Technologically-enhanced Neoprimitive Savage

 

A few days ago, I published the chart at the end of this page here:

BPainFree: Mood Map

The idea simply put is that after attaining the prerequisites, the changeable part of our day to day mood is determined by certain cues.  I think they evolved to help one find his place in a hierarchy and other evolutionary reasons we are generally uninterested in.  Our interest is in having a positive mood, so we want to get positive mood cues.  See if you can navigate the chart and tell me what you think.  It's very simple once you get the hang of it.

 

What I found when I used the mood map on myself is that I have generally little problems with self-esteem as far as self-efficacy or self-worth, that means I generally think I am competent and worthy.  However, on the last 3, environment, philosophy, and work, I found myself greatly lacking.  

 

Being in a bad environment is basically a side effect of living on disability.  The streets here are mean and largely deserted.  The only good thing is that no one lives next to me or across from me, so my little squalid space is fairly peaceful but when I walk up the street and turn left to exercise, some drivers seem to think I'm a new male prostitute, and when I walk down the street to the left, they think I have crack cocaine to sell them so I have to go up the street and turn right and cross Wynnton Rd to 'the other side of the tracks' out of East Wynnton.  There have been two murders in my neighborhood the almost 2 years I've been here, both on my old walking/biking routes.  Anyway, to change that situation would require Jesse Jackson to come down here and get us all together for a revival of some sort or, I could move, which I don't have the funds to do now so I'll have to wait till around February.  So I guess I can start preparing for the move by removing my things from the yard and collecting nicer furniture.

Another thing I struggle with is pessimism.  Try as I might to be an optimist, I am a natural born full-fledged pessimist.  I think it's born from expecting to be able to have faith in man, in people, and being disappointed by our joint, natural stupidity.  So instead, I will try having faith in the truth.  The truth will always be the truth, it will sometimes prevail but whether it prevails or not, it will be the truth.  I guess that's not faith at all, but confidence.  Confidence in 'what is'.

Lastly, I need engaging, meaningful, novel work so I've started a semiautobiographical fiction blog to complement this blog that I will launch soon.  Anyway, that got real personal but that's my take on the mood map I've created.  I went mostly on introspection but it's heavily influenced by evolutionary and social psychology.  Tell me what you think, how to the cues affect your mood?  Are there powerful cue types that I'm missing?

Mood Map

*Prerequisites: Food (healthy diet), shelter, sleep, baseline wealth, and baseline health.

Cue Type	Affect spectrum/feels like (negative)	Affect spectrum/feels like (positive)	Cues (negative)	Cues (positive)
1.  Self-esteem/power	Weak/ fear	Invincible/ confidence	losing	winning
	Incompetent/ fear	Efficacious/ confidence	demonstrating weakness	demonstrating strength
	boredom	flow	Laziness	engagement
			Social cues
	shame	pride	shunning	respect
			Non-confidence	confidence
2.  Self-esteem/value	Unworthy	Worthy	Dislike (from self and others)	Like (from self and others)/ affection
	Unloved	Loved	Revulsion (from self and others)	Affinity* (from self and others)
	Ugly	Attractive	Dislike (from self and others)	Like (from self and others)
			Looking unkempt	Looking good
			Self-neglect	Self-grooming
3.  Environment	Impoverished	Enriched	Squalid	Beautiful
	Disgust	Comfort	Bland	Stimulating
			Poor	Wealthy
			Plain	Decorative
			Unimaginative	Artsy
			Uncomfortable	Comfortable
			Dirty	Clean
			Bad luck	Good luck
4.  Philosophy	Pessimism	Optimism	Bad luck	Good luck
	Heartless universe	Caring universe	Bad luck	Good luck
	Fate	Freewill	Selfishness, brutality	Altruism, charity
	Humans basically bad	Humans basically good	No reward	Rewarding
5.  Activity	Boring	Engaging	Ineffective	Effective
	Meaningless	Meaningful	Old	Novel