Overview Of My Theory To Be Tested (With New Points/Explanations) First off, I am going to explain my idea that needs to be tested to give an overview. It actually explains some new things I haven't said before. I struggle with a chronic 24/7 absence of all my pleasant feelings/emotions (anhedonia) as well as depression. Now I have payed very close attention to having this personal experience with it and I realize something strange here. I notice that sometimes there are moments where things have a very subtle amount of meaning in my life. But then there are moments in which things, out of the blue, spontaneously seem like nothing more than empty and meaningless shapes, sounds, and images. During these given moments, I feel an increase in my anhedonia. That is, I feel a further shutdown of my good moods which were, apparently, already so close to nothing that they were hardly detectable. During those given moments where my anhedonia becomes worse, I feel a jamming sensation in my brain as though something is stuck there that is causing everything to turn off. I think it would be a dysregulated fear stress response that is overpowering everything and causing everything to turn off. My brain cannot get that fear stress response back under regulation (control), so everything has to be turned off for now. But anyway, continuing on here. Depression and anhedonia are what turn off the reward system of our brains. So when my reward system turns off even further during those given moments where my anhedonia becomes worse, I perceive less good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration in my life. This has nothing to do with my way of thinking. In other words, my way of thinking is not causing me to perceive less of those things in my life. It is instead the further turning off of my reward system that makes me perceive none of those things in my life. During those given moments, I can still tell myself that I still have good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration in my life. But they all seem like nothing more than labels (words and phrases) I am telling myself. I am not in the mental state of actually perceiving those said things in my life. Therefore, I would have none of those things in my life during my worst moments of anhedonia. That even goes for depression which I think is even worse and turns off the reward system even further. Therefore, my idea here is that the moral (personally created) version of good, bad, love, joy, happiness, pain, sadness, rage, suffering, despair, etc. is nothing more than labels. It does not actually give us those said things. Our reward system is what gives us the former terms and our unpleasant feelings/emotions are what give us the latter terms of pain, sadness, rage, suffering, despair, etc. Therefore, those terms are actual mental states like sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, etc. They are not our thinking alone. They do not come through personally defining those terms through our thoughts alone. So if you were blind and deaf and you still thought to yourself that you have sight and hearing, then that would obviously not give you sight and hearing. They would be nothing more than just the labels sight and hearing. Now if I were to completely and utterly turn off all reward system function in your brain, then I am more than curious as to what you would report back to me. Would you really say to me that something seems very strange to you and that any good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration you think you still have in your life is now nothing more than just labels to you? Or would you actually think you still have those things? If you still think you have those things, then do you really have those things? Or are you just fooling yourself here and that you are just not paying enough attention to your mental experiences here like I have? If you are actually fooling yourself, then my idea would be correct here. So the less and less reward system function we have, the more good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration we lose and the more they seem like nothing more than labels. But on the other side of the spectrum, having full healthy function of our reward system gives us the mental state of heightened good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration. Our biological sense of reward (good moods) are the heightened state of good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration. It is a non-moral feeling/emotional (mood) version of good. This is the only version of good that can give our lives good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration according to my idea here. But whether that is really true or not relies on scientific experiments to see if there can be any new supporting evidence for my idea. I am now going to explain the experiment below: Experiment I have actually come up with an experiment to be tested. You can tell me if it is flawed or not: We need to find out if all good thoughts (thoughts of having good meaning in our lives) are always optimistic experiences for us. We would also need to find out if all optimistic experiences are rewarding experiences (our pleasant emotions). So we need to find out if all good thoughts send the pleasure signal to our brains to give us the experience of pleasant emotions. If they do, then we would know that these are the types of thoughts that send the pleasure signal. From there, we need to find out if all optimistic thoughts send the pleasure signal as well. If they do, then that would say that all good thoughts are optimistic thoughts. From there, we need to find out if all optimistic experiences for us as human beings are always rewarding experiences (our pleasant emotions). We need to find out what optimism is since us having good meaning in our lives is always something optimistic for us. We need to find out if optimism is joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation. From there, we need to find out if joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation are always rewarding experiences for us. How we would do that would be to see if joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation are the only urges a human being has to live life. So we would have to see if our pleasant feelings/emotions are the only urges we have and if our thoughts alone do not give us urges, but do nothing more than make decisions and choices. From there, we would also find out that our unpleasant feelings/emotions are also urges as well. So we would have to see if joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation are our pleasant feelings/emotions or are our unpleasant feelings/emotions. We know how people act when they are optimistic. They show acts, tones, and expressions that are gleeful and such. We know how people act when they are pessimistic. They show acts, tones, and expressions that are somber and such. So I think it would be quite obvious here that our optimism can only be our pleasant feelings/emotions while it can only be our pessimism that would be our unpleasant feelings/emotions. In conclusion, I want others to share their ideas as well. I want others to tell me what type of experiment I would need to perform to demonstrate/falsify my idea.
Even if it were practically possible, it would not be ethical to chemically or otherwise turn off the signals that produce pleasure in a person's brain. I would hesitate to equate pleasure with love, since optimism about the imminent demise of one's enemies can also be pleasureable. Pessimism can also be pleasant for similar reasons. On a personal level, is there any treatment available for your condition?
Then that would be a different form of pleasure then. There are many different types of pleasure. We have love, joy, inspiration, as well as what you said with the optimism about the demise of an enemy. Also, according to my theory, if pessimism was pleasant to you, then you would be having optimism from your pessimism. The pessimism would still remain unpleasant while optimism always remains pleasant. As for treatment, I have to address these phobias somehow since they were the cause of my anhedonia.
