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Old Sep 22, 2014, 08:24 PM
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Hellion Hellion is offline
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Member Since: Apr 2010
Location: Colorado
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MattMVS7 View Post
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.

Who you are as a person (in this case, being a psychopath like Hitler) is neither inferior nor superior to someone who helps and cares for other people because who you are as a person is nothing more than biological robotic functions and has no value whatsoever (whether positive or negative) compared to pleasure. It's only your amount of pleasure that makes you the better person. So this is the reason why people with nice happy lives are the better people. As for feelings of pleasure that are obtained from eating tasty foods (which I wouldn't even call pleasure at all--just simply a tasty sensation), these types of pleasure have no value and don't make you a better person. It's the other types of pleasure such as love, joy, motivation, empowerment, etc. (the "powerful" and "human-defining" feelings of pleasure), these are what make you the better person.

All of those "greater" feelings of pleasure I just mentioned, they all have equal value. Not having one of them would make you a lesser person. But despite the fact that Hitler has no love, he would still be better than an emotionally numb person who can't feel any form of pleasure whatsoever, but helped many people and gave them pleasure. Also, people with mania are even more superior than people who have a normal full amount of pleasure in life because these people experience pleasure to a degree that is beyond what a normal human being would experience. So a person with manic depression would be superior human beings in their manic state and would be inferior biological robots in their depressed state.

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 there lives are basically worthless without feelings of pleasure?
Not so sure Hitler was really enjoying life and experiencing all that much pleasure...but that is just the impression I get. Also of course pleasure is important in life and not experiencing it or having difficulties experiencing it obviously is going to contribute to feeling suicidal since its part of human needs we aren't designed for constant suffering/misery. Its important but not sure it would be a good measure to base peoples 'worth' on....I'd say it can be an inferior state of mind since it sucks and i function better when it lightens up some though.
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