But ask yourself, why is pain our only means of alerting ourselves when something’s physically wrong? One could certainly argue that evolution got it right by gradually designing a sensitive nervous system. Pain is the quickest and surest way of not only alerting us of physical trauma, but also to ensure you do something about it – unless you can handle the pain, to which case the ongoing alarm system known as pain simply becomes annoying, e.g. a stubbed toe.

So pain isn’t perfect, you might say, but, at the very least, it gets the job done. And I agree. However, I also don’t believe that it should be our sole method of alerting ourselves whenever physical trauma has occurred. As noted in the example of a stubbed toe, pain can also occur during non-emergency situations, to which all of us, I would argue, would like to tell our pain to simply shut up every now and then.

Whenever an alarm system goes off in our homes, we’re then alerted of a possible break-in. The majority of the time the alarm is correct and potentially saves your life because of it. However, alarm systems are meant to be turned off when told to – especially if no break-in occurred whatsoever and was merely a false alarm. The same applies to our cars during a potential robbery, or when someone bumps into the car, etc. The alarms are necessary, but they’re also very annoying, especially when they don’t turn off when told to. Another good example would be our alarm clocks. We need them to ensure we wake up at a specific time, but then we’d probably go mad if we couldn’t shut the things off.

Why then should pain be any different? Why should pain be the only type of alarm system for physical trauma for us to choose from? Imagine being able to turn off the feeling of pain altogether and then replace it with an augmented alarm implant. No sounds, no pain – just a bio-digital alarm system which flashes near your retina, alerting you of physical trauma, where the trauma is located, and how to proceed. Not only that, you would actually be able to turn off the alarm if one so desires it.

This might even be too "sci-fi" for you. Perhaps the implant would be connected to your smartphone via Bluetooth! And whenever physical trauma occurs, the implant would send you a text message alerting you of said trauma, where it’s located, and whether or not you want it turned off (or even should be turned off). The feeling of pain would no longer be necessary; the feeling of pain would become this inefficient, primitive tool that would give way to far more efficient methods that are much better suited for the 21st century.