Pain Management

the rack

Discomfort comes in many forms, shapes and sizes. Pain isn’t one thing. You may have a throbbing or burning. People faint from pain and conversely sometimes a trauma is so extreme that the body is thrown into protective shock, something akin to the way defense mechanisms work with regard to psychic matters. Anxiety is often associated with pain and it can be painful to endure, but it’s not an affect that most people associate with physical discomfort. Torturers who seek to break their subject know a good deal about pain as do martial arts experts who use pain to subdue opponents. In this regard can choking someone out by depriving them of oxygen be rightfully considered pain? In terms of pain management you might be given Percocet after an operation, but there comes a point where the drug is no longer medicating a wound and that’s when the problems begin since it’s not pain, but life itself for which an anodyne is being sought. This can be a tricky condition to triage for many people who become addicted in the aftermath of otherwise normal procedures. The greatest source of mental pain is loss. People who are jilted by lovers or who lose their family or friends due to illness fall into a category all by themselves. You pay your respects when there’s a death in the family, but there's nothing that can be done or said to alleviate the raw pain. The most a compassionate person can do is to listen.

Does Modern Man Think Too Much?

Lucy (author:120)

Does civilization think about itself too much? Humans possesses self-reflexive consciousness and thus are aware of their own thinking, which is what supposedly differentiates them from animals—though the line between man and animal is becoming increasingly slim the more scientists delve into the nature of animal consciousness. At a certain point in history humans were probably closer to animals to extent that they didn’t give too much thought to what they were doing. The hunters and gatherers known as homo erectus might have been in more of a survival than meditative mode. Socrates famously stated, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” So by the time of the Greeks homo sapiens had evolved enough that they were totally willing and able to account for their conditions and then there is Descartes with his famous “cogito ergo sum,” which is the philosophical version of Hamlet’s famous question about being. Ontology is that branch of philosophy which deals with being and essence and Kant’s “deontology” deals with questions of ethics and morals. Ideology is a response to the awareness of being. If you are conscious of your self, the next question is how should you act. The anthropological find known as “Lucy,” a creature who lived 3.2 million years ago probably didn’t trouble over any of the inequities associated with her condition of being both a woman and hominid. In terms of mindfulness, mankind has come a long way. However, despite triggering, affirmative consent and a multitude of ideologies which attempt to harness or control human impulse, that little bit of larceny one detects in everybody may just be man's inner animal talking.

4891?

No one would ever dream you could have quantum physics or any of the practical applications that derive from it, like microprocessors that work on one atom. The sciences in essence moved more quickly than the mind’s capacity to imagine the possibilities in fiction or anywhere else. But what's unthinkable in the sphere of political science? In the l9th century Samuel Butler wrote a famous utopian novel based upon a palindrome. Erewhon with the tweak of one letter becomes "nowhere." In the 20^thcentury l984 and Brave New World with their uncannily on the mark visions of totalitarianism gave us a preview both of how language and psychopharmacology would be expropriated by demagogic parties and leaders. But existential realities may be moving even faster than art. The axis of the earth has literally shifted and climate change is already resulting in continental shifts that few are able to grasp. Earthlings have despoiled the planet to such an extent that an exodus of an almost biblical nature is not a far-fetched idea. Imagine biospheres, modules of human life being transported over generations to the carbon based planets circling Kepler stars 1200 light years from earth or imagine a novel about mind being separated from the fragility of body and existing in cyberspace and producing a totally solipsistic  universe. The only thing missing, in these two putative works of fiction, are catchy titles. 

Long Shot

"Romantic comedy" is how Manohla Dargis categorizes Long Shot in The Times. But if you’ve perhaps forgotten what romantic comedy is (in this world where Hollywood movies increasingly look like high tech video games), Jonathan Levine’s Long Shot is unlikely to help you remember. It’s romantic and comic, but will unlikely bring back any the great classics from The Philadelphia Story to Annie Hall. Long Shot  refers to what everyone thought was going to happen in 2016 where the first lady would have been a first mister had the election turned out differently. It also refers to the ejaculate that will become the MacGuffin later on in the movie. Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), a secretary of state with presidential ambitions falls for Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen), an idealistic journalist who she babysat for a teenager and who has just been fired from his muckraking job at the Brooklyn Advocate, an alternative newspaper. The movie gets off to a slow start until Charlotte gives vent to her kinky desires. Seeing hesitation in her lover, she apologizes for being bossy saying, “we’ll do exactly what you like then you slap me on the ass and choke me a little bit.”  The verbal hijinks characteristic of true romantic comedy take on a decidedly sexual and for the most part crude form in Long Shot (and the scene in question deserves some degree of scrutiny since the would-be president is choreographing her own classically submissive behavior). In their first coupling Charlotte says, “I usually can last longer than that.” “Not me,” is Fred’s rejoinder. The movie hits its stride as interchanges about sex become the lingua franca with Fred playing a kind of stage mother scripting Charlotte’s rebellion against the establishment. “Could you not tell anybody about this,” Fred asks one of the secret service agents who catches them in flagrante. “They wouldn’t believe me anyway,” is the response. In a world of appearances and ratings, is an ambitious politician willing to bet on her public image? The answer may lie in yet one more innuendo that derives from the film’s title.

The Crack-Up

Composure is a nice thing and people gravitate to the self-assured, those who “know” who they are. There is, of course, enormous human pain associated with the reverse, ie the sight of someone falling apart. In the fifties you may have overheard your parents talking about people having nervous breakdowns. Today the nomenclature has changed. A person is deemed to be bipolar or borderline. There have been many representations of personalities falling apart in films from The Snake Pit (1948), David and Lisa (1962), Repulsion (1965) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), and Conspiracy Theory (1997), to name just a few. The Crack-Up was a collection of essays in which Fitzgerald charted his own decline.The process is a little like the cosmological description of supernovae, dying stars emitting huge flashes before they explode. The unhinged Howard Beale character played by Peter Finch in Network (1976) famously intones, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore,” thereby igniting a revolution in which viewers rise up and follow him. Stalwart individuals rarely lead revolts since their being is an affirmation of the status quo, but it’s the person teetering on the edge who may light up the night sky.

Greg Jackson's Poetry

Greg Jackson’s “Poetry” (4/29/19) is one of those New Yorker short stories that stands out. It can be overbearing (it’s certainly not an example of the kind of Carveresque minimalism that the magazine once championed), but it’s more exceptional than it is heavy-handed. It’s ostensibly about the conflict between the narrator, James and his significant other, Celeste, who attempt to climb too high. Celeste by the way sports a “Fleurs du Mal” T-shirt. It’s also about the eating of forbidden fruit. The symbolism might set off alarms, but the title actually refers to the process of the story’s own inception. “Poetry” runs rings around traditional narrative. It's a poem in the guise of a short story. Chief among Jackson’s poetic devices beyond the allegory that runs rampant is the use of aphorism. “Kafka once remarked there is hope, but not for us,” is an early sally. And here is the narrator on his French born landlord, Jacqueline. “Suddenly I understood that, for her, every experience was the disappointing shadow of what she had allowed herself to imagine ahead of time.” Jacqueline is by the way a poet  whose work “was the inadequate and bitter fruit of the purer and more beautiful impulse to write poetry, which survived, inviolate, no matter how poor and insufficient the words were.” Celeste ends up vomiting all night, while the narrator emerges unscathed with “the apple...still inside me.” “I have not died yet,” he says and referring to the dangerous climb he goes on to remark “and to judge by this unbroken streak of not dying I will live forever.” Like poetry? “Poetry’s” tsunami of association provides an endorphin rush that in the end comes full circle, creating in the reader the equivalent of an old-fashioned Aristotelian catharsis.

The Final Solution: Offending the Audience

The title of a Peter Handke play is Offending the Audience. Abuse is one way to get attention. Shock jocks like Howard Stern use transgression as a means of increasing ratings. Parenthetically there's a fine line between belief and provocation. Were the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville merely expressing their fascist beliefs? Shouting fire in a crowded theater is the subject of Schenck v. U.S, the famous Supreme Court case in which Oliver Wendell Holmes described the limits of free speech. Still the notion of riling people up has a long and sometimes not so venerable tradition in America where one form or another of the bearded woman is still attracting thrill seekers to side shows. Level-headed people with rational things to say are hard put to get a hearing anywhere. There's simply too much competition, too many voices clamoring to be heard. Trump is the perfect example since he’s the ultimate shock jock offering up a new piece of provocation and putting his opponents on the defensive while they’re still bumbling to respond to an earlier sortie. Figuring out how to get attention in a situation in which a charismatic personality is dominating can be daunting. Saying nothing and letting their words blare forth is one, often very good strategy. Trying to compete creates at best only a head-on collision. In prize fighting  counterpunchers are often quite effective.They’re the ones who use their opponent's power against them.