Is Every Decision in Life Motivated by Pain or Pleasure?

[Omni]

Someone told me that every decision we make in life is either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. We ultimatley choose that which we desire the most. I basically agree with this statement, eg.1. I smoke because the pleasure of smoking outways the eventual pain. eg.2. You didn't ask that girl out because the pain of rejection outwayed the potential pleasure if she said yes (for those girls out there, please substitute girl for boy, or leave it girl if you wish).

 

[jammieg]

I agree that this is a fundamental aspect of animals, someone once told me if you focus on the rewards it helps because what a person thinks is more likely what they do, so what would happen if one focused on the rewards of quitting smoking, instead of the joys of smoking or the suffering it causes? What about the girl?Stranger still it seems I or we are sometimes addicted to suffering and blinds one to the solutions, not really suffering in itself but the negative emotional stimulation that it leads to, just as people can get addicted to anxiety or irrational fears it's a form of stimulation nevertheless, but a good actor has more control of their emotions instead of the other way around.

 

[Omni]

I think in the end its what ever keeps us in our comfort zone.

 

[THANOS]

i believed that pain vs pleasure was the key to our choices for awhile now. And i still do. Not only do we choose by pain vs pleasure, we also make our choices by which has less pain then the other when our choices look like there is no pleasure. And the same goes with which has more pleasure when the other choices have only pleasure.

 

[the_truth]

I think I told you this. It is an abstract concept that probably arose sometime after plato and socrates, though in the 20th century logicians have become scientists and psychiatrists and materialist philosophers have become marxists. Both of whom ignore and do not care about such ideas.