Inflicted pain can be embraced and transformed by its recipients into something else.

Evidence

Pain inflicted as punishment can be eagerly embraced by those on whom it is inflicted and transformed into something other than what was intended. Sadomasochism (which I discuss in the next chapter) is one example, although I shall argue that it should not be identified as merely a secular version of a phenomenon familiar to us from the domain of religion—and therefore as the pathology underlying particular religious practices. The presence of the word “pain” should not be taken as evidence that it refers to a single concept. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 416

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: the progressivist assumption that agents always seek to escape pain, and what it blinds us to in both religious martyrdom and everyday endurance.