Is good an actual quality like water that we need to drink?

[The Transcended Omniverse]

Psychologists often divide emotions into two categories: intrinsically positive and intrinsically negative (i.e. feeling good and feeling bad). I have every reason to think this division is true based upon my own personal experience. After all, positive and negative, good and bad, light and darkness is a well known concept in many movies, anime, artwork, etc. Feeling good and feeling bad is an actual quality of good and bad.

This means that good and bad are actual qualities like water, food, electricity, etc. That is, they are actual things rather than ideas or concepts. If you are someone who struggled with depression or negative emotions such as feelings of anger, disgust, or sadness where you had little to no positive emotions in your life, then you would be having little to no good value in your life just as how you would be having little to no water.

The thought and belief of having water in your life will not give you actual water just as how believing that your life is still good, joyful, beautiful, and worth living during your miserable moments or other negative emotional states would not bring your life any of those things either. Sadly, this means that all those famous and genius miserable artists and composers had little to no good value in their lives regardless of what they believed otherwise. Their lives and artistic endeavors were virtually meaningless and empty even though they were deluded otherwise.

So, with all of this being said, positive and negative emotions, also known as pleasant and unpleasant emotions, are intrinsically good and bad. Beliefs and mindsets themselves are not the same thing as emotions because, if you were in the most miserable state of your life and you believed that you were in a positive emotional state such as feeling joyful and excited about a certain idea such as going to the carnival, then you wouldn't be.

It would just be the thought of being excited and joyful, but no real excitement and joy. Our positive and negative emotions would be like our own inner light and inner darkness. It is the inner light we need to truly make our lives and artistic endeavors good and beautiful and it is the darkness we should avoid since that can only make our lives bad and shit. This means that the only way to live and be an artist is through positive emotions.

To conclude this packet, I will point out something interesting here. Emotions themselves are actual value judgments. Here is a response from a skeptic/neuroscientist which supports this:

Emotions are value judgments too. If they weren't, humanity would not be distinct from other mammals; we would be biological machines with no autonomy, acting purely on instinct. For example, if you are physically hurt, and the doctor treating you causes you pain during treatment, do you become angry and bite him? No, because you are able to override your instinctive anger and fear at someone causing you pain with your ability to reason that the treatment is necessary and the pain is temporary. But a dog can't reason, and will bite to stop the person causing the pain. Both the instinctive emotions AND the reasoned thoughts are value judgments.

Therefore, since our positive emotions are always emotional value judgments of good value and our negative emotions always being emotional value judgments of bad value, since emotions themselves are actual qualities (things that exist such as water, food, electricity, etc.), then positive emotions would have to be a quality of good and negative emotions would have to be a quality of bad.

This means that the only way to live the most beautiful, good, and worthwhile life would be if you were in the most profound, intense state of euphoria of your life and the only worst life you can live would be if you were in the most profoundly horrible negative emotional state of your life. Unfortunately, moments of euphoria are very brief and fleeting which means that your life can only be the greatest for you in brief, fleeting moments.

Other Person's Response: Could you give me an example of people who think that their positive emotions are the inner light to their lives as you claim?

My Reply: There are many people out there who struggle with depression. Many hate their lives and they just want to die. They say that having a positive mindset does nothing for them. This supports my worldview quite well because these depressed people are only expressing the truth here. They are merely expressing the need for the inner light back into their lives again. Many people out there don't realize this truth. Depressed people simply come to the aid of therapists, counselors, and mental health professionals who help change their thinking and work on certain therapeutic methods when, in reality, none of these things were the issue.

What really needs to be done for these depressed folks is to somehow find a way to restore their positive emotions. I realize that antidepressants are one method. But something more needs to be done here since our positive emotions are truly the only things we have to make our lives good and worth living for. I don't care if anything I say offends or upsets you. The truth is the truth and it needs to be shared. I, myself, have struggled 10 whole years with the worst misery of my life induced by emotional traumas and obsessive thinking and it is time I shared the truth of my personal experience to the world.

[The Transcended Omniverse]

[Replying to post 10 by Divine Insight]

How my worldview differs is that it says that, as long as you struggled with negative emotions such as misery or despair and you believed your life was still good and beautiful, then your life would not have any real good value and beauty. This would have to mean that all those miserable and depressed famous, genius artists had little to no good value in their lives since they had little to no positive emotions. These geniuses believed otherwise which means that this worldview of mine has to be something new. Otherwise, these geniuses would not have believed this. They would have had the worldview that I am presenting.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 11 by The Transcended Omniverse]

What does that have to do with the secularist view?

Many secularists will agree with you on that point.

After all, most secularists will agree that life only has whatever value we give it.

So I still don't see where you are proposing anything new or different.

All I see is a total ignorance on your part of how secularists already view the world.

[The Transcended Omniverse]

[Replying to post 12 by Divine Insight]

If you were to go up to any artist today and ask him/her if negative emotions can give our lives good value, they would say "yes." They would tell you that art is about a variety of expression whether it be joy, pain, suffering, tragedy, and misery. So, you are meaning to tell me that I was right all along and these artists were wrong and delusional this entire time? To recap, I stated that it can only be our positive emotions that can give our lives good value and it can only be our negative emotions that can give our lives bad value. Having no emotions at all would only render our lives without value. I said this was a rule of life and that no belief or personal value system of your own could defy this rule. But artists out there today act as though it can.

If I was right all along, then this would mean that masochists would also be delusional since they claim that they love negative emotions such as misery in their lives and that such emotions give their lives good value. Therefore, I think it is instead the hedonists like me who had it right all along. Given all of this, negative emotions simply have no reason for existing. It was a tragic mistake for them to have existed. As I said before, I have struggled with the most horrible misery and hopelessness of my life and it was a 10 year battle. That was a tragic mistake to have happened. Had there been no such thing as negative emotions, then I could only feel the positive emotions. Maybe a little bit of negative emotions are needed in your life to have the positive emotions, but I personally do not think so.

I think you can have the most profound and beautiful positive emotions in your life without ever having had any negative ones. It would be no different than how a person can still see, hear, smell, and taste without ever having been blind, deaf, without smell, and without taste. With all of this being said, imagine a world where, instead of the idea of a dangerous situation being something bad due to the fearful emotion urging you to escape, it would instead be a positive emotion urging you that it is a good and beautiful thing to escape and that you really need to do this to save your life. In such a world, we could have only the positive emotions to encourage, motivate, and inspire us in any given endeavor whether it be creating any type of artwork, escaping from danger, etc.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 12 by Divine Insight]

If you were to go up to any artist today and ask him/her if negative emotions can give our lives good value, they would say "yes." They would tell you that art is about a variety of expression whether it be joy, pain, suffering, tragedy, and misery. So, you are meaning to tell me that I was right all along and these artists were wrong and delusional this entire time?

You are the one who is making a mistake here. You are speaking of "good" value. So you have already subjectively judged the value to be "good" (i.e. to necessarily be associated with positive emotions by your definition of "good").

The artists that you are misrepresenting here would most likely say that all experiences give our lives "value" (notice that they aren't placing any moral judgements on the concept of "value"). They are simply saying that all subjective experiences have "value". Whether you want to label it as good or bad value is your subjective business.

You are making the common mistake of trying to define "good and bad" subjectively (i.e. via subjective emotions) whilst simultaneously demanding that value itself must be "absolutely good", otherwise you personally don't subjectively consider it to be of much "value".

So your whole approach to trying to force everyone else to be "wrong" with respect to your views amounts to nothing more than your own subjective opinions and definitions. Not any absolute objective "truth" as you have previously claimed.

All you are doing is trying to push your personal subjective views off as absolute objective truths. That's not going to fly. Nobody is going to buy into that.

To recap, I stated that it can only be our positive emotions that can give our lives good value and it can only be our negative emotions that can give our lives bad value. Having no emotions at all would only render our lives without value. I said this was a rule of life and that no belief or personal value system of your own could defy this rule. But artists out there today act as though it can.

But your mandatory "definition" on this subject is nothing other than your own personal opinion. You are the one who is defining what it even means to have "good" or "bad" value. And then you are proclaiming your definition of value to be some sort of absolute objective truth.

All you are doing is applying extremely flawed logic to your arguments. Moreover at this point you no longer need to "dig" to find this supposed "truth" since you clearly claim to already have it to the exclusion of everyone else.

If I was right all along, then this would mean that masochists would also be delusional since they claim that they love negative emotions such as misery in their lives and that such emotions give their lives good value. Therefore, I think it is instead the hedonists like me who had it right all along.

But here you are making the mistake of thinking that masochists aren't truly masochists. Instead, you imagine them to be miserable hedonists who aren't truly masochists at all. All you are doing here is denying that masochists can exist at all. And you are subjectively judging them to be delusional because in your subjective view they can't possibly be having positive emotions via masochism. But if that were true then there would be no such thing as a masochist, all that would exist are delusional hedonists. So that's all your argument amounts to here.

Given all of this, negative emotions simply have no reason for existing. It was a tragic mistake for them to have existed.

I disagree. Sometimes negative emotions give rise to anger, and anger (whilst at first glance may appear to be undesirable) can actually inspire a person to get out and do something positive to change the things in the world that are making them angry.

By the way, chalk one up for the artists you mentioned previously. Here's an example where negative emotions can indeed give rise to "good value" by inspiring someone to change the world for the better. So here's an example where you were previously wrong about artists.

As I said before, I have struggled with the most horrible misery and hopelessness of my life and it was a 10 year battle. That was a tragic mistake to have happened. Had there been no such thing as negative emotions, then I could only feel the positive emotions. Maybe a little bit of negative emotions are needed in your life to have the positive emotions, but I personally do not think so.

Well now we have the question of what was going on in your life that caused you to have such horrible misery and hopelessness for 10 years? Something negative must have been happening to your or around you.

If someone is being abused is it going to help for them to pretend that this is causing them to have positive emotions? How do you propose that people who are in desperately negative situations force themselves to have positive emotions?

I think you can have the most profound and beautiful positive emotions in your life without ever having had any negative ones. It would be no different than how a person can still see, hear, smell, and taste without ever having been blind, deaf, without smell, and without taste.

I disagree with your analogy here. It would be extremely different from how a person can still see, hear, smell, and taste without ever having been blind, deaf, without smell, and without taste. A more appropriate analogy would be to suggest that people who have all these senses simply ignore bad scenes, bad sounds, bad smells, and bad tastes. That's not at all the same as not having the senses.

With all of this being said, imagine a world where, instead of the idea of a dangerous situation being something bad due to the fearful emotion urging you to escape, it would instead be a positive emotion urging you that it is a good and beautiful thing to escape and that you really need to do this to save your life. In such a world, we could have only the positive emotions to encourage, motivate, and inspire us in any given endeavor whether it be creating any type of artwork, escaping from danger, etc.

But now you're back to actually agreeing with the artists that you renounced at the beginning of your post. All you are doing here is using your negative emotions to inspire you do react in positive ways. And for this reason the artists argue that negative emotions can indeed have "good value" if you react to them with positive reactions to make the world a better place.

~~~~~~~

Once again. I don't see where your arguments are all that much different from what the artists are already saying. It simply appears to me that you are failing to understand what the artists are actually saying. That's all.

After all, do you really think that artists in general are going to suggest that you should react with negative actions to negative emotions? I don't think so. In fact, artists most likely don't even try to tell people how to behave. That's not their job. Their job is to simply document all emotions through art. How you react to those emotions is up to you.

So I think you are misrepresenting the artists positions. All they are doing is conveying reality through art. How you react to reality is your business. And if you need professional help with that, you typically wouldn't go to an artist for help. Instead you would go to a psychologist who specializes in trying to help people react in positive ways to negative emotions.

In short, the psychologists are way ahead of you. They have been working on helping people to use negative emotions to bring about positive change for decades if not centuries.

I just don't understand why you think your "worldview" is radically different from how most professionals already see the world.

We can't change the fact that there are things in this world that cause us to have negative emotions. Therefore negative emotions are here to stay. It's part of our reality. All we can do is decide how we will react to negative emotions. But that revelation is nothing new to be sure. Although, having said this, there are clearly many members of the masses who haven't yet learned this skill.

So I just don't see where you are suggesting anything that educated professional people don't already know. This may seem like a new revelation to you, but for them it's old hat.

[Divine Insight]

In fact, when I stop and think about this, what you actually appear to be objecting to is that the masses haven't yet caught up to the psychologists.

It's certainly true that many people react negatively to negative emotions and end up escalating the negativity of their situation. That's a given. In fact, this is what psychologists would like to see end. But it's difficult to change how the masses behave because the psychologists aren't in a position to be raising everyone's children properly.

So in the real world we have poorly raised parents poorly raising their own children and perpetuating the status quo of people reacting negatively to negative emotions.

That's not a desirable situation, but unfortunately it's the world we live in.

[The Transcended Omniverse]

[Replying to post 14 by Divine Insight]

Sure, you could react positively to negative emotions and you could definitely react negatively to positive emotions, but I just think that it can only be our positive emotions that can make things of good value in our lives and that it can only be our negative emotions that can make things of bad value in our lives. As long as you felt a positive emotion from something, then that said thing would be good from your perspective and, as long as you felt a negative emotion from something, then that said thing, person, situation, or moment can only be of bad value in your life. Of course, making wise decisions should still not be dismissed. You should, for example, still choose to get off of drugs that made you feel nothing but bliss even if you couldn't feel any negative emotions to make those drugs a bad idea in your life. For anybody to say that positive emotions can make things and moments of bad value in our lives or that negative emotions can make things of good value in our lives would be no different than saying that light can be darkness or that darkness can be light.

It would also be no different than saying that a positive charge can be a negative charge or that a negative charge can be a positive one. It makes no sense. Our positive emotions would be like positive charges, but they wouldn't just be positive. They would be like good charges while our negative emotions would be like bad charges because, as I said before, our positive and negative emotions are a quality of good and bad that makes things and moments of good and bad value to us in our lives. Of course, our emotions are not charges and neither are they light and darkness. I just gave this analogy/metaphor to get my point across. Our positive and negative emotions would be the objective good and bad that allow things, moments, and situations to be subjectively good or bad to us because, like I said before, different people will have different emotional responses to different things.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 14 by Divine Insight]

Sure, you could react positively to negative emotions and you could definitely react negatively to positive emotions, but I just think that it can only be our positive emotions that can make things of good value in our lives and that it can only be our negative emotions that can make things of bad value in our lives. As long as you felt a positive emotion from something, then that said thing would be good from your perspective and, as long as you felt a negative emotion from something, then that said thing, person, situation, or moment can only be of bad value in your life. Of course, making wise decisions should still not be dismissed. You should, for example, still choose to get off of drugs that made you feel nothing but bliss even if you couldn't feel any negative emotions to make those drugs a bad idea in your life. For anybody to say that positive emotions can make things and moments of bad value in our lives or that negative emotions can make things of good value in our lives would be no different than saying that light can be darkness or that darkness can be light.

I don't disagree with anything you've said here. The only thing I am attempting to point out is that I don't see anything here that isn't already known to be true by professionals who consider these types of problem. In other words, I don't see where you are proposing anything that isn't already basically "common knowledge" among professionals in the field.

On thing I would like to point out that you yourself have just made it clear in your above quote that emotions themselves are not enough. You point this out by recognizing that taking drugs may temporarily provide was seem to be positive emotions, but intellectually (i.e. by using knowledge and logic) we can also recognize that some things that produce what seem to be positive emotions may actually end up producing quite negative emotions later on.

So in this sense emotions alone cannot lead us to "goodness" or even be a dependable indicator of what might ultimately be good or bad.

So positive emotions cannot be the totality of "goodness", especially in terms of determining what might be good or bad in the long run.

But they can be used as a measurement of what is "good" over time. But then there is also the problem that you confess in your next quote that different people will have different emotional responses to different things. Thus making emotions relative to a persons subjective experience with emotions.

It would also be no different than saying that a positive charge can be a negative charge or that a negative charge can be a positive one. It makes no sense. Our positive emotions would be like positive charges, but they wouldn't just be positive. They would be like good charges while our negative emotions would be like bad charges because, as I said before, our positive and negative emotions are a quality of good and bad that makes things and moments of good and bad value to us in our lives. Of course, our emotions are not charges and neither are they light and darkness. I just gave this analogy/metaphor to get my point across. Our positive and negative emotions would be the objective good and bad that allow things, moments, and situations to be subjectively good or bad to us because, like I said before, different people will have different emotional responses to different things.

By the way, good emotions certainly can't be depended upon as an indicator of whether a given behavior is "good or bad".

For example, tonight I was out in my woodshop working on preparing the shop for winter. It was hard work. I was tired, and sore. I did not feel like doing the work at all. I certainly wouldn't describe it as having been a "positive emotional experience".

None the less I stuck to it and finished the work to the point I wanted to get to. I went out at 9:00 PM and didn't finish until 2:00 AM. I was actually surprised to discover that I had worked that long. One thing that kept me going was that I did try to focus on "positive emotions" by daydreaming about how nice it will be to have the shop winterized when I'm done. So I created artificial positive emotions by not focusing on the dreaded hard work that was not emotionally rewarding.

I'm sure that I will have positive emotions about the work I have done at some future time. But doing the work did not provide me with positive emotions.

So once again, here is an example where logic wins out over emotion. The simple logic of knowing that if I do the work I will be able to emotionally enjoy the results of that work at a later date is what kept me going. So logic was the key to success here. If I had actually acted on my emotions I probably would have quit early and not get the work done. In fact, I actually came close to quitting because I was getting sick of doing the work. But I stuck it out because I allowed LOGIC to overrule my emotions.

So in this case, logic was the tool that took me to an end result that will be "good".

But overall, I don't see where what you are saying is anything new, unless you are suggesting that only emotions can determine what's good or bad. I think logical reasoning can also be used to make that determination.

[The Transcended Omniverse]

[Replying to post 17 by Divine Insight]

I am arguing that it can only be positive emotions that can allow us to see good value in our lives and it can only be negative emotions that can allow us to see bad value in our lives. Mindsets alone of us seeing good and bad value in our lives would not allow us to actually see good and bad value without the respective emotion. It would be no different than if a blind person believed he could see colors when, in reality, he can't.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 17 by Divine Insight]

I am arguing that it can only be positive emotions that can allow us to see good value in our lives and it can only be negative emotions that can allow us to see bad value in our lives. Mindsets alone of us seeing good and bad value in our lives would not allow us to actually see good and bad value without the respective emotion. It would be no different than if a blind person believed he could see colors when, in reality, he can't.

The only place where I would disagree with you here is in your wording.

Instead of saying: "I am arguing that it can only be positive emotions that can allow us to see good value in our lives and it can only be negative emotions that can allow us to see bad value in our lives."

Why not say the following:

"it can only be positive emotions that can allow us to judge value to be good in our lives and it can only be negative emotions that can allow us to judge value to be bad in our lives."

In other words, your argument seems to be presuming that there exists absolute good value and absolute bad value. And that our emotions allow us to "SEE" these absolute qualities of life.

But I see no reason to assume that premise. What's the basis for that premise other than possibly a bias toward believing that absolute good and bad preexist our judgement of these things?

In the second situation our emotions simply allow us to make subjective judgements on what we deem to be good or bad value based on how we emotionally feel about things. In other words, there is no need to assume that there exists any absolute good or bad prior to how we judge things to be based on how we emotionally feel about them.

So if you are attempting to try to define some sort of "absolute good and bad" based on human emotions, then I would suggest that you are making a lot of unwarranted assumptions.

I would argue that we create these value judgements based on our emotions. Not that emotions allow us to see these preexisting qualities.

So I suggest that your argument presumes the existence of absolute good and bad, when it's not necessarily to make that presumption.

My counter-argument would be that you think you are "seeing" something, when in reality you are just "creating" a value judgement based on your emotions.

[The Transcended Omniverse]

[Replying to post 19 by Divine Insight]

My basis is my own personal and profound experience. I am absolutely convinced of this since it is as clear as day to me and I have profound insight into my own personal experience. Rational/thought judgments of good value make us feel positive emotions such as it being a good and lovely day today and it is through our positive emotions that we are able to perceive that good value we judged to be there in the first place. The same idea applies to our negative emotions allowing us to perceive bad value. Even if our emotions were induced by other means such as drugs rather than thoughts, then they are still what allow us to perceive good and bad value since, like I said before, emotions themselves are value judgments and value judgments allow us to perceive value. After all, a value judgment is a perceptual state which is the reason why value judgments allow us to perceive value. But, like I said, the rational value judgments themselves do not allow us to perceive value.

Audio signals get sent to the audio cortex and that is how you hear actual sound. Visual signals get sent to the visual cortex and that is how you see actual colors and other objects. Likewise, thoughts of value judgments get sent to the emotional parts of our brains and it is through our emotions that we are able to perceive real value. But the audio and visual signals themselves are not any real sight or hearing just as how thoughts of value themselves in our lives cannot allow us to perceive any real value.

Therefore, that is the reason why our positive and negative emotions are like glasses we need to wear in order to see the values in our lives. It would also be no different than if you were in a pitch black cave and you believed gold was in that cave. That belief/mindset alone would not allow you to see the gold. You would need actual light to see the gold. The more light you have, the more the gold shines which means you are able to see the gold more. The less light you have, the less the gold shines which means the less of the gold you will see. In that same sense, our positive emotions are like the light that allow us to see the good values in our lives and our negative emotions allow us to see the bad values in our lives.