Evolution defines pleasure as the only good

There are 3 pleasure states: negative (hopelessness), neutral (anhedonia), and positive (feeling pleasure). The negative state of pleasure (depression), depression is also a natural response by evolution to discourage our survival aside from it being something such as a chemical imbalance or the result of a brain abnormality. It warns us when something is going wrong in our lives which is the reason why we become depressed when something bad happens in our lives such as the loss of a loved one, etc. When we are encouraged for survival, that would be defined as having genuine good perceptions in life such as to want to live and make the best of our lives, help others, etc. This encouragement can only be defined through our pleasure since it is only our feelings that genuinely encourage and discourage our survival. They are the only things that genuinely make us perceive our lives as either being good and worth living or as bad and not worth living at all. But if you are in a state of anhedonia (absence of pleasure), then this should also tell you that your life is not worth living at all either since how we normally function as human beings would be through relying on our perception of good to make our lives good and worth living. That neutral perception should then send a depressive signal to your brain and then make you and your life bad and of truly even less worth now. As I said before, in a state of anhedonia, our good and bad perceptions are not genuine and is just our mind's irrational way of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are having genuine good and bad perceptions without having any pleasure or suffering in our lives at the moment.

I said that our encouragement for survival in life can only be defined by having genuine good perceptions. Therefore, since depression discourages our survival, then this means that we cannot genuinely perceive us and our lives as being good and worth living while in a state of significant depression since depression shuts down our good perceptions. Therefore, depression shuts down our good perceptions in a negative sense in that we would have bad perceptions, anhedonia simply neutralizes our perceptions in which we neither genuinely perceive our lives as being good or bad without pleasure and suffering, and pleasure is what defines our genuine good perceptions in life.

When a person is depressed, he/she might say to his/herself in a depressive mood (tonality) that his/her life is still good and worth living. He/she might very well continue on to pursue his/her dreams and goals in life even while still feeling depressed. But those good perceptions are all decoys without our pleasure as I've said before. The person's depression has shut down his/her genuine good perceptions in life. But he/she is now doing nothing more than just simply saying to his/herself that his/her life is still good and worth living anyway and just forcing his/herself to live life anyway. So now this person is just simply being fooled by words and phrases alone when there is no genuine good perception at all from those words and phrases while he/she is in a state of depression.

On one side of the spectrum you have people who are so severely depressed that they don't want to do anything who find no good value in their lives. They can hardly function and can hardly want to do things in their lives at all. These types of people are so severe that they can never bring themselves to make the best of their lives and such. These types of people need electric shock treatment. But on the other side of the spectrum you have people who are so happy and excited in life that they are doing all sorts of great things in life. So based on that, you can clearly see how our level of pleasure defines our level of good perception in life. But even if it were somehow a proven fact that you and your life are truly good even in a state of depression/anhedonia, then what good is that going to do for you? What is the use of you and your life being good if you are not even allowed to genuinely perceive it as being good?

Now our perceptions do define how we feel. But it's our feelings that make those said perceptions genuinely good or bad only from the perspective of those feelings alone and not from the perspective of those perceptions (thoughts) alone which are all neutral in of themselves as I've said before. So it's just how we feel independent of our thoughts that genuinely makes us and our lives good or bad. I also realize that there is one other emotion which would be empathy. There are also 3 states of empathy as well: negative (in which you feel bad such as you feeling sorry for hurting someone else), neutral (no empathy in which one might also just simply help others out anyway through just thoughts and such alone), and positive (which would be a feeling of pleasure in which you feel good for helping someone else). Here again, the negative state defines us and our lives as being bad and genuinely defines our perceptions as bad, the neutral defines us and our lives as being neither good or bad and our perceptions as being neither good or bad without our pleasure, and the positive state is what genuinely defines us and our lives as being genuinely good and defines our perceptions as being genuinely good.

In conclusion, I am making these arguments to try and help find better cures and treatments for anhedonia and depression. If people would realize that pleasure and suffering are the only true good and bad things in life, then they would be much more inclined to find better treatments and a cure. Too many people are just accepting of suffering due to them thinking that they are still good people even with much suffering and/or an absence of pleasure in their lives. But I wish to change this mindset so that people would then truly realize once and for all the pleasure and suffering really are the only true good and bad things in life. Not only am I trying to find better treatments and cures for depression and anhedonia, but also for suffering in general. My hedonistic values would also encourage others to find better treatments and cures for suffering in general as well. This would also even include mortality since living in an eternal blissful life of no suffering is the one and only greatest life there is and is the one and only thing that would make you the greatest person.