A Perfect World?
Many people in the world are unhappy - IE they have low levels of dopamine / other neurotransmitters. I think this sub-optimal situation is entirely avoidable if we had governments that knew their arses from their elbows.
I believe I would vote for a political party who had a simple manifesto of "maximising the population’s happiness levels" - through pharmaceutical means.
More specifically, our dopamine levels decrease as we age which is hardly ideal - it is best to save the best till last - as when one eats a pizza, the calorie rich middle bit is consumed last - so a refinement to the manifesto would be to ensure that dopamine levels are increased constantly with advancing age - to compensate for some of the negative aspects of ageing.
I feel we could also all do without the pain of death hanging over heads like the sword of Damocles. If the levels of pain relief chemicals in our bodies were raised as the risk of our death increases, painful deaths could be avoided and the fear of death alleviated.
Imagine a system where you go to the chemists on a Monday morning and pick up your weekly doses of drugs / neurotransmitters. It is a personalised dose - personalised to your age, sex and any pre-existing health conditions you have. Viraga and steroids would be provided for sexual health, stimulants for work. There is a national database to manage all this.
Under this system a good proportion of the the pharmaceutical industry would be dedicated to developing the currently frowned upon ‘recreational drugs’ - these drugs could become so much safer and efficacious with suitable levels of investment in research - we currently make no investment at all in this area. The drugs could be so safe and efficacious we could use them all the time (with a suitable rotation policy - which the personalised does scheme would take care of automatically).
I believe I would vote for a political party who had a simple manifesto of "maximising the population’s happiness levels" - through pharmaceutical means.
More specifically, our dopamine levels decrease as we age which is hardly ideal - it is best to save the best till last - as when one eats a pizza, the calorie rich middle bit is consumed last - so a refinement to the manifesto would be to ensure that dopamine levels are increased constantly with advancing age - to compensate for some of the negative aspects of ageing.
I feel we could also all do without the pain of death hanging over heads like the sword of Damocles. If the levels of pain relief chemicals in our bodies were raised as the risk of our death increases, painful deaths could be avoided and the fear of death alleviated.
Imagine a system where you go to the chemists on a Monday morning and pick up your weekly doses of drugs / neurotransmitters. It is a personalised dose - personalised to your age, sex and any pre-existing health conditions you have. Viraga and steroids would be provided for sexual health, stimulants for work. There is a national database to manage all this.
Under this system a good proportion of the the pharmaceutical industry would be dedicated to developing the currently frowned upon ‘recreational drugs’ - these drugs could become so much safer and efficacious with suitable levels of investment in research - we currently make no investment at all in this area. The drugs could be so safe and efficacious we could use them all the time (with a suitable rotation policy - which the personalised does scheme would take care of automatically).
Comments (11)
Every day the risk of you dying increases. Is this painful?
I think the fear of the pain of death is greater than the fear of death itself. If the first could be alleviated through regular dosages pain killers - used in a rotational manner to avoid tolerance increases - and increased in dosage as your risk of death increases - then we would all have happier lives.
Nope. That is not what troubles people. Fear of death makes people put up with the pain.
You can jump off a very high building you wont feel a thing.
Falling from a height to death is a somewhat painful and somewhat prolonged experience I'm afraid. See here for the gruesome details:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1crhni/suicide_pain_and_effectiveness/
Falling from a height to death is a somewhat painful and somewhat prolonged experience I'm afraid. See here for the gruesome details:[/quote]
How long do you think you might suffer after you jump off a skyscraper?
Saying happiness only has to do with hormone level is proven by science to be false.
The truth is, we don't know what really makes us lastingly happy. Seeing suffering as a problem is wrong, it's not a problem, it's a condition, we don't need to fix it, we need to understand it.
Many scientists today believe that happiness has to do with more than just the brain, as unbelievable as that sounds.
Suffering isn't a problem, it's a condition that needs to be understood, not fixed. It's not wrong to suffer, it's not ideal, but it's not wrong.
People draw more happiness from religions, the majority of the population, than people find in drugs and brain treating medication, that's just the reality.
Empire State building? 5 minutes?
You don't like discussing death?
I like it. It is the only certainty we have in life.
I acknowledge that if you throw yourself off a high building and are lucky/skilful enough to land head first, then maybe death takes less than 5 minutes - but it still takes time and is still painful.
I don't generally like to talk about such things, but your brain, scattered on the pavement, is still alive, even if it is in fragments. One (or more?) fragment would contain your self awareness and it would be some time before oxygen starvation kills that fragment. Please don't throw yourself off a building.
I think OP is suggesting a government program making that more available to everyone, and also more research into making more and better of it. And to that extent I agree, though the specifics of the program he proposes are questionable.
Quoting Seagully
If suffering isn't a problem, then what is? Every other problem is problematic because of the suffering that it inflicts.
Quoting Seagully
That sounds like you're conflating something that's bad for you with something that it is bad to do. Someone was making a similar mistake in an earlier thread about Stoicism. Saying "it would be good to alleviate people's suffering" isn't saying "it's bad of those people to suffer, they should stop doing that". In the Stoicism thread, it was confusing "you don't have to feel bad about things" (it's okay to choose not to, if you can) with "you have to not feel bad about things" (you're doing wrong by feeling bad about them, stop it).