I’ve been meaning to link to David Pearce’s manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative for some time now.
I have not had the time to really read this online book closely (in fact I strongly disagree with some parts that I have closely read), but regardless of how realistic or off-the-wall Pearce’s argument is, he highlights the sort of things that will be possible sooner than later and which society and individuals are going to have a difficult time wrapping their heads around.
Pearce argues that it will soon be both technically feasible as well as morally good to use genetic engineering to eliminate psychological suffering. He maintains that psychological suffering is simply a lousy (for individuals at least) byproduct of evolution,
Darwinian evolution has powerfully favoured the growth of ever more diverse, excruciating, but also more adaptive varieties of psychophysical pain. Its sheer nastiness effectively spurs and punishes the living vehicles of genetic replicators. Sadness, anxiety and malaise are frequently good for our genes; they’re just psychologically bad for us.
So, once we have the technology, why not rewire human physiology to eliminate psychological suffering? Well, one answer might be that maybe we don’t really want to be happy all the time. After all, some psychological pain helps us realize the negative consequences of our actions and encourages growth and development (imagine if young children were incapable of feeling psychologically painful remorse for harming living things, for example). There are also a lot of issues over just what sort of being a person who was unable to feel psychological pain would be.
But if the current market for legal and illegal mood-enhancing drugs are any indication, there would likely be a vast market for something that even came close to what Pearce is proposing.