Identity and Pain

I presented my idea that pain is essential to identity in my philosophy group, during a discussion on identity and the internet, and it led to some stimulating conversation which I will attempt to recapture here. To put my argument in a nutshell, when I'm dreaming (or online, in some assumed identity) I can't pinch myself to sense if I'm real. Some people objected to the distinction between what is real and what is not. Others argued that identity is a social construct determined by our interactions with others. One person said that emotional pain is equivalent (or identical, in the mathematical sense) to physical pain, and somebody else took that further to argue that emotional pain experienced in online relationships can have the same function of binding one to one's identity as physical pain has in real life. These arguments helped me crystallize my idea as follows:

The term identity has many meanings. One of them is how I see myself. Another is how I present myself to others, which may take the form of several different identities or fictions. Yet another is how others see me - although I can assume different identities, I can't entirely control how others see me. How I see myself is then influenced by how others see me. It's as though I look in a mirror and make myself up a certain way, then I go out in the world and copies of me are created in other people's minds, none of which are exactly the way that I wanted them to be, and then I see myself as I am reflected in their minds have to go through the whole process again. The internet, chat and e-mail communications with people have been for me a very distorting mirror in which to see myself, and I hypothesize that is because it's much easier to lie online so people are used to others wearing masks and project a lot more of their own interpretations about what might be hidden behind the mask. So I end up being reflected in all these people's distortions, and having to endlessly recreate myself. Some people suggested that this is a bandwidth problem, that text communication online lacks the richness of interpersonal, non-verbal communication. I agree that is part of the problem, and it sets the ground for the bigger problem of the possibility of lying (false identity) and consequent distrust or suspiciousness. Anyway, this realm of identity seems to be all mirrors and smokescreens.

Another realm of identity is an attempt to answer the questions, who am I and how do I know? This is where pain comes in. Pain is different from the other senses because my pain is in some way unique to me. We can all see the same table, touch it, taste the same ice-cream - albeit our experience might differ somewhat. But only I feel the pain in my body, and you feel the pain in your body. I can feel your pain, but this is qualitatively different from feeling my own pain. Emotions, like the other senses, tend to have objects - and can therefore be stimulated by objects of the imagination. I can imagine or recollect or meet online something terrifying, and feel fear in my body, feel my heart beating, my palms sweating, etc. Equally I can imagine something that makes me cry or laugh, or feel sexually aroused. But I can't imagine something physically hurting me and feel the pain in the same way. I can't even 'remember' the sensation of having an attack of gallstones a few months ago and the pain in my abdomen, because I can't imagine the object associated with that. Unconsciously, I think there is a way we can experience pain (or its absence) by hypnotic suggestion, but not by conjuring up an object of the imagination like with the other senses and with feelings. This unquestionable experience of pain, together with its inevitably aversive nature - I can't feel pain and not want it to stop - prevents me from getting lost in the hall of mirrors described by the other realm of identity. It also impacts my choices regarding inflicting pain on other sentient beings, whereas while I'm stuck in the hall of mirrors of the internet I have little or no compunction to act morally in the sense that my transgressions will not result in somebody getting beaten up or bleeding to death. If they exist, they will simply come back in another form.

I wonder if emotional pain, and the feeling of another's pain, bear the same relationship to the experience of pain as does memory of one's own pain? Going back to the idea of a community of pain, and how when I was in pain different people looked at me and communicated with me non-verbally, I am reminded that the sharp, shooting pain of gallstones brought to mind the searing abdominal pain of puerperal fever, when I felt as though I was going to die.

There is an inherent contradiction in the questions who am I, and how do I know? Because at some level I invent who I am and then I know it's a fiction. How do I know pertains to the I that came before the invention and that is the I that is raw intention, and the I that comes after the fictions, the bodily sensations that I do not invent or wish into existence.

When I started talking about this idea with my children, somebody (it may have been me) brought up the serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.