We are nothing for suffering (my story)

[ShaMan]

I disagree with your entire premise - whatever it is.

[MattMVS7]

Also, there are innocent people with nice happy lives with little to no struggles who help others and achieve great things in their lives just as good as (and even better) than those people who do through their suffering and despair. Therefore, suffering and despair is truly pointless and all that matters is being happy in life and giving others pleasure through your own pleasure.

[ShaMan]

Therefore, suffering and despair is truly pointless and all that matters is being happy in life.

Do you have compassion? If so, did suffering play a part in obtaining it?

Have you known happiness? If so, has despair been its counterpart?

[Jenny A]

Also, there are innocent people with nice happy lives with little to no struggles who help others and achieve great things in their lives just as good as (and even better) than those people who do through their suffering and despair. Therefore, suffering and despair is truly pointless and all that matters is being happy in life and giving others pleasure through your own pleasure.

Ahh, I remember this discussion. It was pointless and caused me despair.

[Elskidor]

That would have been epic if it was done in all caps!

[Whateverist]

Of course we would all have gone deaf.

---

Now just in case no one wants to read my opening post because it is too long, I have provided here in this post a brief summary of my story. Also, there are people who live their entire lives with depression or anhedonia and, based on my story as well as the summary I will now present, these are the most inferior people of all. Even I am inferior for having anhedonia and depression myself and I would be the most inferior person if I could never fully recover from it.

Story Summary: Who you are as a person is nothing compared to your feelings of pleasure. Pleasure is superior to emotionless robots and people who don't have pleasure due to either depression or anhedonia (emotional numbness) are the equivalent to emotionless robots. You would still be nothing more than the equivalent to an inferior biological robot regardless of how much others value you, what great things you do in life, and how much you help others if you lived a life without pleasure. Even if who you are as a person does have human value and is not something "robotic," you would still be an utterly inferior human being because pleasure is the greatest thing about you in life and to lose it would make you inferior. So even if you were a psychopath like Hitler who slaughtered many innocent people, as long as you have pleasure, that would make you the better person. You would even be far better than a depressed and emotionally numb innocent person who instead helped many people around the world. So this is the reason why people with nice happy lives are the better people.

I believe in hedonism and hedonism states that pleasure is the only greatest thing in life. Everything else in life is nothing compared to pleasure. So this is the reason why pleasure is the only greatest thing about you as a person and to lose that would basically make you nothing as a person. My personal experience of pleasure also says to me that it is the greatest thing in life and that nothing else in life or about you as a person ever compares (even if you were a person who values the pleasure of others and lived solely to bring others pleasure). The fact is, you have lost your own pleasure if you had depression or anhedonia and you would still be nothing more than an inferior biological robot even if you instead lived solely to bring others pleasure. Yes, the pleasure of others matters just as greatly as your own. But you would still be nothing as a person without your own pleasure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism

There you go. Much better.

Now I can tell you I completely disagree with you. I personally do not pander to pleasure or happiness. They come or they don't on their own schedule.

Many people experience depression in their life and while you're in it it can be pretty strikingly awful. You can feel dull, socially stupid and beyond the reach of all stimulation.

But did you ever hear of the Law of Inverse Consequences? I think, like me, you have narcissistic tendencies. To have your opinion of yourself lowered because of depression can be pretty devastating for folks like us. But really, our self-evaluations are worthless, both when we are full of our selves and when we feel worthless. The trick is to stop evaluating yourself. Screw it.

My advice to you is to accept that you are much less than you used to think you were and probably always will be. Meh. Get on with it and leave your evaluation to your biographers if any there be.

[RobbyPants]

Does Mozart Link now have a sock?

Yes. He posted this here and at TTA.

[MattMVS7]

Story Summary (Final Part): There are people who live their entire lives with depression and/or anhedonia and can never get better or fully recover (they can never overcome their suffering). Based on my reasonings in my opening post, these would be the most inferior people of all. Even I am having depression and severe chronic anhedonia and I would be inferior and I would be the most inferior person if I could never get better or fully recover. Also, there are innocent people with nice happy lives with little to no struggles who help others suffering and achieve great things in their lives just as good as (and even better) than those people who do through their suffering and despair. Therefore, suffering and despair is truly pointless and all that matters is being happy in life and giving others pleasure through your own pleasure and through your nice happy life free of suffering.

Some people obtain pleasure from suffering (whether it be valuing suffering or even recieving relief from suffering). But, once again, you can achieve much more pleasure and greater feelings of pleasure having lived a nice happy life of no suffering. Now if pleasure wasn't all that important in life, then why do so many people who have anhedonia and depression feel suicidal and that their lives are basically worthless without feelings of pleasure?

I believe in evolution and that our sole purpose is to survive. In other words, the phrase "survival of the fittest" is our motto in life and is our only purpose in living. Those with anhedonia and depression as well as other major problems are the most unfit for survival (the weakest) while those with nice happy lives are the most fit for survival (the strongest) and that is what makes these happy people superior. We are nothing special or strong for having suffered and for moving forward in life despite our suffering because we would still be unfit for survival (weak). However, pleasure is the only strength in life and all other aspects of you as a human being (your thoughts, knowledge, and attitude in moving forward in life), these are not strengths at all. They are nothing more than biological robotic functions that a highly intelligent and well-designed biological robot from the future that has no ability to love or experience pleasure would possess. So people with anhedonia and depression would still be nothing more than inferior biological robots even with the attitude of moving forward in life, in helping others, and in doing great things in their lives.

People struggling with depression or anhedonia might think they are the better people for gaining knowledge and learning how to treat and recover from it. But innocent and caring people with nice happy lives can even learn how to recover from depression and help others if they learn and study about it and help others through their knowledge. Again, knowing things does not make you a better person since knowledge is nothing but biological robotic functioning.

In conclusion, I would like to say that a true emotionally sensitive human being would have both immense value towards his/her own feelings of pleasure as well as the pleasure of others. To instead have no value towards pleasure in general at all (both yours and others) and instead find value in other things in life (or even value towards life itself for that matter), you would truly be the lesser person who has no part in the title of an "emotionally sensitive human being" whatsoever. You would not only demean yourself for abandoning the greatest aspect of you as a person (which is your pleasure), but you would also be demeaning of others by, for example, telling other people to abandon their value of pleasure in general and to find greater thing in life as well as to tell these people to tell others this same message. This would be truly offensive and demeaning of someone with depression or anhedonia who is on the brink of suicide who feels his/her life is basically no longer worth living without his/her pleasure.

But despite the fact that Hitler, I think, has only half the title of "emotionally sensitive" for having value towards his own feelings o pleasure in killing innocent people, he is still the better person for having pleasure in his life. So even if you didn't have this title at all, you would still be the better person for having pleasure because how much the title of "emotionally sensitive" defines your greatness as a human being is little compared to the level of greatness that is defined by pleasure.

You might be sensitive towards other things in life if you didn't have the title "emotionally sensitive" at all, but pleasure is the only greatest thing (based on all m arguments made here) and to instead find value in other things in life makes you the lesser person. However, if I am somehow wrong about pleasure being the greatest thing in life (which I don't think I am), then any positive attitudes we use to get us through in life all have equal value. In other words, one is not superior or inferior to the other. So if you were someone suffering from anhedonia or depression and had the positive attitude in finding something greater in life than pleasure in general, the fact is, those things wouldn't have greater value than pleasure because your positive attitude is neither better nor worse than the positive attitude of someone who does find that pleasure is the only greatest thing that matters in life. Therefore, you did not find anything greater in your life through your suffering of depression or anhedonia (which would be the "finding of the true and greater value in life" mindset which would be false). You would have suffered for nothing just to have value towards something else in life which already has the exact same value as pleasure.

Even if you did find more things in life of greater value and such through your suffering as opposed to a nice happy life that you might of lived before, the fact is, you can find just as much things (and even more) to be of greater value I life through pure pleasure alone and living a life of no suffering because there are innocent and caring people with nice happy lives free of major struggles who achieve this. There are people who create dark, gothic and tragic works of art through their suffering. But you can create these types of art through pure pleasure alone (the pleasure of dark, tragic, and gothic things) and through a life free of struggles. Someone who knows what it's like to suffer might look at such a work of art and say: "How tragic and what despair this piece has." But a person who does not know what it's like to suffer and simply just receives pleasure might look at such a work of art and say: "How awesome and hardcore!" But based on everything I said in my writing here, suffering is pointless in the first place. Therefore, knowing what it's like to suffer is also pointless and we should all just live awesome and hardcore lives of pure pleasure and no suffering. Even without knowing what suffering is in the first place and if there was no such thing as suffering, we can still create dark, gothic, and tragic works of art through pure innovation alone (as artists are creative and can create things that don't exist in the real world). We can create these works art through pure pleasure alone and share them to other non-suffering people who will also receive pleasure from them. They can obtain pleasure just as good (and even better) from these works of art than people who do knowing what it's like to suffer and through witnessing such a work of art through their knowledge and experience of suffering.

Finally, some people would get bored or go insane living a life of pure pleasure with no suffering. But that all depends on who you are as a person. If you are someone who finds value in suffering, then it would be likely that you would get bored or go insane living a life of pure pleasure with no suffering. But if you are someone like me who instead feels empowered and immense value towards living a life of pure pleasure with no suffering, then these types of people will never get bored or go insane or find their lives to be of less value if they lived such a life of pure pleasure with no suffering.

[FatAndFaithless]

[Blackrook]

My belief in God is what kept me going in my darkest hours, when everything seemed hopeless. I could not imagine suffering through that hopelessness AND believing there was no God. Unlike you, I do not believe people to be superior to each other based on mental health. That concept seems a bit Darwinian to me. All of us are God's children, and he loves each of us more than we have the capacity to imagine.