The ‘plus (+) theory’ –
Suppose hurting your brother makes you happy. So its a ‘+’. So you hurt him. You become happy. Then suppose someone teaches you how it is wrong to hurt him by giving you a philosophy / a theory, knowing and accepting which gives you a bigger happiness (a bigger ‘+’) than hurting the brother. Then the sign of ‘hurting brother’ would become ‘-‘ (negative) and it can become a ‘+’ only if I attach another ‘-‘ to it which would mean that I give it up / stop it. So I stop hurting him and move towards the bigger ‘+’ of following the philosophy.
At any time, we are either only staying at / maintaining a ‘+’ (this includes converting minuses to pluses) or moving from one ‘+’ to a bigger ‘+’.
Also this shows that ‘unless you get a ‘+’ for something you won’t do it’. We do anything because we think it will make us happy i.e. it maintains the ‘+’ (including converting minuses to pluses) or is a bigger ‘+’ than before.
So, what is happiness? The reason for doing anything. Happiness is – the reason for doing anything. That happiness might just be a mental conceptualisation – pre-action and hence pre-result – and hence might be ‘wrong’ also as an error/mistake in thinking (it is thinking/a thought since its a mental conceptualisation).
The ‘happiness’ mentioned above could be a happiness (the usual usage) or joy or something which saves you from trouble or gives you peace or protects you or whatever……All these are pluses.
The causal precursor to a plus, is a ‘want’.
Experiencing a plus, is ‘liking’.