There are certain kinds of pains I just don't understand and by not understanding I mean, why do they hurt so much when nothing can be done about them?
Take tooth pain for example. Pretty much any pain involving the mouth, like abscesses, is dreadfully bad. We've only had anything resembling modern dentistry for, at best, a few hundred years. But we've been anatomically human for almost 200,000 years. Why should tooth pain be quite so exquisite? What's the purpose of it? Sure, something could be done about it now...but what about then?
And then you have other types of pain that seem to serve no purpose as nothing can be done about it like kidney stones, splinters, broken bones, and giving birth.
Pain should have a purpose. It should be there to remind you that what you're doing is damaging or potentially so. It's good that fire feels hot because you don't want to be exposed to it. It's good that ice feels cold for the same reason. The initial pain of a splinter is fine. It teaches you to be careful but the continued pain that is felt until you or your body can push it out is just overkill.
Broken bone pain seems unnecessary too. Yes, nowadays we have casts and splints but what about when you broke your leg back in prehistoric times? You were tiger food now and all the while you're waiting to become a meal, it hurts like fuck. Your body and mind get to have one final, totally unnecessary conversation about how you shouldn't've done what you did à la Scrambles to Chopper: (body) "I told ya! I told ya!" (mind) "I know! I KNOW!!!"...but with pain instead of words.
And like tooth pain, I don't even know the point of the pain associated with kidney stones. Whatever causes them to form in the first place certainly doesn't happen overnight so their being painful just seems so spiteful on the part of your body, doesn't it?
Why is childbirth painful? One would think that giving birth, being vital for the continuation of a species, would be a most pleasant experience in order to encourage females to want to do it again. But nope, dorko body here has decided to trip all its pain sensors instead.
I guess I'm referring to two major types of stupid pain here: inexplicable and fatal. Both are senseless but the latter is especially cruel. Unfortunately evolution could never set up a system to deal with fatal pain because, well...you need survivors to pass along traits. Still, you'd think some sort of mercy would exist for cases like this. At the very minimum such a system could be present in the bones and/or the nervous system.
Breaking a leg in prehistory pretty much meant death. It means death for any animal today to lose its primary means for locomotion. The same is true for severing an artery. Wouldn't it be much more merciful to the animal (or human) if opiates or some other feel-good chemicals could be released from bone marrow if a bone broke or from the brain if reports of pain went above a certain threshold or if blood pressure dropped below a critical point?
Let the inevitable end for the animal feel euphoric instead of horrifying. Why shouldn't being mauled by a tiger feel fantastic?
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