Pleasure/pain at the cellular level could drive chemical reactions that would otherwise have had to wait for random luck.
"By my own pleasure and pain I live, move, and have my being," sayeth Satan at every level of existence, even the cellular level, where he hath no tongue with which to speak, and the human level, where he knoweth well the truth spoken.
Now I need to go to sleep. My altered state is giving me a headache.
Five principles: survival, pleasure/pain, power, conformity, reality. I always like sets of five because they match the number of sharp points on the pentagram.
Each person is somewhere on a spectrum with regard to each of the five principles. You might maximize one principle (say, power) while minimizing another (say, survival) and maybe even dipping into the negative for one of the others (say, conformity).
I'm close to zero on conformity. I don't think about it. This is different from dipping negative on conformity, which would describe the person for whom nonconformity is an end in itself.
I tend to maximize survival, reality, and pleasure/pain. I'm above average on power but only by a little. I don't feel the need to lord it over others. But I don't allow others to lord it over me.
Do you think this model makes sense?
