Ask the Box

19 jun 06.

"is it true, as wise men, from Dante to Bono, have been propounding for ages, that one must reach the utter bottom before s/he can hope to attain the "glorious radiance" known as the Contemplative Life? does one HAVE to go through Hell before one can enter Paradise? and can one enter Hell and never come out? what does it FEEL like to reach Rock Bottom, assuming you have at one point or another experienced said condition?"

i don't think so. for one thing, it constitutes dualism, something i don't think is a valid concept. i suggest postmodern and eastern texts, as well as nietzsche, as philosophical antidotes to dualism. but i'd guess, by your use of the phrase "contemplative life", that you're already into fruity eastern texts.

(sometimes i have a pretty good idea of who's asking the question -- some are better than others at style-concealment, if they even bother to try. also, some just have a distincitve style. also, some write the kind of long questions such that style is easier to distinguish. i've never enclosed an entire paragraph in parentheses before -- it's a useful practice).

so, you're equating the contemplative life, or, i suppose, boddhisatva "semi-enlightenment", with abrahamic paradise. the "opposite" of the contemplate life, i suppose, is the unexamined life, the life without looking inwards at one's own mind. i'd say "the non-thinking mind", but then this contradicts the eastern suggestion that enlightenment isn't an intellectual pursuit, but is rather equated with the unceasing chatter of the mind.

that sounds a lot like one of the semantic traps buddhists and the like are always twinkling their eye at. for the sake of getting anything done, let's say the opposite of the contemplative life is the life where you don't do any self-reflection whatsoever -- the less-conscious life.

i'm pretty sure i don't have to dance around your question: in practical terms, does the mind have to experience some pain, be familiar with pain, before it can recognize or experience pleasure? let's examine a real-life situation for which you're presenting this metaphoric generalization, this conceptual template.

does a kid have to have had a really dissappointing birthday party before he can recognize or enjoy an enjoyable one? no; in my childhood, i never had an unpleasurable birthday party. of course some were more pleasant than others, but all of them crossed that threshhold of neutrality into pleasure. i didn't first experience a lousy birthday party. perhaps on the semantic side, on the textual side, bono is right, because an understanding of a word, in this case, "joy", necessarily comes with it the understanding of its opposite. language is problematic, and in fact it does lend itself to categories and oversimplification. in fact, the ultimate categorical oversimplification: dualism.

let's think of someone who has lousy birthday parties from the get-go. in that case, exactly the same pattern holds: pleasure does not make that first-experienced pain more painful; just because a linguistic, conceptual dualism has been introduced doesn't somehow amplify bad feelings -- the feelings were always just as bad, necessarily, because they're the same feelings experienced with ensuing pleasure or not.

instead of negating or calling into existence the other, i think pleasure and pain instead amplify the perception of one another, and experiencing both establishes a continuum of experience that suggests a duality that really doesn't exist in the first place, and might even be harmful to contemplate or "understand". but, it seems to be the way we're wired.

ok, someone has a birthday party where he experiences pain, and then one later where he experiences pleasure. yes, the pleasure makes the pain more meaningful (meaning = text), but it doesn't make it more painful, as strictly a referrent. so, in the realm of thought, in the realm of textual understanding, experiencing pleasure does make the pain more meaningful, because, obviously, it gives meaning, it gives signifiers, to these unthought of things, let alone unnamed things. but, it doesn't change the fact that it was pain into not-pain -- it was still unpleasant.

the same goes the other way, which directly addresses your question: experiencing pain before pleasure doesn't make the pleasure more pleasurable, but rather makes the pleasure more meaningful.

now that i think about it some more, i think the opposite of bono's assertion might be true -- that once someone experiences pain, he can no longer properly experience pleasure; by descending into and ascending out of hell, dante takes some of that hell with him when he walks into heaven.

but the bono text makes a point, a related point, but not its intended one: niether pain nor pleasure can ever be the same after experiencing the other. however, i don't think, i'm pretty damned sure, in fact, that one can't truly experience the referrent of pleasure until one has been dragged through pain.

even if we're not given words to point at these referrents of "pain" and "pleasure", the experience of one makes the other less innocent, because we know, then, that things always have the potential to go the other way -- that the gallows are always lurking just beyond the hill.

so: no, one need not feel pain before experiencing true pleasure -- one does not "have to go through Hell before one can enter Paradise". in fact, when one goes through hell, paradise can never be the same. this all has nothing to do with naming pleasure and pain, which is a thing that comes after experiencing pain for the first time -- you distinguish it from pleasure, and need something to call this new sensation that's the opposite. after naming, pleasure appears to be more pleasurable, at least upon later refection, because this textual dualism between pain and pleasure has been created in the mind.

when someone does pleasure first, and then pain, does he take a little bit of that pleasure with him into the pain? furthermore, when we continue to go back and forth on this continuum as we age, do we keep dragging a little pain into the pleasure, and a little bit of pleasure into the pain? i think so. so, the further we go on, the more we go back and forth, the less of a "back and forth" there is -- pleasure and pain become one, and the wisdom of age begins to come into nacsence. this. perhaps this is enlightenment.

but my simple answer to your question is: nope.