How comfort defines us as people
When a newborn comes into this world, the first thing he, or she, learns is to avoid the harshness of his, or her, new state of existence by breathing, shaking, and crying. The newborn then learns to seek the comfort of caregivers who alleviate the immediately learned discomfort. Comfort is, therefore, the second thing almost everyone in the world learns.
Because it is far more appealing to be comfortable than it is to hide from discomfort, civilized people sheltered by the privileges of society to varying degrees then progressively learn throughout their lives to be motivated by the search for comfort in all its forms while the need to avoid discomfort becomes such an alien concept to the more privileged that they avoid uncomfortable realities.
Socrates once said, “to philosophize is to learn how to die.” In other words, one must learn to overcome our natural impulse to avoid discomfort, which death is the greatest discomfort to life. To update his thinking with more modern, behaviorist terminology, people avoid aversive stimuli and seek appetitive stimuli, thus the enlightened learn to ignore appetitive stimuli and embrace aversive stimuli when they seek intellectual comfort.
In other words, they learn to choose what comforts they seek and what discomforts they avoid, i.e. overcome the human animal’s instincts. What comfort and discomforts individuals embrace, therefore, becomes the measure of their humanity. To simplify, the measure of a man is his actions.
Because it is far more appealing to be comfortable than it is to hide from discomfort, civilized people sheltered by the privileges of society to varying degrees then progressively learn throughout their lives to be motivated by the search for comfort in all its forms while the need to avoid discomfort becomes such an alien concept to the more privileged that they avoid uncomfortable realities.
Socrates once said, “to philosophize is to learn how to die.” In other words, one must learn to overcome our natural impulse to avoid discomfort, which death is the greatest discomfort to life. To update his thinking with more modern, behaviorist terminology, people avoid aversive stimuli and seek appetitive stimuli, thus the enlightened learn to ignore appetitive stimuli and embrace aversive stimuli when they seek intellectual comfort.
In other words, they learn to choose what comforts they seek and what discomforts they avoid, i.e. overcome the human animal’s instincts. What comfort and discomforts individuals embrace, therefore, becomes the measure of their humanity. To simplify, the measure of a man is his actions.
