Reader’s Intro:  This is a packet where I have come up with my own definition of value, worth, joy, beauty, happiness, suffering, torment, love, hate, and misery.  Everybody has something that gives value and worth to their lives.  Therefore, I wish to share to you how I define value and worth in my own life.  The reason why I call it the ‘evolutionary definition of good and bad’ is for reasons revealed later on.  I have struggled with depression and misery much of my life due to traumatic life events and ocd thoughts.  I have learned many things from this personal experience and I wish to share to you and others what I have learned.

I am firmly convinced that I am not deluding/blinding myself in any way in regards to my personal experiences.  I think it is instead other people who are delusional.  That would have to be an agree to disagree scenario.  But anyway, continuing on here.  I think this definition is actually a universal definition that applies to all human beings because there is the difference between supporting your views from personal opinion as opposed to what we actually know is true.  For example, if someone said:

“The color red is the best color and all other colors aren’t anything good.  I am right and everyone else is wrong.”

Then this would be the person’s opinion.  However, if a person has been convicted of a crime based upon all the clues (evidence), then this would not be an opinion.  It would be a rational and justified conviction.  Even though I say there is no evidence later on for my definition, I think there really is.  Therefore, I will present you everything we know that leads me to a conviction that I think is rational and justified.  If others don’t agree with it, then it is just my personal conviction.  I am not trying to insult anybody or anything of the sort.  I just wish to share to you what I’ve learned from my personal experiences.

I would also add that I don’t think there is any evidence that any other definition is real.  Given everything I have said in this packet, I think it makes it quite uncertain whether any other definition is real.  As a matter of fact, I think it makes it quite obvious that any other definition is wrong.  You can bring up any point you like that attempts to prove how there really is evidence, but I think that all of the counterpoints I would make would clearly indicate otherwise.  However, it could be the case that some counterpoint (s) might actually convince me that my whole definition is wrong.  But I don’t think this is going to happen.

So, I will present to you my definition here in this reader’s intro.  If you are pressed for time and don’t have the time and patience to read this entire packet, then just read what is in this reader’s intro.  The reader’s intro ends with a bolded notice at the end which reads:  “End of Intro.”  If you even have time to read more, then I would also highly recommend at least reading the 1st response and my reply to it since that is the most important one.

From there, it you still have time, read the 2nd response/reply since that is the 2nd most important one.  The 3rd response/reply would then be the 3rd most important one.  Lastly, the 4th response/reply would be the 4th most important one for you to read.  On a further note, I post a logical argument later on near the end in this reader’s intro which has 4 premises with bolded numbers and a conclusion in bolded words.

If you are really pressed for time and you just want to skip right on down and read it, then go ahead because it basically sums up my entire view quite well.  The logical argument is titled “My Hedonistic Logical Argument” in bolded words.  Although, for anyone out there who has time to read this packet, I would highly recommend that you actually read this entire intro since it gives more insight.  So, I will now present to you my definition:

Light=good = positive toned state of mind=good emotions (good moods/feelings)=the perceptual quality of good value, joy, beauty, love, inspiration, happiness, and worth in one’s life.

Darkness=bad=negative toned state of mind=bad emotions (bad moods/feelings)=the perceptual quality of bad value, suffering, torment, hate, and misery in one’s life.

Blank=neutral=neutral (mechanistic) toned state of mind=neither good nor bad emotions (neither good nor bad moods/feelings)=the perceptual quality of no value, no worth, no joy, no suffering, no beauty, no love, no hate, and no happiness in one’s life.

Emotions are everything to being human.  Without emotions, then we would just be biological machines.  This would have to mean that it is not us as human beings who give whatever value and worth we want to our lives.  Rather, it would be our emotions that do.  Our emotions dictate the type of perceptual value we have as human beings and the type of perceptual value we have in our lives.  It is not a matter of value judgment upon my part in saying that it is our emotions that make things valuable to us.

Rather, our emotions (moods/feelings) possess a quality of experience to them which gives them this power over our lives since a non emotional quality of experience possesses a mechanistic tone and cannot possibly yield any real perceived value/worth to our lives.  If you experienced a very profound and beautiful feeling of joy or excitement from being out in nature or getting a new present, then you would not only display profound, beautiful, and excited gestures and expressions, but you would also say something such as:

“This is so beautiful and amazing to me!  This is something really good to me and it is really worth something to me!”

This is not a matter of the person’s thinking projecting a value judgment and thinking these things are good, beautiful, amazing, and worthwhile to him/her.  Like I said before, thoughts alone without emotions are nothing more than mechanistic experiences and we would be nothing more than biological machines.  They can help us make wise choices and help save our lives, but that is it.  Thus, these thoughts/outlooks alone would not give any real perceptual experience of good value/worth to our lives.  So, it is not the person’s thinking here.  Rather, it is his/her state of light-filled consciousness (good mood/feeling) that is giving him/her the experience of good value, beauty, worth, and joy perceived in his/her life.  It is his/her pleasant mood that is putting him/her in a heightened state of conscious paradise.

I explain in my non bolded summary that our good moods/feelings are the actual perceptual awareness (conscious experience) of good value/worth to our lives.  Now, I don’t believe in a god or an afterlife since I am undecided when it comes to the existence of these things.  But if these things were real, then our good moods/feelings would be the divine awareness that transcends all other forms of awareness which are either mechanistic or, even worse, the awareness of nothing but darkness (i.e. suffering, misery, bad value, torment, hate, etc.).

You might have noticed that I used a value judgment in saying that it would be worse than a biological machine to experience the bad moods/feelings.  But I did not feel anything bad at all in saying that.  Therefore, you might conclude that my life can have real value without my good and bad moods/feelings.  This is still false.  Despite the fact that I use value judgments in my writing, these values cannot be perceived (experienced) without their respective moods/feelings.

Therefore, I am just saying these value judgments in my writing for convenience sake.  The values might actually be there in some abstract form.  For example, I could acknowledge that Beethoven was one of the greatest composers while in a miserable state without my good moods/feelings, but I would not be able to perceive that value.  The idea of Beethoven would currently be an experience for me that is completely miserable, dead, empty, and insignificant to me.  It is only once I fully recover from such a miserable state that I can be in a conscious state where I am experiencing all the awesomeness and magnificence of Beethoven.

None of this might make any sense to you even after everything I have explained.  You might think that things can still be good, better, or worse to you even without the associated mood/feeling.  But this would be nothing more than a biological machine’s standard of perceptual value.  It completely leaves out the person’s inner experience and only focuses on the external.  Imagine a person who is having the absolute worst experience of his/her life.  From there, someone comes up to him/her and says:

“Does that cake look better and more amazing than the other cakes?  See, your life can still have good value/worth to you regardless of how horrible of an experience you are having!”

This is the reason why we need a higher, humanistic standard that takes into account the person’s inner experience.  I just think that way too many people are being blinded/deluded from their own inner experience and are convinced that they are having an actual perceptual experience of good value/worth in their lives.  Not based upon their own inner experience.  But instead by external factors such as his/her upbringing, conditioning, false teachings of society that focus one’s awareness away from his/her inner experience, external obligations/responsibilities, expectations of others, etc.  Such factors would easily give a false and misleading insight into, not only one’s own inner experience, but what it truly means to live a life that has real good value/worth to you rather than the “robotic” version of good value/worth manufactured by society.

Even bees and other living organisms live their lives naturally by this robotic/mechanistic version of good value/worth.  Since bees and some other organisms don’t have emotions, then they are nothing more than biological machines.  They live their lives helping others of their kind.  But they don’t have any actual perceptual quality of good value/worth in their lives.  Actually, according to their standard as biological machines they would.  But from a human standard, they wouldn’t.  As you can see here, you don’t need any positive toned state of mind or positive emotional state to live your life, help others, and make the best of things.

But this does not mean that your life has any real perceptual quality of good value, worth, joy, and beauty to you.  People without their good moods/feelings are living their lives like these mechanistic organisms.  But we as human beings need an awakening here.  We need to be awakened to the realization that we are something more.  This realization will allow us to be awakened to a human standard of perceptual good value/worth in our lives rather than the mechanistic standard that we have been falsely lead to believe is true.

Anyway, going back to what I said earlier about God and the afterlife.  I do not agree with a God who would send me here to be put through all the horrible traumatic and miserable moments that I’ve struggled with much of my life.  There is simply no excuse for an all knowing, all powerful, all loving, and all just God to not create the perfect blissful utopia life for me and others.

That is forcing something upon me that denies me the divine awareness that I need in my life.  Especially considering good moods/feelings are very fleeting things.  This divine awareness is all there is to life and being human.  Since it’s all about the divine awareness (good moods/feelings) and nothing else, then I would instead agree with a God who would create a blissful utopia life for all of us where there is no pain, suffering, anhedonia, or misery.

Some people would say that you cannot experience bliss without pain, suffering, and misery.  If that is the case, then only a little bit of suffering and misery would be needed then and that is it.  But if you can experience bliss without ever having experienced pain, suffering, and misery, then you are already aware of all the good value/worth in your life and you would be deluding yourself to think otherwise because it is no different than how we don’t need to be blind in order to see.  Since you can already see without ever having been blind, then you already have that form of awareness.  It doesn’t matter if you think it’s not sight.  It is still sight.

As you can see here, my good moods/feelings are the only things I have in my life and it would enrage me if I lost them.  From there, it would further enrage me for others to say to me that I don’t need these good moods/feelings and to just grow up/move on with life anyway.  In a way, it is like they have the mindsets of machines who cannot understand/comprehend my higher, humanistic needs and my higher, humanistic way of thinking.

If I lost my good moods/feelings due to ongoing depression, misery, or anhedonia and I could not fully or sufficiently recover these feelings back to me within the reasonable time frame of 1-2 years, then I would end my life regardless of what others say to me.  I am being denied the very thing I need and for others to object to my needs just shows how inconsiderate they really are.  That is why I would pay no mind to what they say and I would end my life regardless of how much anger, grief, or hurt it would cause these people.

Before I continue on, I would like to give a spiritual analogy for our moods/feelings.  Like I said before, I do not actually believe in the supernatural.  I just want to give an analogy to make it interesting.  Our good moods/feelings are not just feelings.  They would be the divine spiritual light energy to our lives as I’ve mentioned before.  When a person has an attractive thought towards a certain mate, then that thought alone is nothing more than a mechanistic experience.  However, the moment this thought summons up spiritual light energy, this light energy fills up the person’s being which puts him/her in a heightened divine state where he/she becomes aware of the attractive beauty of his/her soul mate.

Our good moods/feelings are the divine spiritual component to our human existence.  Without them, then we would be nothing more than biological machines or, even worse, poisoned with dark spiritual energy (our bad moods/feelings).  A feeling of fear, for example, is a bad feeling that helps protect us.  However, it is still a bad feeling and fills our very being with negative spiritual energy.  But a feeling of the worst misery or hopelessness of your life is the absolute worst dark spiritual energy.  It is nothing but pure poison.

Now, many people seek the light since the light is good.  The light is everything to our lives because, as long as we are in the dark where our lives are completely destroyed and devoid of all good value/worth, then that is no way to live.  In order to be in the greatest enlightened state, then you would have to be in the greatest feel good state of your life where you experience the most profound and intense good feelings. Therefore, any other way of achieving enlightenment would have to be false.  It would be nothing more than a biological machine’s definition of enlightenment.

This means that a person can only perceive his/her life as having good value, worth, joy, and beauty to him/her through being in a joyful/beautiful mood.  The more profound and intense of a feel good experience you have, the more perceptual quality of good value/worth you will have in your life.  The less you have, then the less of a human being you become and the less perceptual quality of good value/worth you will have in your life.  People who don’t have these good moods/feelings due to anhedonia, an emotionally traumatic event, or depression cannot perceive any real good value/worth in their lives and they would only be deluding themselves to think otherwise.  That, or their perceptual quality of good value/worth is very slim due to a level of good moods/feelings that is very slim.

When I say that depressed/anhedonic people are less of a human being since they have very little to no good moods/feelings, I am not saying they are inferior human beings.  I am instead saying that they have lost the light in their lives and are just biological machines.  But if these depressed/anhedonic people were to regain more and more good moods/feelings over time, then they would regain their status as human beings again more and more.  Thus, they would regain the human status of perceptual good value/worth in their lives rather than the mechanistic status.

Now, this definition of having the perceptual quality of good value/worth in one’s life is the humanistic definition which means that any other definition does not meet this higher, humanistic standard and, therefore, would be nothing more than a biological machine’s definition.  This is the humanistic definition for being in a state of mind/being that qualifies as something more than a mere biological machine.  It would be no different than a situation where there is a race of machines who have a different definition of socializing than a race of humans.

The machines do nothing more than sit there and perform monotonous calculations with one another.  That is how they define socializing.  This definition does not meet our human standard.  It would completely destroy and take away our human definition and we would be rendered miserable.  Our lives would be empty since they would be miserable.  We as human beings would be denied the higher, humanistic quality of socialization that we need in our lives.

The humanistic definition of socialization would be the real socialization while the machine’s definition would not be real socialization, according to our humanistic standard.  I realize that my humanistic standard is one set forth by me, but there needs to be one just as how there needs to be one for socialization in my example I gave earlier.  A humanistic standard is a universal standard.  This means that a machine’s definition of socialization would never qualify to meet this standard for human beings.  At least, to the normal human being it wouldn’t qualify.  If it did qualify for any given human being, then this person would not be normal and there would be something wrong with him/her.

I think my humanistic standard is obviously the only right one because I think it is quite obvious that you need a positive toned emotional state of mind (experience) to perceive good value/worth in your life.  It just makes no sense to me how it can be possible to have any real good value, worth, joy, and beauty perceived in your life without this.  It would have to be nothing more than a biological machine’s definition.  Anyone who is fine with this mechanical definition would be someone not normal and there would also be something wrong with him/her.  That, or he/she has been deluded and needs to be awakened to the realization that he/she is living like nothing more than a biological machine with no real good value/worth perceived in his/her life.

I will give you a personal example.  During my worst miserable moments, I have chosen to get help since I wanted my life to change for the better.  One could say that I really did have an actual perceptual quality of good value and worth in my life since these people would say that getting help had good value/worth to me.  But they would be wrong.  I can honestly tell you, from my own personal experience, that this experience does not meet the human standard to any degree whatsoever.  My life was still completely empty, hell, the worst life with the worst perceived value, and devoid of any real perceived good value, worth, joy, and beauty.  This means that I have simply chosen to get help knowing that it was a wise decision.

But it was nothing more than this.  Me saying that this experience does not meet the human standard is, again, not a matter of my value judgment.  It would be no different than a situation where I was blind and reported to you that I could not see.  This is not a matter of value judgment on my part.  It is instead a matter of the experience itself.  I was experiencing no sight and, therefore, I truly could not see.  In that same sense, what I was experiencing during my worst miserable times was not a light-filled state of consciousness that would have allowed me to perceive a quality of good value/worth in my life that meets the humanistic standard.  I was instead in a state of mind (consciousness) that could only perceive a biological machine’s definition of good value/worth.

Sure, a positive toned state of mind/positive emotional state might have been there since this might be the only explanation as to why I have chosen to get help during my moments of complete and utter misery.  However, there was still no light in my life.  Therefore, this would be a biological machine’s definition of a positive toned state of mind/positive emotional state.  So, basically, it was nothing more than a biological drive allowing me to get help.  But, again, my life was missing the higher, humanistic quality of light (my good moods/feelings) in order to make me and my life something joyful, beautiful, good, and worthwhile to me.  Therefore, there really was no real positive toned state of mind/positive emotional state there at all during my moments of misery.

If you experience physical pain, then this experience being unpleasant for you is not a value judgment.  It is an actual experience.  Likewise, having experiences in your life that you perceive to be hell, joyful, beautiful, horrible, good, bad, worthwhile, etc. for you is not a matter of value judgment either.  These qualities can only be perceived (experienced) through our good and bad moods/feelings since, again, these are qualities that are something more than a biological machine.  When I had nightmares, I experienced horrible altered states.  These altered states were crippled states since I was in the most crippled/hopeless state of my life during my miserable moments.  These altered nightmare states were the worst hell.  That is not a value judgment.

My conscious state was in a state of the most horrible hell.  In these nightmares, there were horrific imagery and scenes.  There were also horrific sounds and other horrific stimuli.  But then there were the horrible altered crippled states/feelings.  If I were to only experience the horrific stimuli and not the horrible altered states/feelings, then this nightmare would not have been anything horrible to me at all.  Those stimuli would not actually be anything horrible to me at all.  Thus, this nightmare would have had no impact upon me whatsoever.  I would have awoken from it just fine.  But it is only through these horrific altered states/feelings that I become aware (experience) the horror of these nightmares.  I know all of this from personal experience since this has happened to me.

As for empathy, if it is not an emotion (mood/feeling), then it, in of itself, cannot give a person’s life the perceptual quality of any good/bad value in his/her life.  If it is, then it is only through feeling good in helping someone out that you can actually see the good value and worth in doing that.  Feeling bad will always make you see it as a bad thing that you hurt someone else.  If you were to be compelled to make up for the harm you did, then it would only be because this was such a horrible situation to you.  Not because it was anything good to you to make up for it.  The same thing applies for strength of character and character growth/development.  If these things do not offer a positive emotional experience, then they, too, cannot yield any real perceptual quality of good value/worth to a person’s life.

Now, there could actually be two types of emotions or positive toned states of mind.  If you were to be in your normal state of well being which is the brain’s normal healthy state or if you were to feel joyful and excited over a new video game or movie, then this is a good emotion and a positive toned state.  So, this is the first type.  The 2nd type would be choosing to make the best of your life anyway and pushing forward in life despite the absence of those aforementioned feel good states.

One could say that a positive emotion or positive toned state is somehow there driving this depressed/anhedonic individual.  I’m not sure there is.  It could be a matter of the person simply making choices.  But the question is, if this truly is a positive toned state or an emotional state, does this experience meet the humanistic standard?

Or is it nothing more than the will to carry on in life and make the best of things like a deluded biological machine who thinks his/her life is good and worthwhile to him/her, but, in reality, is not actually perceiving any real good value/worth in his/her life?  From my own personal experience, I think that the 1st type of good moods/feelings are all there is to life.

I think they are the only experiences that meet the humanistic standard of being in a state of mind where your life has a real perceived quality of good value/worth to you.  This would mean that the definition of a positive toned state of mind/positive emotional state without the 1st type of good moods/feelings would, again, be nothing more than a biological machine’s definition.

Now, having good value and worth perceived in your life can only be a positive tone of experience for you.  It would make no sense to say that having good value and worth in your life is either a negative tone of experience or neither positive nor negative (i.e. mechanistic).  Since our good moods/feelings are the only experiences that possess the positive tone as I’ve just explained earlier, then it would obviously follow that it can only be our good moods/feelings that give our lives real good value and worth.

For example, if someone said:

“My life is worth living,” “These things and situations have worth to me,” or “Good, I get to get what I want now.  This situation has a lot of worth to me.”

Then that is a positive tone.  Even if you screamed and said:

“GOOD, HE/SHE DESERVES TO DIE!!!  THAT IS WORTH SOMETHING TO ME!!!”

Then that is also a positive tone.  It is a positive outlook (experience) for you.  But, like I said, it is only the good moods/feelings we get which can give our lives positive tones of experience.

To present this in a brief logical argument form, I will present the premises below and my conclusion:

1.)  Perceiving something to be of good value, worth, joy, beauty, inspiration, love, and happiness to you can only be an experience for you that has a positive tone.  In short, having good value and worth, along with joy, beauty, and happiness in your life is always a positive experience (state of mind) no matter how you look at it.

2.)  Perceiving something to be of bad value, torment, suffering, and misery to you can only be an experience for you that has a negative tone.  In short, having bad value, along with suffering, misery, and torment in your life is always a negative experience (state of mind) no matter how you look at it.

3.)  Perceiving something to be of neither good value, worth, bad value, joy, beauty, happiness, suffering, torment, or misery to you can only be an experience for you that has a neutral (mechanistic) tone.  In short, having neither good value, worth, nor bad value, along with having no suffering, misery, torment, happiness, or beauty in your life is always a neutral experience (state of mind) no matter how you look at it.

4.)  Our good moods/feelings are the only experiences that possess the positive tone, our bad moods/feelings are the only experiences that possess the negative tone, and a non feeling experience can only possess a neutral (mechanistic) tone.  A non feeling experience actually does possess a positive and negative tone.  However, it would be a positive and negative tone that only meets a biological machine’s standard.  It would be nothing more than a mechanistic positive and negative tone that does not meet the human standard.  It would be no different than having a positive and negative charge on a battery versus the positive and negative qualities of our human experience.

Therefore,

Conclusion:  Our good moods/feelings are the only things that can give our lives a humanistic quality of good value, worth, joy, beauty, and happiness, our bad moods/feelings are the only things that can give our lives bad value, suffering, misery, agony, and torment, while it is only experiencing neither our good or bad moods/feelings that can bring our lives no value, worth, joy, beauty, suffering, happiness, love, or misery.

Additional delusional factors include conditioning, strength of character, and empathy towards other human beings which would certainly delude an individual into thinking that helping out others, making the best of life, etc. during miserable times would give real good value, worth, and joy to a person’s life with no need for any good moods/feelings.

If you don’t agree with my definition and have any objections to it, then this is the reason why this packet is so long.  There is a response/replies section below where I engage in a discussion with other people in order to clear up any objections others might have.  If all of these objections get cleared up, then my entire philosophy should become perfectly clear to you.  Once it becomes perfectly clear to you, you can then decide whether you agree with it or not.  But as long as I present my philosophy in its very beginning stage without any responses from other people and my replies to clear up any objections, then that leaves plenty of room for people to, not only disagree with my views, but to also name call me and display contempt and/or a scorning attitude towards me.

However, if these objections get cleared up, then it is far more likely that people will understand me and my views.  They will finally see my views for what they truly are.  If people don’t fully understand my views and name call me or mistreat me, then that causes me frustration knowing that people do not yet see how my views really are accurate and how I am really onto something here.  Lastly,  I also say some of the same things from other packets since these are new people who have never read my packets before.  I also say some of the same things to other people since they have never heard my responses to the other people I have conversed with.

Lastly, to summarize my whole view, my good moods/feelings are like a sacred, holy, and divine joy, love, beauty, good value, happiness, and worth to my life.  They are very profound experiences and there is absolutely no other experience like them.  They are the only experiences that make me a beautiful being of light.  All other experiences are either mechanistic or nothing but misery, perceived bad value, and suffering which either make me nothing more than a machine or a disgusting human being of darkness.  I was really wondering if I could have the exact same experience my good moods/feelings offer me, but without the good moods/feelings.  Like I said, I just don’t think such a thing exists.  I really think that all other experiences are nothing more than dead and mechanistic that will yield no light to my life. /End of Intro

I am going to give a newer and better summary for all of my packets that talk about my definition of value, worth, joy, beauty, love, happiness, suffering, and misery.  I call it the evolutionary definition of good and bad which is supposed to be an objective definition that applies to all human beings.  Maybe you shouldn’t even consider my view to be a philosophy.  Perhaps you could view it as an objective claim I am making.  My personal and profound experience has led me to this claim (hypothesis).  Even though I say there is no evidence for it, I wish to share and talk about it anyway.  If there really is evidence out there for my claim, then I would not know how we would go about discovering it.  In addition, everything I am saying might be complete nonsense, but it is my own personal experience/conviction and I want you to read it anyway.

According to my definition of value and worth, it is only pain and pleasure (the pain/pleasure principle) that dictates the value of our lives.  We do not personally define our own value, worth, joy, beauty, and happiness in our lives.  Rather, evolution does through pain and pleasure.  That is why I call my definition the evolutionary definition of good and bad.  Now, this is a summary for anyone who is pressed for time and doesn’t have the time to read all of my main packets.  Although, I would really recommend you fully read this packet and read all of my main packets because that will give you, others, my parents, and my therapist a full insight into who I am, how I think, and what my values are.  Lastly, some of the things I say in this packet are the same things I say in later ones.

This is because I am taking what I have said in my other packets and putting it here as a part of this packet since these points are very important to reiterate in my summary packet.  I didn’t do a literal copy/paste.  Rather, I say things which sort of resemble the things I say in later packets.  I also post responses and replies after this brief summary.  Read them as well if you have the time and patience since they are important as well.  Therefore, I will now present to you this summary:

Our good moods/feelings are not just pleasant experiences and nothing more.  They are something far more and many people don’t realize it.  They are the actual awareness of good value, worth, joy, beauty, and happiness in our lives.  When you are in a state of well being (feeling good), then that is the awareness (experience) of all the goodness and joys of this life.  There is no other experience besides our good moods/feelings that can give us this awareness.  Our good moods/feelings are a transcended awareness and all other experiences (forms of awareness) are nothing but mechanistic forms of awareness that give no real good value or joy to a person’s life at all.

Sight and hearing are forms of awareness that allow us to visualize objects and perceive sound.  You cannot give yourself sight and hearing by thinking to yourself that you can see and hear when you are blind and deaf just as how you also cannot give your life good value and happiness by thinking that your life has good value and happiness without your good moods/feelings.  This means that our good moods/feelings allow us to “see” just like how sight allows us to see things.  Except, sight allows us to see objects while our good moods/feelings allow us to see all the good value, beauty, and joys of this life.  Empathy/strength of character does not give us the awareness of good value and worth in our lives.

It only makes us want to help others and carry on in life despite the miserable times.  That is how many people are wired since it benefited our survival and the survival of others.  It, along with our conditioning, deludes us into thinking that a life without good moods/feelings can still be a life that has real good value and joy to us since, again, this deluding quality benefited our survival and the survival of others.  But this is all a lie.  It is only through pleasure (feeling good) and pain (feeling bad) that we become aware of the good, the bad, the joy, the suffering, the beauty, and the happiness in our lives.  Therefore, depressed and anhedonic people are living lives that have no good value and no worth to them and they don’t even realize it.  Some actually do.  But some don’t and, unfortunately, still think their lives have real good value and happiness.

Lastly, I will now present to you another person’s response to my summary and my reply to it.  Actually, it is multiple responses and replies.  This is to clear some things up and address some issues others might have with my whole philosophy:

Other Person’s Response:  Imagine a situation where my family could go through the worst torture and I was the only one who could save them.  According to your view, if I could only feel good in regards to other situations, then my life would have nothing but good value and worth to me while the dire situation my family is in wouldn’t matter to me.  I would think it would be a wise decision to save them, but it really wouldn’t matter to me.  It wouldn’t be anything good or bad to me.

From there, your view would say that this wouldn’t make me a bad person to just leave my family to be tortured and go watch the movies or play the new video game that I instead felt so excited about.  It would actually make me a beautiful being of light because, according to your view, good moods/feelings are the only things that make us and our lives beautiful.  You see, this is the type of example your worldview advocates.

My Reply:  This is correct.  But if other people felt that you were a horrible person, then you would be a horrible person from their perspective.  But, from the perspective of your inner self, you would be a beautiful being of light and your life would be beautiful to you.  In other words, it doesn’t matter how others feel about you.  The fact that others see you as a terrible person cannot be anything bad to you since you are not feeling anything bad from that.  You are experiencing your own inner light and that is what makes you beautiful on the inside from your own inner perspective.

Of course, I would definitely go and save my family’s life in your scenario since I would think they deserve to be saved.  It would be nothing more than a wise decision on my part, but I would still do it anyway knowing that they were kind and innocent people in my life.  Given all of this, you might think that my worldview is ludicrous, but let me finish.  First off, I think how we feel about certain situations is truly the only way evolution has allowed us to perceive said situations as having good value, worth, bad value, joy, beauty, or suffering to us.

It is not a matter of us as human beings being some sort of sadistic and cruel creatures leaving others to be tortured.  It might definitely appear as such on the surface, but, in reality, it would be no different than blaming and name calling an amputee since he/she could not do the things that a normal limbed person could do.  It would also be no different than blaming and name calling a mentally handicapped person since he/she did not have the mental capacity of a normal person.

Likewise, you would be unfairly name calling and blaming someone who did not go to work because he/she did not feel like it, you would be unfairly name calling and blaming someone who didn’t save the life of an innocent family member when he/she did not feel like saving him/her, etc.  But, at the same time, if those people who name called you and blamed you felt angry, they would be unfairly name called and blamed as well.  Therefore, I guess none of our actions have any real reason to be blamed because this is just how we felt.

However, I think police would still send criminals to prison since they felt that these criminals were horrible people deserving of punishment.  But as for your local cop who did not feel up to the job, he would just let a criminal go and eat at a doughnut shop.  But I could actually be wrong about this one because we are still wired to make decisions and choices anyway knowing that they are wise decisions even if they had no good or bad value to us.

We have the emotional brain and then we have the logical brain.  These two brain areas were meant to work together.  If you were in the process of making a very important logical decision that could change your life, then you would need that feel good burst of energy to allow you to actually perceive said decision as having good value/worth to you.

If you didn’t get that good feeling, then it is either because this is evolution’s way of telling you that this decision is nothing good to you or it would be because you had some sort of mental health condition such as anhedonia where you couldn’t feel good.  Many people want to leave the emotional brain out of the picture since they think it is trivial and that feelings are nothing important.

You see depressed and anhedonic people do this all the time.  They just carry on in life and do their jobs like biological machines since they are burdened with obligations and responsibilities.  But these people are being denied the good value, joy, beauty, and worth perceived in their lives.  So, our logical brain is simply a decision making/personality machine while it is our good moods/feelings which are the perceptual experience of good value, worth, and joy to our lives.

I will give you one last example.  When a mouse gets a reward stimulation and feels very good, it is driven towards the mate, food, or toy that it felt great from.  This phenomenon clearly indicates that the food, mate, or toy had immense good value/worth to this mouse.  But if the mouse had depression or anhedonia, then it would not engage in activities.  It would not bother with mates, food, or toys.  I think it would.  But on a smaller scale.  The mouse, in this situation, would just simply be engaging in activities like a biological machine.  But it would be devoid of the perceptual experience of good value/worth that would have really driven this mouse into these activities.

Other Person’s Response:  If feeling good is the only way to a life that is perceived to be of good value to an individual as you say, good feelings are only momentary things.  They are brief states of arousal that only last for brief moments before fading away.

My Reply:  Actually, there is another feel good state besides the states of arousal.  It would be the brain in its normal, relaxed state of well being.  This is a state of mind that lasts 24/7 since this is the brain’s normal healthy state.  This state gives us a constant 24/7 perception of good value, worth, joy, beauty, and happiness in our lives.  This is very convenient for us because, if it were only the states of arousal that gave our lives the perception of good value, then we would always have to wait for those states of arousal to occur in order to perceive our lives as having good value to us.  Fortunately, this is not the case and evolution has made it convenient for us.

However, states of feel good arousal such as feeling excited give our lives an enhanced perceptual quality of good value in our lives.  The generalized feel good state simply gives our lives a sufficient and stable perceptual quality of good value.  But if you were to have both your good feelings of arousal along with your generalized feel good state taken away due to, for example, an emotionally traumatic event in your life that put you into a completely hopeless/depressed state, then you could no longer perceive any good value in your life.  Only once you fully recover and have these good moods/feelings back would your life have all the good value and joy to you once more.

Lastly, unlike the version of good value that is normally defined, my definition isn’t a stable and continuous version of good value that a person can have in his/her life since our moods are always changing.  Moments where you feel very bad are the moments where your life has bad value to you while moments where you feel good or neither good nor bad are the moments where your life has good value to you or neither good nor bad value to you.

In addition, we can also have mixed feelings/emotions.  So, if you were in a generalized state of well being, but felt a little bit bad at the same time, then your life would be half good and half bad depending on the degree of good and bad feelings you are experiencing.  If it is just a little bit of a bad feeling and the rest is a good feeling, then things, situations, and moments in your life would be something like 20% bad and 80% good to you.

Other Person’s Response:  Life would simply be a disaster without these non feeling values.

My Reply:  Even if the type of world we would all be living in would be chaos without these non feeling values, that still doesn’t change my views here.  If we were to somehow realize that these non feeling values weren’t real and the world were to become chaos, then that is just the way it is.  That is just what we are as human beings then.

Other Person’s Response:  If you were not experiencing any good feelings due to chronic depression or some traumatic life experience and you could obtain the greatest eternal blissful life of your dreams right now, then wouldn’t that have good value and worth to you?  Wouldn’t you choose to remain in this life to obtain that eternal blissful life even without your good feelings?

My Reply:  My answer to this would be that it would not be of any good value and worth to me.  Like I said, I would have to feel good about the idea of this blissful dream life in order for it to have good value and worth to me.  However, that would not stop me from choosing to stay in this life to obtain that blissful life.  It would be a wise decision on my part.  I would choose to stay in this life to obtain this blissful life because I know that it would be the wise decision to make.  I would know that my life would soon have the greatest good value and joy it could possibly have.

Likewise, if someone were to tell me that there is an eternal hell of the worst torment awaiting for me and that I have to do something now to avoid it, then if, let’s pretend, that all my bad feelings were completely disabled, the idea of this eternal hell cannot be of any bad value to me.  But, again, I would certainly choose to avoid this hell knowing that it would be the wisest decision of my life.  I would also certainly choose to save my mother’s life from an eternal hell knowing that she deserves to be saved.  However, like I said, that situation wouldn’t be of any bad value to me if I wasn’t feeling bad and neither would it have any good value and worth to me either to save her life if I wasn’t feeling good.

But let me actually be a bit more open minded here.  We are talking an eternal blissful life here for me which is something I have always yearned for as the afterlife of my dreams.  It could be possible that I would have an actual perceptual experience of good value/worth towards this dream life and obtaining it.  Likewise, it could be possible that I would be able to have an actual perceptual experience of bad value in regards to both me and my mother being tormented in hell forever.  But I just don’t know here.  I don’t know how this would work out.

If I were in these types of situations, then I would report back to you whether what I have experienced was a machine’s definition of good and bad value or a version of good and bad value that actually meets the human standard.  But just to stick with my evolutionary definition, I would say that I wouldn’t experience any real perceived good and bad value in these situations.  Lastly, I said it would be a wise decision to me to take action to obtain that blissful life.  One might think that it being wise to me is the very definition of it having good value/worth to me.

You would be right.  I really would be perceiving good value/worth towards obtaining this blissful dream life despite my misery.  However, this would be a biological machine’s definition of good value/worth being perceived.  So, it would only be a wise (good) decision to me from a completely mechanistic point of view.  But from the human standard, it would not be any real good value/worth perceived in my life.  Again, I do not wish to live like a biological machine and nothing more.  I have higher, humanistic needs like anyone else and I have profound humanistic thinking.

Other Person’s Response:   Hi Matt:

The short answer is that I saw your later post first (because I clicked on it from a recent topics link) and after realizing this, it seemed more appropriate to “like” the original post.

But to elaborate, after I re-read the conclusion to your logical argument there are some bits that do seem less clear to me.
You write that: “People who struggle with depression and anhedonia are only having positive thoughts that their lives still have good value..But their quality of experience possesses no positive tone to give any real good value, worth, joy, beauty, and happiness to their lives. ”

This seems like a contradiction to me: if you are sincerely having any positive thoughts at all, then there is at least some positivism tone present in your life/mind/heart and therefore some subjective value (however small).

It doesn’t seem possible to me to think positively without having at least some experience of positivism. So if positive thoughts are present, there is no delusion.

At the same time I think (?) I understand your larger point, which is that qualities others may value in an individual (character, empathy towards others) can seem meaningless to that same individual without the subjective experience of positivism and/or positive emotions.

In other words, if I treat others with kindness and am generally speaking a decent human being – my life may have value to others (objectively). But if I have no personal, subjective positive experience at all, those same qualities may seem meaningless to me personally.

My Reply:   But you can have, for example, loving thoughts that possess no positive experience.  For example, if the most cruel and uncaring sociopath just simply thought to his/herself that he/she loves his/her family when this sociopath really doesn’t love them at all and only wishes to harm them, then these loving thoughts would be nothing more than mechanistic tones of experience.  It would not be any real love at all this sociopath would be having.  People can still have thoughts and act on them, but have tones of experience that contradict those thoughts.  A person can be blinded and deluded from this tone of experience and still think and act out on those thoughts as though they were genuine experiences when they weren’t.

I will give you an example.  If someone just did something with their lives anyway and thought/said:

“Well, I am just going to make the best of my life anyway.  Things need to get done here and I am going to do them.  That is a good life worth living for to me.”

Then this person can be focused only on the moral obligations and responsibilities that he/she has and not upon his/her inner experience.  In other words, he/she can be focused on external things and abstract concepts rather than his/her inner experience which is so precious.  In a way, you could consider this person being dragged along by the obligations and responsibilities of this life.

What this person is considering to be a good and worthwhile life for him/her is not actually anything based upon his/her inner experience, but rather, upon the external.  Therefore, he/she is living and making the best of things only from an external point of view.  But, again, he/she is blinded and deluded from his/her inner experience due to conditioning, society, upbringing, morals, obligations, etc.

Even if the person claimed that he/she truly was having a positive toned inner experience without his/her good moods/feelings that gave his/her life real good value and worth to him/her, that doesn’t make it true because there were plenty of people who claimed they experienced a god such as Thor when that wasn’t real.  Again, conditioning, upbringing, society, etc. not only blinds and deludes us from the truth, but it also blinds and deludes us from seeing the truth of our inner experience.

Although I am truly convinced of my own inner experience which has led me to the conclusion that good moods/feelings are the only things that can give our lives the perceptual awareness of good value and worth to us, I think it is instead other people who are deluded and are falsely seeing into their own inner experience due to, again, conditioning, society, etc. blinding/deluding them.

Other Person’s Response:  I think those depressed people you’ve mentioned are, in fact, having a positive tone of experience without their good moods/feelings.  Otherwise, why would they be doing all these sorts of amazing things in their lives and inspiring others?

My Reply:  But even a highly advanced robot can do the same thing.  It can also perform the same acts, tones, and gestures and claim that its life has the inner experience of real value and real joy since that is what it’s programmed to do.  But the robot would have no inner life (experience).  Likewise, a depressed person’s beliefs, upbringing, morals, empathy, conditioning, and strength of character can be his/her “programming” which makes him/her truly believe that he/she is having an inner experience of real good value and joy in his/her life.  But, in reality, he/she really has no experience of good value, worth, and joy in his/her life.

Other Person’s Response:  I would really want to live like a machine.  It sounds like the ideal life for me!

My Reply:  By having that feel-good perception, then the idea of living like a machine would have good value to you.  But once you become this machine and no longer have your good moods/feelings anymore, then such a life would no longer have this good value/worth to you anymore.

Other Person’s Response:  Theres so much mest up ways of thinking here. You can claim that you’re trying to not offend anyone and say you’re just expressing your view which is fine but nonetheless youre still putting depressed people into one category. You just wrote “depressed people have no good value and worth in their lives” “depressed people are living lives that have no good value and worth and dont even realize it ” are you kidding how can you glump people together like that and think that a persons feelings and mental ilness automatically equates to having no worth.

So many people that brought us great things have all been so deeply depressed. Singers, scientists, philosophers have all been people that have brought great value to our lives even with their state of depression. They enriched us with their intelligence and creative minds. There are parents who are raising children that have severe depression and manage to get up every morning and give their child a good life does that sound like someone who has no purpose and value?

“Depressed and anhedonic people are living lives that have no good value , no worth and they dont evem realize it” thats is such an ignorant stement to make and bring no one any value or use. And I can tell someone their fat and ugky and then say “hey thats just my view not trying to offend anyone ” but it doesnt make it any less offesnsive and it wont make them any less ugly or fat. Also the fact that you equate happiness and feel good feelings as people being with value is so strange to me when again so many happy people do nothing withe their lives or contribute anything to society. Depression does not determine your value as a human being and if thats how you feel about yourself than im sorry but its not good to project such harmful negativity to people that are trying to find light in their current dimmed world.

My Reply:  I said that it is only our good moods/feelings that allow us to perceive good value and worth in our lives.  I am not saying that depressed people cannot have any good value and worth to us.  I am saying that they cannot actually perceive any good value and worth in themselves and in their own lives.  If we felt good from a depressed person who has contributed to our lives, then we would be able to see that depressed person as being a wonderful person to us.  But the depressed person who helped us would not be able to perceive his/her altruistic actions as being anything good or worthwhile.

He/she might think otherwise, but, in reality, he/she is having nothing but an experience that is completely dead inside.  There literally is no good value being perceived in this person’s life at all and he/she is falsely lead into the notion that the right mindset alone creates the perception of good value in our lives when it is really our good moods/feelings that give us this perception.  I think that I have every right to express myself and my views like anyone else.  I will not be alone with them.  I do not care if people become offended by them when my intention was not to offend in the first place, but only to vent and express my views.

Other Person’s Response:  Well than thats another completly false stament. On the contrary its when you face hard stuff and are in a bad mood / feelings that you appreciate the god stuff and see value in things/people how can you know whats good without experiencing the bad.  Good feelings come from realizing whats good and whats bad. Obviously when youre in a good mood you have a good outlook on life that goes without saying. But how exactly do you think those good feelings and moods are acquired?

Perception definetly has a lot to do with how you feel can help improve you. We are all born and then we die. No one is guranteed anything in this life we all face the same ending and that is death. One can have the perception that whats the point of anything we all die anyways why try doing anything at all and go into depression mode and do nothing. Someone else can have the opposite perception and say “hey that sucks but here eirher way wether I do something or not im here. Even if i die I want to make value of my life and try to do good and be good” were all going to die and its whats your perception of that inhabitable out come that wil determine your mood and feelings on it. Depressed people can see the good in stuff if they didnt they wouldn’t be here helping others. Also im severly depressed and I do see value in when my actions helpb others especially my loved ones. Not everyone feels the way you do.

My Reply:  During those horrible moments, nothing in your life would have any good value according to my definition of value.  However, the moment you get out of those horrible times and achieve feelings of joy you’ve never experienced before, then this is the moment where your life would have the good value.  In other words, you can only see good value in those hardships you’ve been through once you can feel good from looking back at those hardships and what you’ve obtained out of it.

How you think definitely has an impact on how you feel.  But, like I said, thoughts are just thoughts.  It is only when these thoughts make you feel good that you are able to see good value, joy, and beauty in moments, situations, and things in your life.  Lastly, you can live your life helping others and you can live your life in other ways which would imply that your are living a life where you are perceiving good value.  But that doesn’t make it true.  Plenty of people have lived their lives thinking and believing in many false things.  But that doesn’t make those things true either.

Other Person’s Response:  Basically no one can have a discussion with you because you think You’re right and call other peoples views lies. You told the other person to show you why your stament is wrong and to prove you otherwise but thats no possibel because Youre not concerned with whats true or not you are merely concerned with what is yout opinion of the truth based on your own reality. I will say if thats how you think and feel than youre right but Youre only right when it comes to your own life because otherswisr what you have stated is false and does not apply to anyone else or depressed people in general.

My Reply:  I think that when it comes to our own personal views (philosophies), that they can only lead to agree to disagree scenarios.  You seem to hold me accountable for only listening to myself and my own views.  But I can turn the argument back around on you and hold you accountable for dismissing my views/philosophy.  As you can see here, I don’t think anyone can be held accountable here.  We just have an agree to disagree scenario and we should just leave it at that.  I just wanted to share and express my views anyway since I felt so frustrated being alone with them and not being able to share them.  I personally am convinced my philosophy applies to everybody while you don’t.  Therefore, this is just an agree to disagree scenario.