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Fri 28 Aug, 2015 03:25 am
There is no joy while being down and depressed and/or anhedonic. This is a fact of life. Joy is the incentive to live and to pursue your goals and dreams. Our thoughts alone cannot give us this incentive. For example, if someone falls in love with an anhedonic and/or depressed person, then this anhedonic and/or depressed person would not be able to love his/her soulmate at all.
The term "love" has been defined through science as being a pleasant emotion. The pleasant emotion that urges us to bond with people. If you are experiencing this pleasant emotion, then you are said to be experiencing love. So in that same sense, joy, care, compassion, and happiness are also pleasant emotions as well and can only be pleasant emotions.
Having an incentive in life to live for others or to pursue our goals and dreams always increases heartrate. For example, if someone is experiencing intense love, then that would increase his/her heartrate and such. Same thing applies for joy, care, compassion, and happiness. Therefore, it goes to show you that a depressed and/or anhedonic person cannot have any love, joy, care, compassion, happiness, or any incentive to live and pursue his/her goals and dreams since him/her having the thought of him/her having those things in his/her life does not increase his/her heartrate or anything else of the sort which would of been features and characteristics that would of otherwise been present through his/her pleasant emotional experiences.
So if you can't love, care, have compassion, or have any incentive to live for someone and for your goals and dreams, then there is just no point in living for anyone and for your goals and dreams. So that is the reason why depressed and/or anhedonic people have no reason for living. That is the reason why being the moral individual who puts his/herself through depression and/or anhedonia for others and such is a useless endeavor.
Living instead solely by the pain/pleasure principle in avoiding pain and misery and living to experience your pleasant emotions is all there is to life and is all there is to being human.
Even a sociopath who derives pleasant emotions from harming others and such would be more human than someone depressed and/or anhedonic who chooses to help others. Because at least the sociopath has the incentive to live in his/her life whereas the depressed and/or anhedonic person does not.
I will say it here again one last time. Having an incentive in our lives always increases heartrate. If you experience the unpleasant emotion known as "fear" from being in a dangerous situation, then that increases heartrate. This is because it is an incentive for you to get out of that dangerous situation. You cannot just have the behavorial responses alone in order for it to classify as having an incentive in your life. You need the physiological response.
Without that, then it is not an incentive to live since your brain is not triggering the physiological response of an increased heartrate and such. So that is the reason why you cannot experience any motivation, inspiration, love, joy, fear, rage, happiness, etc. through your thoughts alone if you struggle with depression and/or anhedonia. You would have no reason to live if you are depressed and/or anhedonic. Since I struggle with depression and anhedonia, then I have no reason to live or to pursue my dream of being a composer.
Therefore, I just can't possibly think that there really is a moral version of good and bad that gives good and bad meaning to our lives without our pleasant and unpleasant feelings/emotions. Since we have no reason to live without our pleasant feelings/emotions, then it can only be our pleasant feelings/emotions that give good meaning to our lives. So that is the reason why I am really thinking here that there is instead a scientific version of good and bad.
Our pleasant feelings/emotions are the experience of the scientific version of good since they are what allow us to perceive a scientific (non-moral) version of good meaning in our lives while our unpleasant feelings/emotions allow us to perceive a scientific (non-moral) version of bad meaning in our lives.