The Hedonistic Imperative

[Pelerus]

0. Introduction.

Happiness is an illusion; only suffering is real.
(Voltaire)

0.1 The Naturalisation of Heaven.

This manifesto combines far-fetched utopian advocacy with cold-headed scientific prediction. The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how nanotechnology and genetic engineering will eliminate aversive experience from the living world. Over the next thousand years or so, the biological substrates of suffering will be eradicated completely. "Physical" and "mental" pain alike are destined to disappear into evolutionary history. The biochemistry of everyday discontents will be genetically phased out too. Malaise will be replaced by the biochemistry of bliss. Matter and energy will be sculpted into life-loving super-beings animated by gradients of well-being. The states of mind of our descendants are likely to be incomprehensibly diverse by comparison with today. Yet all will share at least one common feature: a sublime and all-pervasive happiness.

This feeling of absolute well-being will surpass anything contemporary human neurochemistry can imagine, let alone sustain. The story gets better. Post-human states of magical joy will be biologically refined, multiplied and intensified indefinitely. Notions of what now passes for tolerably good mental health are likely to be superseded. They will be written off as mood-congruent pathologies of the primordial Darwinian psyche. Such ugly thoughts and feelings will be diagnosed as typical of the tragic lives of emotional primitives from the previous era. In time, the deliberate re-creation of today's state-spectrum of normal waking and dreaming consciousness may be outlawed as cruel and immoral.

Such speculations may currently sound fantastical. Yet the ideas behind this manifesto may one day be regarded as intellectually trite - albeit today morally urgent. For as the genetic revolution in reproductive medicine unfolds, what might once have been the stuff of millennialist fantasy is set to become a scientifically feasible research program. Its adoption or rejection will become, ultimately, a social policy issue. Passively or actively, we will have to choose just how much unpleasantness we wish to create or conserve - if any - in eras to come.

MORE - http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedonist.htm

[Katweezel]

From The Hedonistic Imperative:
... " Sadly, among today's "bipolars" manic exuberance can spin out of control. Euphoria may be accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania"... This guy must have been reading a lot of stuff from... The Zen Zone.

[Xenophon]

hedwebs a fascinating site

[aslan]

Originally Posted by Pelerus

Happiness is an illusion; only suffering is real.
(Voltaire)

If this is true, then it appears better to suffer from illusions, than to live in reality.

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by aslan

If this is true, then it appears better to suffer from illusions, than to live in reality.

"Suffering is Grace." --Adi Da

[sagefr0g]

Quote:
Originally Posted by aslan View Post
If this is true, then it appears better to suffer from illusions, than to live in reality.

Originally Posted by zengrifter

"Suffering is Grace." --Adi Da

innocence trumps them all with a sense of what is important when it gets down to nitty gritty, to you.

[aslan]

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

innocence trumps them all with a sense of what is important when it gets down to nitty gritty, to you.

If my happiness is illusory, alors longue vie à l'illusion!

[Katweezel]

Originally Posted by zengrifter

"Suffering is Grace." --Adi Da

Eckhart Tolle on suffering:

... "Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive. The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize that there is no death - and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego dies. Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating?

Do you want an easy death? Would you rather die without pain, without agony? Then die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as "you"...

[aslan]

Originally Posted by Katweezel

Eckhart Tolle on suffering:

... "Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive. The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize that there is no death - and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego dies. Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating?

Do you want an easy death? Would you rather die without pain, without agony? Then die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as "you"...

I'll never understand this ego dying stuff that you and zg are always talking about. If you mean self-denial, or being other-centric, or not being ego-centric, then I get your drift. We call it dying to self, in Christian parlance, as you know, but I can't help thinking you mean something else, and I will never understand it if you do. Also, we have the sense of God living in us: I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. But if "I/me" no longer exists, then, with all due respect, you can have it. I for one want to enjoy the happiness of the afterlife, not be numbed and absorbed a capite ad calcem into some amorphous "not-I/me."

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by aslan

I for one want to enjoy the happiness of the afterlife, not be numbed and absorbed a capite ad calcem into some amorphous "not-I/me."

The "not me/I" as you call it IS the 'Self'.
The "happiness of the afterlife" is a mythological delusion that may prevent you from reentering deeply
into Reality this life... but not to worry, you've got all eternity to get IT right. zg