Pain, Punishment and Pleasure

Pavlok electric shock punishment

Crowd funding

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pavlok-the-habit-changing-device-that-shocks-you

Promo video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYvpvz_bzmI

I read an article today that really stood out.  I looked more into it and it's basically a company that wants to keep you accountable to yourself by punishing you when you don't do what you say you want to do.

Pain is iinevitable in life,  but I believe you can choose to a degree where when and how that pain happens. 

I like the idea,  there are two types of people,  those mainly driven by reward and those mainly driven by undesirable consequences...  'carrot or stick' philosophy. Both work,  it just depends on the type of person and the choices you make.

An explination I found:

First, you could dangle a carrot in front of the donkey, fooling the donkey into thinking that if he pulls the cart far enough, he’ll get to eat the carrot.

The second is to prod the donkey along the road by hitting him with a stick.

If the donkey is motivated by the ultimate reward of a carrot, the stick won’t be necessary,
but if he’s not really all that interested in carrots, then the stick will be employed.

Either way, through reward or through punishment, the cart driver gets what he wants.

Contributors Justin Taylor

Science says that pain and pleasure are in a lot of ways, intertwined,  a paradox where pain causes pleasure. 

http://m.livescience.com/27462-relief-makes-pain-feel-good.html

Some philosophers would say there is no pleasure without the contrast of pain.

I could go on as pain and pleasure is a passionate topic of mine,  but I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes. 

Haruki Murakami: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”