness or old age.
So it's not so much pain and pleasure that drive us, but rather our perceptions of reality, many of which can be given the convenient labels 'pain' and 'pleasure'.