Pain and Death

Pain is the strong feeling that something is wrong. Death is the ultimate state of things being wrong.

There is a cynical belief that pain and death are actually good. The argument is that we cannot know joy without sorrow to compare it to. We cannot appreciate life if it can be taken for granted. Living forever would be boring.

I feel pain when I am harmed. Should I die, my corpse will be an inanimate object and a biohazard to be disposed of. I will never be bored if I bother to stay busy. I do not see this supposed good in pain and death.

People were designed by the original person. The original made his created versions weak and needy to render them manageable. He allowed an imperfection to render his humans mortal, since most of them proved boring. He gave them an aversion to pain and a fear of death to motivate them, since most of them would not bother to do anything otherwise.

Boring people are not so boring when they wince, writhe and scream. Their personal failures are finalized by death. Their lives are kept short because they are lived in vain already.

It is different when the people the original person finds interesting suffer pain and death. Unlike the boring many, who live, suffer and perish in vain, the interesting few live meaningful lives, suffer meaningful pain and die meaningful deaths. Courage is possible in the weakness of flesh. As a passion of spirit, courage can turn pain and death into empathy and redemption.

Good is not evil. Pain and death are not good, for they do not come from goodness. Pain and death are things wrong to be made right. Empathy and redemption are good, for they come from goodness overcoming evil: They are the wrong made right.