My theory to help find a cure for depression

[MozartLink]

Since my other explanations for my philosophy are way too long, then I will create a summary here. This is my #1 best summary. I explain a way we might discover evidence for it later on. I think my worldview would be called "hedonism." It is a very common worldview where people just want to be happy, have fun, enjoy their lives, etc. It is a worldview that completely leaves out the notion of depressed/anhedonic lives as being any real source of alternative value and worth in a person's life. This means that if a person loses his/her good moods/feelings, then he/she is out of luck and just has to wait until he/she recovers them in order to bring back the good value, worth, joy, happiness, and beauty in his/her life.

However, I extend on this philosophy with my own theory that attempts to validate its "sad but true" outlook. So, I will begin. Our good moods/feelings (states of well being induced by the various feel-good neurotransmitters/chemicals in the brain) are the only experiences that offer us a real perceptual quality of good value, worth, joy, inspiration, happiness, love, and beauty in our lives. It would be no different than how sight is the only experience that can offer us the ability to visualize (see) objects. This is because sight and visualization are the same thing. If you become blind and lose your sight, then you lose your visualization. No outlook, realization, belief, or thought alone can give you your visualization back. It is only once you recover from your blindness that you can see again.

Likewise, a person without his/her good moods/feelings can acknowledge the abstract values that certain situations, works of art, etc. hold and he/she can still believe and think to his/herself that his/her life still has good value/worth to him/her, but that is not the same thing as actually perceiving those values. It would be like having the experience of thinking and acknowledging that 1+1=2 in your head as opposed to the experience of perceiving love, joy, and good value in your life. As you can see here, perceived values in our lives become nothing more than mechanistic perceptual experiences without our good moods/feelings regardless of what we were to believe or think otherwise.

This mechanistic perceptual experience obviously does not meet the human standard. It is simply no way to live at all. That is why there is no way I am going to live a life of depression or anhedonia for any extended length of time. I am doing fine now and no longer have misery and depression in my life. But in the event that it happens to me again, then I would have to find a way to recover within the reasonable time frame of 1-2 years. I can very well live my life the best I can and whatnot while in this depressed/anhedonic state, but this perceptual experience does not meet the human standard. Situations might very well still be good to me and worthwhile to me, but this perceptual experience obviously possesses no quality for my life.

Now, I don't believe in God and the afterlife. I am actually undecided when it comes to the existence of God, the afterlife, and the paranormal. But let me give you a Christian analogy to make everything in my writing seem clear to you in case everything I am saying here either seems like nonsensical gibberish or if it all seems flawed. A person can very well acknowledge and believe that God and Jesus are the most magnificent and loving beings. But without the spirit of Jesus/the Holy Ghost within him/her, then this person is just a soulless biological machine. His/her perceptual experience of God's/Jesus' magnificence and love is nothing more than that of a biological machine. Therefore, his/her perceptual experience only meets a soulless biological machine's standard. It does not meet the standard of the Divine.

This person would need to be filled with the Divine Awareness of the Holy Ghost in order to actually perceive God's magnificence and love for what it truly is. This perceptual experience would be that of God and would meet the standard of the Divine. In that same sense, you could consider our good moods/feelings to also be the Divine Awareness that allows us to truly perceive good value, worth, joy, beauty, and happiness in our lives. Without this Divine Awareness, then our perceptual experience of those terms is nothing more than that of a biological machine. It does not meet the human standard of any perceptual quality of those terms.

This means that you, I, and everyone else can only live our lives as nothing more than biological machines since our good moods/feelings are the higher component to our human experience that we need in our lives. So, our good moods/feelings would actually be the divine spiritual light to our lives that fills us up and allows us to become aware of all the good value/worth in our lives. Likewise, our bad moods/feelings would be a descended form of awareness that allows us to become aware of hellish and horrible experiences as well as bad value in our lives. An experience that is neither a good or bad mood/feeling is nothing more than that of a biological machine.

Given all of this, I conclude that other people are only fooling and deluding themselves due to their conditioning, upbringing, etc. in thinking that a life without good moods/feelings still has perceived good value and worth. My personal experience has led me to this conviction which was a very profound experience in my life. One might easily say that I have no evidence for this and this is all just my opinion. But there could be a way to discover this evidence providing that there really is evidence for it. It would be through neuroscience. I think we know through neuroscience why pain is painful and why heat feels hot to us. We can gain insight into these qualities of experience through neuroscientific technology. Therefore, the same thing would have to be done for the quality of experience that our good moods/feelings possess.

We would have to use neuroscientific technology to find out if the quality of experience that our good moods/feelings possess truly is a quality that gives our lives a real perceptual experience of good value/worth. From there, we would have to look at other perceptual experiences (i.e. our outlooks and mindsets) which so many people are led to believe is truly the only thing that determines whether we perceive our lives to be of good value/worth to us or not. We would have to find out if these experiences possess nothing more than a mechanistic quality or if they really do possess the higher, humanistic quality that would truly give our lives a higher, humanistic perceptual quality of good value/worth in our lives. If neuroscience discovers evidence for my idea, then we would come to realize that our mental well being (good moods/feelings) are truly the only thing that matters.

As long as you are happy and enjoying your life, then that is all that matters. When I say that's all that matters, then I must feel good from that to make it matter to me. The more of a profound and intense good feeling experience you have, the greater perceptual quality of good value/worth you will have in your life. But if you have only a small degree of these good moods/feelings, then you will have a slim degree of perceptual good value/worth. But just because dire situations would hold no value to us without our good moods/feelings, we would still make these choices anyway knowing that they would save our lives and the lives of others. It would be a mechanistic standard of living, but if it is only for a brief moment that would save your life and the lives of others, then it is still on the recommendation list. Actually, it is our bad moods/feelings such as fear, sadness, and misery which would make situations bad and a hellish experience to us. But an experience that is neither a good nor bad mood/feeling cannot give our lives any perception of any good value or bad value.

So, with all of this being said, evolution did not give us the ability to perceive situations as being good and bad to us in the absence of pain (feeling bad) and pleasure (feeling good). Many people and many organisms live their lives and help others of their kind in the absence of their good and bad moods/feelings. However, that is only a mechanistic standard of living that has been wired into us through evolution and it is a mechanistic standard of perceptual good value/worth. It is only through pain and pleasure that we are brought to a higher form of awareness (experience). I would call my definition the evolutionary definition of good and bad since it is evolution that dictates the perceptual value in our lives through pain and pleasure and not us as human beings who do.

To conclude this packet, people would say that there are other forms of ecstasy (good moods/feelings) that one could achieve besides the ones I have described earlier which were states of well being induced by the feel good chemicals. For example, one would say that through meditation and detaching yourself from the hedonistic version of good moods/feelings I've described that one can achieve a higher and enlightened version of a good mood/feeling. However, these other good moods/feelings do not exist. They are, again, nothing more than a mechanistic standard of a good mood/feeling and not any real good mood/feeling that meets the human standard. Therefore, people are only wanting to shove away the real good moods/feelings as though they are something trivial.

People want control over their lives and wish to dictate whatever value, happiness, and good mood/feeling they want to have in their lives. But life doesn't always work out like this. We don't always get what we want in life. Life is unfortunate and, sadly, some things really do have dominance over our lives. It's no different than a situation where you are dying of thirst and you had an empty glass. Redefining the emptiness inside that glass as water will not give you the actual quality of water you would need to save your life. This is the analogy I give for those types of people who think that defining what gives their personal lives value, joy, happiness, beauty, and worth somehow makes it a real perceptual quality in their lives.

[Harbal]

It's no different than a situation where you are dying of thirst and you had an empty glass. Redefining the emptiness inside that glass as water will not give you the actual quality of water you would need to save your life.

I think you firmly established some tome ago that you're the glass completely empty type.

[]...[]

.



To the original poster, WTF? You call that a shorter version?

Look, you're trying to mentally support something that just is not valid in the real world.

That's why your need for soooo many words; sooo many if, ands & buts.


Let it go. Experience the world without thought. Grow. Let your being grow.


I suspect you are young & female. LET GO!

Get a boyfriend, have a drink, grow.

Feel. Feel everything. Good & bad.


~ Bill Wiltrack ~

.

[Lacewing]

This is my #1 best summary.

Since seeing your repetitive brain dumps repeatedly on this forum , I think that your level of self-absorption is too uninteresting to wade through. Sorry to be so blunt -- but you keep doing this, so I figure you're asking to hear honest feedback.

You appear, to me, to be doing what a lot of people do: Molding the WORLD to their narcissism, in a way that makes their experience uniquely important, and makes them the one with the answers for others.

Such a hyper focus seems very small, no matter how much you fine-tune it, nor how you try to creativity describe it to others. It's like obsessing over a raindrop in a jar (controlled isolationism), as opposed to diving into an ocean (flowing shared experience). I don't think that narcissism and isolationism can be trusted to reflect any views other than small, self-serving limitations and agendas.