Chapter 12
PAIN (1.8)
If you've ever taken care of a fellow in pain, you know how demanding,
cranky and irritable a normally good-natured person can be.
Pain itself is not an emotion, but a perception that warns the individual
that his survival is threatened. However, there is a particular emotional
response to pain which occurs on a small way-stop between Anger and Antagonism.
SCATTERED ATTENTION
A person cannot stay high-tone when he is in pain, so this is the level
to which he drops. His attention scatters; he wants to be elsewhere (anywhere
else); he's testy, snappish and impatient. He's fighting the pain; but
his mind is so scattered that he's completely ineffective.
Joe is cleaning the garage when a bee stings him. He makes a wild slap
at the bee, misses and knocks over an oil can. He picks up the oil can,
fumbles and drops it. Snarling, he lunges at the half-dead bee on the work
bench and hits his head on the open cupboard door. His comments during
this fiasco are unprintable.
Pain so interrupts a person's orderly control of his environment that
he fights it—with churlish, ill-natured thrusts. Extreme heat (one form
of pain) produces emotions in this band of the scale. We see this in the
person who climbs into a closed car on a hot summer day; he becomes impatient
and cantankerous. Those same hot summer days are the ones which produce
an eruption of riots and "crimes of passion."
PAIN TOLERANCE
An upscale person can tolerate more discomfort in the form of extreme
heat, cold, light or noise. The lower a person is on the scale, the lower
his pain tolerance. Grief considers everything painful (knowledge, reality,
experience and most sensations), so don't confuse him with 1.8 where pain
is real and sharp and the emotion is much more alive. Grief will complain
of pain when his shoe pinches a little, whereas the hightone person might
not even consider the shoe uncomfortable.
SPORTS
We see many sports played across the level of 1.8 on the tone scale
(although the top athletes themselves are usually higher tone than this).
Ice hockey, for instance, is essentially an Antagonism game that produces
frequent injuries. A player gets pushed against the boards; he drops to
1.8 and turns around clubbing with his stick at the offending opponent.
Another player gets hit, so he too swings. Soon the whole thing turns into
a donnybrook that sends half of the players to the penalty box.
SUMMARY
It's easy to identify someone in this tone: splice together equal parts
of Anger and Antagonism, then sprinkle a little salt on the wound.
That's pain. ow!