When one is gripped by excruciating physical pain, one is always shocked at just how frightful it can be. - David Pearce

As the neurobiological basis of feeling and emotion is unravelled, and the human genome decoded and rewritten, it will become purely an issue of post-human decision whether negative modes of consciousness are generated in any form or texture whatsoever.

Suffering exists only because it was good for our genes. Conditionally-activated negative emotions were fitness-enhancing in the ancestral environment. In the current era, apologists for mental pain are serving as the innocent mouthpieces of the nasty bits of code which spawned them.

[N]othing is too terrible to be true if it is consistent with the laws of nature [...].