The carrot and the stick

Salut,

sitting in my bed... I have a hard time getting up these days... I usually wake up often during the night, but now I just got two nights in a row where I don't think I woke up once in the 7-8 hours I slept... Yet, I still have a hard time coming back to life... weird...

I dream a lot though... I always dream quite a lot, but I get a feeling I'm dreaming much more these days, and very weird things too... For example, last night, there were many images of the current blurryness at work, but getting to work on ice skates, and having an ice skating path through l'échangeur Turcot in Ville St-Jacques, near the Angrignon exit, including an ice rink overpass...

That was weird, but even worst than that, meeting Marc Labrèche playing a guitar and borrowing it from him, only to realize it is all fucked up, OK, missing strings, having strings just going half way through the neck, OK, but then he gives me some sort of appendage that you stick to the guitar as a neck replacement, that was a little weirder, but the worst of it, is that I had a hard time playing the guitar because it was full of... spaghetti and meat sauce... Now THAT's weird...

I usually dream about stuff that are a little less weird, and I actually enjoy the other lives I live while I'm sleeping. But that's not what I wanted to to talk to you about this morning. I was thinking about a very interesting conversation I had with a friend last night, where I was telling him about how pain and pleasure drives our lives, and not money or the economy.

I think Freud said that we only have things driving us, sex and survival. Darwin would agree since we need the survival instinct to... survive and the reproduction instinct to... Of course... reproduce... And this is why sex is soooo much fun... Otherwise, who would reproduce just for the fun of it... And since survival can be so painful, yet crucial, we have to go through pain to keep having pleasure...

the carrot...

and the stick... ;-)

I truly believe that we are only driven by pain and pleasure... How much pain are you willing to endure to get to the pleasures you want? How much pleasures are you willing to deprive yourself to avoid the pain associated to earning those pleasures? And yes, I admit that the economy is a strong portion of that, how much money are you willing to painfully invest in the pleasure of buying?

I have a brother who is voluntarily single (and have been for a while) because he says that having someone to satisfy his needs of companionship that he strongly feels about 2 days a month, is not worth the investment of the painful compromises you need to make when you live with someone else during the other 28 days of the month... Or something like that...

So what drives YOUR life? The economy? The society of mass consumption, which we live in? Or... the carrot... and the stick?

BYE
MAD... The carrot?
or
MAD... The stick?
S:-P