zen_tom

Isn't this similar to the hot-cold-warm water experiment? Mix a bowl of warm water in the sink. Now run a hot tap and a cold tap, putting your left hand under one, and your right hand under the other. Hold them there for a while before plunging both hands into the warm water. The hand that has been under the hot tap percieves the warm water to be cold (or rather you do) and likewise, but opposite for the other hand.

So, assuming we are flexibly minded and percieve things in a relative manner (which I think is a safe assumption to make) bad times (once we get used to them) are going to be followed by more personally rewarding good, or reasonable times. Just like the warm water is a pleasant relief from the overly cold tap. It's a case of habitualisation. As for very sudden, or very stressfull experiences, often a release of adrenaline or other natural stress reliever once the experience is over can bring on a sense of euphoria - since the mind links what it directly percieves with how it feels, the laughing haze-boys will become associated with the sense of warm euphoria, and positive emotional associations made. This, and many other religious or symbolic rituals etc are nothing but a hot-wiring of mental chemistry that people have stumbled across over the last 1000 years or so. Same goes for feasting, speaches at weddings, praying, meditating, hazing whatever - it does NOT mean that these things are bad or worthless, they have been honed over years to have these effects - and it is the effects that are the real and beneficial product. Anyway, that's far too long an explanation...