There is a specific emotion which can be induced by some types of trailer, classical and religious music, meditation, long distance running, psychedelics, natural beauty, some types of art and thinking about certain abstract topics (especially consciousness, theoretical physics, pure maths, meta-ethics, economics) - an emotion that might be described as ‘cosmic sadness’, ‘intense euphoria’ or ‘being profoundly moved’.
It is rational for a hedonist to seek to experience this emotion even though experiencing it often causes irrational beliefs, because it is the most pleasurable of all emotions. The emotion is more easily triggered following a period of low mood and is subsequently often followed by a period of improved mood—the popular fallacy that ‘suffering is ultimately a good thing’ may occur because people notice a pleasurable emotion happening after suffering has occurred.
Until late adolescence I referred to this emotion as ‘a spiritual experience’ and used it as justification for cranky beliefs—it wasn’t until after I stumbled across HPMOR that I learnt to experience this emotion whilst maintaining the belief that the emotion had entirely natural causes.
There is a specific emotion which can be induced by some types of trailer, classical and religious music, meditation, long distance running, psychedelics, natural beauty, some types of art and thinking about certain abstract topics (especially consciousness, theoretical physics, pure maths, meta-ethics, economics) - an emotion that might be described as ‘cosmic sadness’, ‘intense euphoria’ or ‘being profoundly moved’.
It is rational for a hedonist to seek to experience this emotion even though experiencing it often causes irrational beliefs, because it is the most pleasurable of all emotions. The emotion is more easily triggered following a period of low mood and is subsequently often followed by a period of improved mood—the popular fallacy that ‘suffering is ultimately a good thing’ may occur because people notice a pleasurable emotion happening after suffering has occurred.
Until late adolescence I referred to this emotion as ‘a spiritual experience’ and used it as justification for cranky beliefs—it wasn’t until after I stumbled across HPMOR that I learnt to experience this emotion whilst maintaining the belief that the emotion had entirely natural causes.