Posted by jay2112 on July 22, 2021, at 23:53:51
In reply to Re: A Cure for Fear, posted by sigismund on July 22, 2021, at 16:07:22
> Marx said something like 'the only cure for mental pain is physical pain'. At the end of his life he learned Russian and then calculus to soothe his mind. I read that Dylan studies Arabic, probably for similar reasons.
Hmmmm. Marx's quote, as well as learning calculus and Russian, possibly co-exist with the fact he lived in utter poverty and despair. I say so, because those were probably 'cognitive escapes', as I learn't in linguistics, to try to lift him out of the s*it he was living in. (And likely an evolutionary trait that tries to prevent us from drinking the kool aid too soon.) YMMV, of course..lol.
I don't quite agree with Karl, that physical pain being a mental cure-all. It's ironic that one cure for physical pain, opiates, is also a cure for mental pain. I do agree with him, in a sense, though, that we should be progressing towards a social utopia, instead of the dog-eat-dog, anti-intellectual dystopia we are living in.
Sorry for sounding so positive.
Jay
Humans punish themselves endlessly
for not being what they believe they should be.
-Don Miguel Ruiz-
poster:jay2112
thread:1116014
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20210418/msgs/1116059.html