The problem is intricate because one of the evolutionary strengths/expertises of human beings that have allowed us to reproduce successfully (counteracting many weaknesses) is precisely the possibility/capacity to anticipate scenarios with the assistance/intervention of emotion. This assistance/intervention is not how we solely can or should function, but it is how we have done so far.
But we naturalise -thus quickly forget- that compared to other species we can relax much more by anticipating, planning and creating more predictable and safer scenarios (civilisation with its rules, the agreements to divide labour to obtain sustenance, the resulting leisure time, the artistic production, etc., are products of that).
However, those millions of years of successful evolution condensed in our “soft” greatly obstruct the organism to experience how without those remaining levels of anxiety, aggression, love, fear, etc., it can still secure it own sustenance, interact correctly with others, act safely, plan, care for others, etc. That is, it’s difficult to be able to experience those same behaviours/achievements without the assistance/intervention of emotion (i.e. during PCEs). More so the additional benefits that outside of a PCE cannot even be envisaged.
On the other hand, our own history since birth shows us that those fears, aggressions, preventions, love, etc., have proved sufficiently successful in providing us with sustenance, etc., despite the associated suffering.
A bird cannot afford to stop constantly looking everywhere for food and danger. If the bird’s neck hurts, it will at best think: “This is a necessary condition for staying alive; it is the price to pay for an evolutionary programme that keeps me alive”. It is almost inevitable then that we end up seeing our positive and negative feelings as a necessary condition to survive, as a price to pay.
Not only is Actual Freedom counter-intuitive: it’s actually counter-evolutionary from the feeling being perspective, as it proposes to change/delete a central part of that succesfull software and make an evolutionary mutation that the current software resists. And it resist the change generating fear, avoidance, imagining the failures/problems that the new software could suffer in known scenarios! But those scenarios/problems are imagined by the very software that utilises the emotions to function and project! At the same time that we dislike the suffering that the current soft generates…
So, @Kub933, I think this state of affairs make more understandable facts like this one you described in your diary:
Indeed.