Joy and pain as Firsts are, like all Firsts, raw and unanalyzable. They simply are what they are.
Saying they are something else, is a matter of drawing relationships and patterns, and thus moves one into the realm of Third.
In the midst of a moment of joy or pain, analyses are irrelevant. The experience is what it is.
But from the point of view of planning our lives, relationship is important: we want to understand what is likely to bring joy or pain to ourselves or others, or to the world as a whole. We want to understand what joy and pain are, in a relational sense. What kinds of organization-patterns are they?
Joy as Increasing Unity
Paulhan, a psychologist writing 100 years ago, had the very interesting insight that “happiness is the feeling of increasing order.”
Joy is unity. Joy is togetherness. Joy is the gaps getting filled, so that there’s no more emptiness craving to be sated, but everything is newly filled-up and satisfied.
Joy is the feeling of increasing unity.
Of course there is much more to the human experience of joy than this—all human emotions are complex, multifaceted beasts. But this is part of it, and an important part: it’s the pattern-space dynamic at the heart of joy.
Minds contain various expectations: meaning, they contain internal representations of patterns they would like to see emerge from their experience, and they seek out experiences that will cause these patterns to emerge.
When the seeking ends and the pattern emerges, there is a feeling of unity: the mind and the experience are bound together. Patternment has increased.
A body feels joy when patternment that is central to its function and integrity increases.
A self feels joy when patternment that is central to its function and integrity increases.
A mind feels joy when patternment that is central to its function and integrity increases.
Joy and Growth
The role of increase in joy is worth reflecting on. We habituate quickly to new pleasures. Statistically, lottery winners are ecstatic for a while, but in the long run are no happier than others.
Stasis is not the path to joy. This simple fact becomes important when considering the various pathways open to humans as technology advances There is more potential joy in developmental trajectories that lead to a continuing onset of new unities, than trajectories founded on “more of the same.”
Joy and Pain
What about joy’s opposite?
Pain, Paulhan notes, is the feeling of decreasing order: disharmony, disunity, the dissolution of patternment.
Of course, there is much more than this to the human experience of pain—but, this is pain’s pattern-space core.
From the perspective of a whole body, mind or self, pain and and pleasure are not necessarily opposites—because these are all complex systems, and increasing disunity in one part can be coupled with increasing unity in another.
This brief article is part of the overall Cosmist Manifesto.
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