PLEASURE Ever heard of that little region in the brain called the "pleasure center?" I first read about it years ago. And I've never forgotten it. As a philosopher, the very idea left an indelible impression on me. Pleasure and pain are the primary motivating forces for the human animal, indeed for any animal. Throughout human history a lot of people have done an awful lot of talking about pleasure and pain (and good and evil, two different words for the exact same thing). We have a way of saying that a good thing gives us pleasure, and an evil thing is a source of pain. Before the 1950s the two words, and the ideas they conveyed, still radiated an aura of mysticism. Then the scientists started in with their electrodes inserted into the brain. One of the things they discovered was an area of the brain which they called its "pleasure center." Good-bye mysticism and enchantment. As the result of these cold, scientific experiments, we learned that the only reason a thing is good is because it somehow stimulates a particular region of the brain. Only this and nothing more. Apple pie isn't good because of some inherent quality it happens to possess. It's only good because some of its molecules have the ability to trigger particular responses, like the release of certain chemicals, in the neural circuits inside our brains. Do you see what this means? You can't just up and say, "Damn, that was a good piece of pie." That particular kind of charm has been removed from the world of human culture forever. It isn't good, as long it's just sitting there, all by itself. It doesn't become good (or bad) till its "stuff," its molecules, mix with ours. But the mixing alone doesn't make it work. It has to mix in a certain way. It's sort of like what happens when a guy is on a date with a girl. He could be the best looking, best dressed, guy in the world. But if he opens his mouth the wrong way, if he starts talking a bunch of trash the girl doesn't want to hear, the chances are very good that he's not going to score, that she's going to tell him to get lost, to take a flying leap. Of course pain is equally affected. We sense it in the absence of pleasure. Just so you won't think I'm making this whole thing up, here is a very little quote I took from an article I found on the internet:
The pleasure system includes the septal area and part of the almond-shaped amygdala; the other half of the amygdala, the hippocampus, the thalamus, and the tegmentum (in the midbrain) constitute the punishment system.
Somehow it causes me pain just read crap like this. I want the charm back. Maybe there are some things you don't want to know, or don't need to know. But then again, I suppose we've always known it. We just didn't want to say it. I guess we like fooling ourselves, always making efforts to believe something that we know deep inside isn't true. Even Shakespeare said it, when he put the following words into the mouth of Hamlet:
... there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
|
