The experience of pain in the modern world and its implications
The experience of pain, or discomfort, (so central to a freudian definition of the self) has been dramatically altered in the modern world. As we all know, pain has been drastically reduced on its every day experience, but what the social and scientific implications are has not, it seems to me, been thoroughly explored.
Lets take three examples, and explore these.
Prior to the Invention of everyday electricity, taking a warm bath must have been a rather uncommon experience for ordinary people. One would have to light up a fire, in order to warm the water, etc.--a cost which likely led to infrequent baths. Cold water is also incredibly painful to the body, simply because of the rapid heat absorption by water. (One of the quickest ways to die is to fall into cold water, as water will quickly absorb all of the internal heat generated from the body, in approximately 5 minutes or so.) If it is bad to take a cold baths in the tropics, just imagine what the Pilgrims in Massachusetts had to go through.
More importantly, however, this unpleasantness meant avoidance of baths came at the cost of hygiene. While today we all recognize the importance of showering or of cleaning one's hands to eliminate bacteria (unknown prior to the late 19th century), bathing comes at relatively little psychic expense in the modern world. Baths are pleasant simply because of the prevalence of water heaters. By warming standing water above 98F they unconsciously recreate the basal experience of the prenatal infant, hence 'drastically' transforming the experience of taking a bath. It is easy for moderns to quickly claim the moral high ground on hygiene visa-vie the Third World because it comes at a relatively low psychic coast.
Similarly, such experiences lead modern to impute certain traits onto the hygienic experience which it previously did not have, such as the sensation of pleasure. Upon this consideration, it is easier to understand the the premodern stance of many religious individuals with regard to the importance of 'painful' activities for the 'healthy soul'. Painful activities, as taking a bath, led to beneficial effects that were previously not as closely associated to 'pleasure' as they are today--an experience which has been regularly forgotten by today's modern and affluent living.
We might take other examples of this simplification of the experience of pain and its benefice to human well being. There are many such examples, some more extreme than others. Surgical operations, prior to the advance of anesthesia, were obviously very painful-but-necessary to the correction of deformation and/or the curing of injury during wartime. While this could be a questionable issue, given that surgery could obviously introduce bacteria into the body, properly undertaken surgical operations would have had a greater chance of saving the individual's life than had they not occurred otherwise.
Similarly, but at a less extreme version, many fruits and vegetables--so important for human health--often did not have the many pleasant tastes and aromas by which today they are characterized. Old-generation Puerto Rican grapefruits--huge globs rich in in Vitamin C--were also full of seeds and were known for their very bitter taste. They were at the same time awful (unpleasant) and joyful (a nourishing liquid), thus making for a much more nuanced experience of the relationship between 'pain' and 'benefice' than that experienced today. The most frequently sold grapefruit today, the renown "Texas Ruby-Red" grapefruit, has been disassociated from all of the unpleasant traits of former grapefruits: it is very sweet and tasty, and it lacks all of those large seeds in the middle of the fruit which made eating the former grapefruits such a chore.
We may thus observe that in the premodern world, pain tended to not be as closely associated with 'evil' as it previously was; pain had not been 'imputed' with the trait of 'detriment' with which it is commonly associated today. Formerly, good things tended to have an element of pain, that nuanced their experience, and our general notions of the world. One might undertake a painful and 'costly' experience, knowing full well that it would be beneficial in the long run--an experience which many children today do not forego, under the (false) presumption that only the 'pleasant' can be good for you. This close relationship between pain and benefice was perhaps central to the experience of manhood in the premodern world. Undertaking a very painful experience was often a requisite for the transformation from a boy into a man, and its high status in the collective. (Approaching a lion might have been at first inimical to one's immediate survival instincts, but its killing came at the benefit of the general collective.)
One possible conclusion that we might draw is that the modern way of living tends to leads us to a less sophisticated and nuanced view of the world than that which previously existed. Pre-moderns knew that something painful could be very beneficial to the individual, and the mere fact that it was painful did not necessarily mean that it was something to be avoided. Today's modern citizens hence are more likely to have an overly simplified view of the world, and which leads to bizarre and mistaken presumptions as to what the world (and society) should be like.
We might also point out that these observations have important implications for genetics, for as we strive to make the world in our image, we might be removing important components of common experience, which will profoundly shape and influence generations in the distant future. As in climate science, these changes (technological, medical etc), shift the common baseline of experience, thus drastically transforming our comprehension of the world and its circumstances. (Large fish used to be the norm in daily fishing, but with overfishing the definition of 'large' has been drastically reduced.) From a 'grapefruit's' point of view, having many seeds is important in order to more successfully survive in nature. Obtaining our pleasure, in the long run, might come at the expense of nature's autonomy and ultimate survival.