Value judgments, tones, and expressions

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Omniverse
Posts: 13
Joined: September 25th, 2017, 3:40 pm

Value judgments, tones, and expressions

Post by Omniverse »

There are two forms of value judgments. The first type comes about through our way of thinking. For example, a person could think to himself that it is a great day today. This would be a good value judgment since the person is thinking of the day being good.

A person could also think that something is horrible. These value judgments are vital because they help us make wise decisions regardless of how we feel. If you felt a positive emotion from doing drugs, then you could make the value judgment that the drugs are horrible since they would do damage to your health in the long run. From there, you could then make the wise decision to get off those drugs.

The 2nd type of value judgments would be the emotional value judgments. If you felt a positive emotion, then that is always a good value judgment. If you felt a negative emotion, then that is always a bad value judgment. These emotional value judgments are not trustworthy. This is because, if you solely live your life by these types of value judgments, then you would end up finding yourself doing reckless things that you would regret.

But even so, we need our positive emotions. Now, I'm not sure if this argument I am going to make is flawed, but I will do my best. There is good, bad, and then there is neither good nor bad (neutral). Our positive emotions would be the objectively good value judgment and our negative emotions would be the objectively bad value judgment. Having no emotions at all would be an objectively neutral value judgment.

This means we cannot make value judgments without our emotions. So, if you felt nothing but a positive emotion from harming someone and you thought that it was a bad thing to do this, then we would not define this as a bad value judgment. Instead, we would define it as the thought of ceasing harm to an individual. This means that we can still make wise decisions anyway without emotions or without the respective emotion since they are still vital choices to make. But it can only be our emotions that allow us to judge situations as good, worthwhile, or bad.

But continuing on here. When someone feels a very profound emotion such as a feeling of love, you will notice how this person displays acts, tones, and expressions that reflect this feeling. They will display profoundly loving acts, tones, and expressions. This means that there is an inner light there that the person's actions reflect. He is experiencing the good emotional value judgment from the higher heavens, so to speak, and he is acting out on that force of inner light. This same idea would apply to someone who feels very excited to go to the carnival. He would display excited expressions.

But what about someone who is completely miserable and displays positive expressions and someone who feels nothing but positive emotions and displays negative expressions? These would actually be misleading expressions. They are forced expressions and do not reflect the inner light and darkness. With the miserable person, he has no inner light, but is still choosing to display expressions of the light. It's like someone who is going to die in the next few minutes, but displays expressions as though he is going to live a full life. These expressions do not reflect the truth.

Since our positive emotions are the light (objectively positive and good) and our negative emotions being the darkness (objectively negative and bad), then a life without emotions would be objectively neutral. Your inner self would be neutral with neither light nor darkness. This means that positive expressions go with positive emotions, negative expressions go with negative emotions, while neutral expressions (i.e. apathy) go with having no emotions. So, if you were someone who struggled with misery, then living your life and pursuing any artistic endeavor as though it is something positive and beautiful would, therefore, be delusional. It would be a deluded standard of living that does not reflect the inner darkness you have.
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Atreyu
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Joined: June 17th, 2014, 3:11 am
Favorite Philosopher: P.D. Ouspensky
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Re: Value judgments, tones, and expressions

Post by Atreyu »

It sounds like the reasonable conclusion to all that you've said is basically that one should not struggle against negative emotion in himself, but rather should just express his feelings of negativity.

Is that correct?
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