Molecular Biology of Paradise

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Mary Anne was queasy, which led roundaboutly to my finding a quote she'd posted in her journal a while back from Greg van Eekhout about oxytocin, a.k.a. "the cuddle hormone." I figured I'd find out more about it; a quick Google led me to The Hedonistic Imperative, a site detailing how to use feel-good chemicals to bring about heaven on Earth:

Try summoning up the most delightful fantasy you can imagine. ... Unfortunately it's quite futile. We run such simulations on legacy wetware. Even the most virile imagination glimpses only a shadow of the biological nirvana awaiting our descendants.

Oh, my—is that a virile imagination, or are you just happy to see me?

They certainly don't think small:

This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Nanotechnology and genetic-engineering allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Post-humans will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.

We've seen that there can be interesting story plots even in utopia. (Pacific Edge, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, etc.) But what about in a utopia in which everyone is perpetually blissed-out? Think of it as a challenge.

7 Responses to “Molecular Biology of Paradise”

  1. Fred

    I actually found the document pretty compelling. I mean, can you really argue with it if you’re a secularist?

    I particularly like the section where all carnivores get “fixed” or eliminated.

  2. ebear

    Hurm.

    “Oh, what brave new world, that has such creatures in it!”

    Maybe it’s just the bad chemicals in my brain, but somewhere back there there’s a little Kirk screaming, “I need my pain! It’s healthy to Get Pissed Off!”

    *g*

  3. Mary Anne

    I agree that it’s sometimes healthy/necessary to get pissed off, but I also know that my life is a lot easier than many of my friends’ lives because I’m basically of a happy disposition; what you might call a sanguine temperament. In the absence of any reasons to the contrary, I’m quite happy. Which doesn’t seem to be true for quite a lot of people. It might be nice to at least offer people the option of adjusting their temperament. And hey — maybe someday I might want to try being a melancholic artist type, the kind who finds misery productive. For like, a day.

  4. David Moles

    Sounds like Iain Banks’ Culture to me.

  5. Shannon

    Well, as someone who has a moral debate with myself over the fact that I drink coffee (yeah, this is likely a tad extreme) – I find the vision of a perpetually drugged world an extreme distopia.

    For me, there is extreme pleasure and enjoyment in thought – constant drugging in some important way means that noone is “really” themselves, and this is very troubling to me (and I’m definitely secular).

    For another – there a pains and discomforts which are good. i.e. heat – burning – pain – sign that hand on stove is not such a good idea….

  6. David Moles

    Quickly gets into some thorny philosophical questions about the self, though, doesn’t it? In some sense we’re already drugged by our own chemistry — adrenalin, endorphins, whatever.

    It all depends on your perspective, I suppose — from an autistic person’s point of view we might all be considered slaves to our amygdalas.

    Anyway, when you get down to it we’re already doing this with Prozac and Halcyon and Zoloft. It’ll be interesting to see what social problems that leads to — interesting and probably unpleasant, but hey, as long as I keep taking my pills I don’t have to worry, right?

  7. Shannon

    I have to add a comment I overheard last night while sitting reading in a cafe.

    The woman next to me, who had been busily writing an essay on Freud (and periodically asking me to watch her laptop while she ducked out to smoke – explaining why I was in the cafe, it was non-smoking), was having a conversation with a friend of hers via cell phone while packing up to leave for the night.

    The conversation went “Why am I being so mean to you, I love you… must be the Ritalin, it makes me mean.”

    Now, there are a number of interesting things here – one, she seemed to be college age; two, between the coffee and the smoking she was taking a few other chemicals as well; and combination of writing about Freud, taking ritalin, and being self-aware enough to note that her conversation was being mean to someone she had no cause to be mean to, struck me as very interesting.

    Anyway, just one anecdotal note about chemicals.

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