I've already had this discussion with you. All value is relative because it's meaningless to try and apply objectivity. You admitted it yourself. — Edward

No, I didn't. Go back and read.

No, they inform our thoughts, I would say.

You admit! (in relation to a certain other discussion)
— Edward

I suppose.

Wtf is this

The following is from the other thread, maybe it adds clarity to my remark above. You decide.

Does it follow that morality is relative? Sure. Does it also follow that conflicting statements about what's good/bad can be true as a result? Surely not.

"Good according to your morality", isn't about being good. It's about what you think/believe is good. It's the difference between being called "good" and being so, and we can most certainly be mistaken in that regard. — creativesoul

I buy this. It makes sense, and makes sense of. It has the virtue of focus. It affirms the idea of the good, while allowing that one good might not apply to all possible places, times, circumstances. But that none of us live in "all possible places, times, circumstances." We all live in a here-and-now, within which relativity does not apply. How big is our here-and-now with respect to relativity? Where is the boundary on this side of which is right and wrong and the good; and on the other it's all relative? I think that depends on the good in question, and the age, maturity, experience, and circumstance of those asking.

And "focus" because focus implies a refined view for a reason, which adjustment is sought and maintained for clarity, the clarity the result of the focus, lost when the focus is knocked out of adjustment - out of focus. — timw

(I expect you know that it appears that above you gave me credit for a quote not mine.)

What? That's your actual quote.

My issue is with a calm focused mood. I think, with philosophy this can too easily be a depressed mood. It's life affirming to be riled up and not entirely thought out.

Thinking is not the opposite of 'being riled up'. My best moments of 'being riled up' in a positive, profoundly joyful and excited way have come through philosophical insights, those eureka , light bulb moments.
What is life affirming is what produces the experience of pure creativity, the joy of discovery. If "being 'thought out' is depressing it is because this 'thinking out' not only lacks discovery , but causes one to fall away from one's sense of wonder and self-renewal. I would call this this the polar opposite of the spirit and intent of philosophy (or else I'd call it analytic philosophy, which always depresses me).

I would bet you that when Kant or Descartes or Aristotle came upon their essential insights, it represented an ecstatic highlight of their life, just as when Einstein stumbled upon e=mc2. Unfortunately , many who write philosophy, have little new insight to offer, so for them it may very become a depressing 'thinking out' of someone else's insights. If one finds doing philosophy depressing, I'd suggest that they are doing is not really philosophizing, it's accounting.

How exactly do people claim to obtain fulfillment from creating ones own value? I understand it as a principle but what is an example of self made value and fulfillment? It always seems vague. — Edward

Its not a s though some create their own value and others don't. We have no choice but to create values to the same extent that we create interpretations , perspectives, theories of our world. We are sense-making interpretative beings. It's less of a choice than that we always already find ourselves relating to our world via an explanatory scheme of one sort or another. Our choice isn't whether to have a worldview or not, its how adaptively we are able to continually adjust our perspectives to a constantly changing world.
Have you read Thomas Kuhn? He asserted that science changes by revolutions in scientific worldviews(paradigms).. Nietzsche would argue that a paradigm is also a value system. So when we move from one worldview to another we are changing our values.Cognitive therapy works by guided people toward adaptively modifying their outlooks . This is an example of attaining fulfillment through transforming our value systems. The goal is to move more and more effectively, which means creatively, through new experience.

It was this line specifically that made little sense to me not the use of the term “arousal”:

resulting in low arousal of a high arousal brain. — Edward

Perhaps you could reiterate and explain more fully what you mean by “low”/“high” arousal in the brain. So please rewrite and give explanation of these terms if you can.

Generally speaking rationality is NOT separate from emotional response. We need an emotional intent in order to apply rational thought. Need gives us the means to act rationally whilst want is often confused with need due to how inaccurate our predictions of the furture are. Absurdism, to me, appears to be more about the application of worded thought as if it is a formulaic pattern build upon atomised parts - this simply isn’t proven/provable. We always end up hedging our bets to some degree or another.

How does a person motivate themselves to protest against animal cruelty when the initial instinctive emotional reaction subsides and they're acting upon rationality, but rationally they know ethics to be absurd/relative/meaningless without emotional conviction. — Edward

I think the answer is that rationality is not inconsistent with emotion. As Hume observed, reason is the servant of the passions, not the other way around.

The goal of mindfulness is not to destroy all emotion, but to escape from overpowering, harmful emotion. Most emotions are not like that, so there is no point in employing mindfulness or other techniques to minimise them.

That ethics might seem absurd without emotional conviction is an empty theorem, since we will never lack emotional conviction. Even the Buddha had emotional conviction.