ZeldaFan77

Also, this goes for feelings that are bad in of themselves such as rage and sadness. They are just like the opposite of pleasure in that they are bad no matter what and no personal meanings or any good deed or action you do in life will ever make them anything good. It doesn't matter whether you perceive, for example, your depression as being a good thing due to you helping others who also have depression and other problems because the depression in of itself is a bad thing. In other words, any positive meanings you have attributed to your depression are meanings that stand by themselves. They do not become infused with your depression and make your depression something good. Why? Because depression itself is not any thought or meaning whatsoever. It is where the pleasure activity of your brain is shut down. Thoughts and meanings are activity of our brain. So it would make no sense for you to say that your depression in of itself contains positive meaning since, again, depression is the "shutting down" of the pleasure activity of our brains while thoughts and meanings are the activity of completely separate parts of the brain. So it doesn't matter whether your depression made you more empathetic towards others, more intelligent/creative, or anything else because this still does not make your depression itself anything good. The fact is, depression is a bad experience no matter what and nothing can make it anything good. The same thing applies to feelings such as rage and sadness in that the only meanings that are perceived as being good send pleasure signals to the brain while meanings that are perceived as bad send emotional signals that make us feel sad or angry and also depressed. So it would make no sense to say that your sadness, rage, or depression has good meaning or that feelings of pleasure have bad meaning. Meanings, though they do cause us to feel emotions, meanings and our emotions are not one thing and are completely separate functions of our brain.

Now even if you are going to say something such as that, if it weren't for anything else in life to begin with (even pain and despair), that we wouldn't be able to experience pleasure, then what I would have to say about that would be that all those things are still neutral and that suffering is still negative anyway and pleasure itself is still the only good and greatest thing there is in life. You can still experience pleasure even after having gone through no suffering and/or despair in the first place. Even if it was somehow necessary to have suffering and/or despair to begin with in order to have the experience of pleasure (which I doubt), then you would no longer need any suffering and despair in your life anymore. And you can achieve all benefits and achieve great things in life just as good (and even better) under the right circumstances through living a nicer and happier life anyway and you can achieve these things having no suffering and/or despair whatsoever in your life.

Therefore, even everything else in life and even your own attitude is neutral and you are free to harm and take advantage of others as long as it gives you the most pleasure in life. However, I would never harm others despite my own personal beliefs because this is not who I am at all. Also, you are not in the minds of other people anyway and cannot feel their pleasure, pain, and/or despair. So it's only your own pleasure in life that makes your life good and worth living. Not you helping others and giving them pleasure despite your own absence of pleasure. Even meanings that you create regarding others without your ability to experience pleasure such as that "I may have lost my ability to experience pleasure, but at least I have brought others pleasure and helped them out," even that would be a neutral meaning and it is still only your own brain and perspective in life which means that it is only your own pleasure that makes your life good and worth living. Only the pleasure itself from helping others is good as well as the pleasure obtained from other things and nothing else in life is anything good at all. Finally, the only difference between a thought and such that has meaning to us as opposed to one that doesn't (one that is neutral) would just be the fact that with one meaning, you are experiencing emotion while with another you are not. Also, I do not even care if your pleasure is detrimental to you and only brings you and/or others harm or even hinders you and/or anyone else from obtaining more pleasure down the road. Your pleasure is still good in of itself no matter what and everything else in life is nothing in comparison to it. So it's only our emotions and pain/despair themselves that have the meaning of "good" or "bad." As in terms of one thought that has meaning to us as opposed to another that doesn't, the only difference between these two thoughts is that one sends an emotional signal to the brain while the other doesn't--that is all. Different meanings might make you do good or bad deeds, but they are all still the same anyway in that they are all neutral. Even if this knowledge is used to help and benefit our lives and society and/or to even obtain more pleasure, that still does not change the fact that our thoughts, meanings, and knowledge, etc. are all neutral since I have just already explained why that is in terms of science (that they are all the same functioning of the brain that comes up with neutral sounds, images, words, etc. in the first place).

So how much something matters to you and how much value, worth, and beauty it has to you (how good it is to you) all solely depends on your own level of pleasure in life. If you have no pleasure, then life itself as well as everything and everyone will have no value, worth, and beauty whatsoever to you and will not matter to you at all no matter what you think otherwise. If you have little pleasure, then things will only matter little to you. But if you have a lot of pleasure, then things will matter greatly to you and the things and actions that give you the most pleasure would matter the most to you (again, even if it is harming or taking advantage of others). Again, you mattering to others and them having value and worth towards you and viewing you as a beautiful person does NOT give you or your life value, worth, and beauty because, once again, you will be and forever will be in your own mind and it will only be your own pleasure that gives you these things. Other people cannot somehow magically "project" their mindset and their value, worth, and beauty towards you onto you.