"Hi. How are you today?"
"I've been better - I feel a little bit down."
I envisage shades of mood arranged, according to the convention embodied in the second quote-marked sentence, on a simple (vertical) number line analogous to a Likert scale.
.
.
.
+5 This level of joy is seldom experienced by anyone, even once.
+4 I'm so happy that I can barely concentrate on anything else.
+3 Life is good. I smile at strangers.
+2 For no discernible reason, I feel pretty good.
+1 I've certainly had worse days.
0 I don't feel anything at all. I'm either neutral, or numb.
-1 I'm a little bit down.
-2 There's a moderate sadness that I can't shift.
-3 It is obvious to a casual observer that I am suffering.
-4 I am broken to the extent that I struggle to get out of bed.
-5 This could well be the end of my life.
.
.
.
.
.
+5 This level of joy is seldom experienced by anyone, even once.
+4 I'm so happy that I can barely concentrate on anything else.
+3 Life is good. I smile at strangers.
+2 For no discernible reason, I feel pretty good.
+1 I've certainly had worse days.
0 I don't feel anything at all. I'm either neutral, or numb.
-1 I'm a little bit down.
-2 There's a moderate sadness that I can't shift.
-3 It is obvious to a casual observer that I am suffering.
-4 I am broken to the extent that I struggle to get out of bed.
-5 This could well be the end of my life.
.
.
.
Expressed simply, then, 'positive' moods align themselves with positive numbers, and depressed moods co-incide with negative numbers - this we see from terminology such as 'feeling upbeat', and 'on cloud nine' as opposed to 'hitting rock-bottom', and 'my mood plummeted.'
I contend that most people are more able to deal with positive numbers than negative ones. That is, positive numbers are more natural. In the most intuitive manner of speaking, negative numbers refer to (a lack of) objects which are not graspable by the senses. Consider the classic (and stereotypical) case of a caveman with the corpses of two mammoths on which to sustain himself.
He counts backwards thus: I have I and I mammoths = II. When I have eaten a complete mammoth, I have II - I mammoths = I.
When the latter mammoth is also consumed, I am back to where I started, and must go hunting again. Our caveman only being a hypothetical creature, we cannot ask him what happens when he initially has two mammoths, and three are taken away - but some 21st-century humans struggle with the idea of debt, and of being less than nothing, so it doesn't take too great a leap of the imagination to conclude that our caveman might recoil at I and I mammoths - I and I and I mammoths = -1.
(To be continued....)
I contend that most people are more able to deal with positive numbers than negative ones. That is, positive numbers are more natural. In the most intuitive manner of speaking, negative numbers refer to (a lack of) objects which are not graspable by the senses. Consider the classic (and stereotypical) case of a caveman with the corpses of two mammoths on which to sustain himself.
He counts backwards thus: I have I and I mammoths = II. When I have eaten a complete mammoth, I have II - I mammoths = I.
When the latter mammoth is also consumed, I am back to where I started, and must go hunting again. Our caveman only being a hypothetical creature, we cannot ask him what happens when he initially has two mammoths, and three are taken away - but some 21st-century humans struggle with the idea of debt, and of being less than nothing, so it doesn't take too great a leap of the imagination to conclude that our caveman might recoil at I and I mammoths - I and I and I mammoths = -1.
(To be continued....)
