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Life is propagated by two main clusters of emotions. (*Yes I know it's more like a spectrum but this is the poor simplification I am using for now)

The "good" feelings that we move towards, and the "bad" feelings that we move away from. (then there's the neutral ones we hang around in sometimes but that's for another time).

If you spend your life always running from the bad ones and always running towards the good ones, you may have a good life. You may have a life that just gets lucky and has more good than bad. Alternatively you may have hard things to do that involve feeling uncomfortable for short or long periods of time. If you are forever running away from the bad emotions, and forever addicted to running towards the good emotions, you are severely limited in your agency compared to if you have even a little bit of freedom to do something like, "avoid short term rewards", or "put up with scary moments" on the way to other experiences. (see also The Trauma model of mental health)

The carnival ride example

Charlie the five year old goes on a carnival ride. Charlie the five year old throws up. Charlie the five year old learns that carnival rides make you feel terrible.

In (one of many) healthy worlds: When charlie turns ten, his friends ask him to go to the carnival again. Charlie realises that the carnival ride might be different now, he fuels himself with a bit of peer pressure and he runs a new experiment, pushing back on the terrible feeling that he would usually avoid and rewrites his inclination to avoid terrible things. Consequently charlie relearns that a carnival ride is only sometimes terrible and with the support of friends it can be good.

In (one of many) unhealthy worlds: When charlie turns ten, his friends ask him to go to the carnival again. Charlie remembers that the carnival rides feel terrible and decides not to go to the carnival. This reinforces the terrible feeling. Charlie feels entirely justified in avoiding a terrible thing, his friends don't really care either way and life goes on. Charlie keeping a tiny reinforced experience that he should avoid terrible things.

Objectively speaking, a carnival ride is not terrible or good. Subjectively, the feelings we attach to such experiences are what ...

Daniele Maccari

Daniele Maccari