Pain = Dissonance

Question: How can psychogenic pain be minimized? 

Idea: Psychogenic pain is a consequence of dissonance between cognitive, conceptual representations and reality. Eliminate dissonance and you eliminate pain. 

      If you were perfectly aligned with reality and - somehow - sophisticated enough to deal with the infinite complexity of the world, your negative emotion system would be out of a job. What can we do with this knowledge? Among many other things, we can use it to frame our decision-making processes and to help choose a direction when rationality is insufficient. 

      Take the moral issue of free will, for example. The Western (meant culturally not geographically), Judeo-Christian conception of morality places free will and its implications in its center. We are autonomous agents in the realization of our own potential and our consciousness, our choices, and our individuality are real, related, and significant - so we think. However, there are many reasons to believe that free will is physically impossible. Recent experiments have shown that with the right brain-scanning equipment, simple, random choices that you make - in which you believe you’re exhibiting free will - can be predicted. So theoretically, I could present you with two shirts, one red and one blue, ask you to choose between them, and then tell you, correctly, that you’re going to pick the red one before you’ve even “made up your mind”. This takes consciousness out of the driver's seat, highlighting that it is not a separately operating faculty that serves as the engineer of your cognition but rather merely an eye facing inward, revealing to you (and, to be fair, I don’t really know what I mean by “you” here) what has already been determined by other forces. So is the universe absolutely deterministic? Well, there is quantum randomness. Is it probabilistically deterministic because the quantum irregularities don’t manifest themselves on an observable level? Maybe, but probabilistic determinism isn’t really determinism. And, if precision is fundamentally limited by the fact that objects cannot store their own infinitely specific spacetime coordinates in their finite bodies, it is impossible to make exact predictions about the future, no matter how much the initial conditions provide. This would make the linear progression of time and causation significant. Still, determinism seems a lot more scientifically plausible than free will. This is skipping many, many steps, but to get back to the purpose of this essay, let’s assume determinism and free will are both illusions and that we don’t yet know the answer to this problem on a scientific level. The proper question to ask - since, practically, this dilemma lies in the moral domain - is which idea can be nested within a narrative that is consonant with the functioning of human society and with human prosperity.                   

      According to the statement made earlier on dissonance, if free will was an idea that fundamentally didn’t agree with the psychological reality experienced by humans, the idea itself would cause us pain. Our conception of the world would be incorrect, and the world would continually remind us of this. Our empirical experience would protest free will and our rational mind would have trouble integrating this troublesome, specious idea with that which it knows to be solid (solid enough to act on). Let’s consider determinism. When you tell people their actions and their lives are determined, they are usually not filled with enthusiasm to make the world better (and I’d be willing to debate that). It may make them nihilistic, feeling like the locus of control is eternally external. Now, it is possible to believe in determinism and to be hopeful and functional and it is possible that people are only demoralized by it because it goes against what our culture has led them to believe. But really, imagine a narrative in which determinism is given primacy. How do you hold people accountable for their morally reprehensible actions? Once we dispense with the idea of The Self (because you have to deconstruct The Self to argue away free will), how do we fill that void? What happens to adventure in a world where the potential within the present moment already has its direction decided and where the present moment, in fact, doesn’t even exist? What happens to meaning? I’m sure there are sophisticated answers to these questions and logical defenses for the idea in general, but good luck making a better case than the one provided by free will. And are you going to be able to convey that effectively to the entire population? Are you going to try to move the foundation upon which the Western House stands and expect the rest of it not to crumble? This would produce too much dissonance. And not just because we’ve established a false reality that ought to have its base blocks reconfigured.

      To minimize dissonance and pain, we should continue the illusion of free will. But isn’t that ironic. “To minimize dissonance we need an illusion.” But illusions are essential to the establishment of coherent narratives. We need fiction. Fiction allows us to imagine and to “let the ideas die instead of us dying” (Alfred North Whitehead). It allows us to traverse beyond mere rationality, to accept propositions on faith, and to nest ideas of astounding complexity in dynamic, beautiful images. An illusion is untrue to the extent that drawing from it and applying its principles in reality creates pain without progress. I don’t believe that is the case for free will. Also, for clarification, we should avoid dissonance between reality and actionable conceptualizations/hierarchies of understanding of how the world works. The dissonance between fiction and non-fiction - where the difference between the two and how they apply to reality is understood - is not a problem. Here, assuming that psychogenic pain comes from dissonance between conceptual maps and reality helps consider an age-old debate in a different light. 

      This idea can also help you be more intentional when constructing systems of belief. For example, regarding religion, many people experience pain as a consequence of the dissonance between their beliefs and science. When people are forced to reconcile a literal interpretation of almost any religious text with modern-day scientific understanding, dissonance will emerge. How can it be minimized in these circumstances? The texts - and I’ll mention the Bible specifically as I am Christian - need to be read in the appropriate light. The Bible is not a scientific theory and it never claims to be one. To reduce dissonance, it should be read as a moral theory and a set of archetypal illustrations of the proper orientation toward and pursuit of what is Highest. For example, to say that you are Christian is to say, to some extent, that you stake your life on the proposition that Christ resurrected from the dead. But what does that mean? It could mean - literally - that you believe that a Man who was God rose from the dead two thousand years ago. Fair enough. But that isn’t really a statement of belief; it’s more that you think that this was an event that took place in history. Is it likely that thinking something can earn you eternal peace and not thinking it can earn you eternal suffering? It’s more likely that the proposition implicit in the narrative is that The One who wisely and voluntarily faces suffering, tragedy, death, and malevolence will be redeemed. This is a statement of faith in the Good Nature of Reality and in the direct relationship between sacrifice and prosperity. This is faith that can actually be tested - it requires action. To believe this is to adopt the radical position that to make the most of life and to work toward the abolition of suffering on Earth, you must face its worst possible challenges. Here, your faith doesn’t require you to make exceptions in your scientific understanding of the world, allowing dissonance, confusion, and pain to insert themselves into a domain that is fundamental to your self and world conceptions.

      This idea also applies to psychological disorders like PTSD, Schizophrenia, DID, and more, trauma responses like derealization and learned helplessness, and explains why pain arises when self-conceptions and conceptions of the world are misaligned with reality. Additionally, you can consider it in relationship to the job of parenting. The best parent is the one who simulates an environment in their home that is representative (yet more merciful and loving) of the outside world so that the child can know what to expect when they are one day independent. A child who experiences dissonance between the way the world enforces consequences upon their actions and the way their home does so will be confused and will struggle. Finally, this idea provides a pretty compelling case on behalf of the truth. Tell the truth so that you don’t produce unnecessary, long-term friction between yourself and the world. 

      When considering a thought, an orientation, an idea, or any other abstraction of reality that exists as a representation in your mind, maybe think about whether this thing will help better align you with reality or whether it will be a brick that you cannot coherently jam into your pyramid of understanding. This is much better than just doing “whatever you think is best for you,” or even whatever you think is most rational (and for many people those two are the same thing). You don’t exactly know what’s best for you now and you in the future. You’ll have to put your faith somewhere, and putting it in the proper alignment with reality is not a bad idea.