ALT.SF4M

  Future Happy Pills

   • j********o@***.com
     22/09/1997 00:00:000 UTC

     It seems reasonable that, in the next century, we will be able to
     develop

     "happy pills" that stimulate and maintain a "natural"/organically

     indistinguishable state of happiness and contentment. (As contrasted
     with

     present drugs, such as Prozac, which merely moderate depression, or

     intoxicants, which clumsily produce a brief unnaturally ecstatic state
     with

     a generally commensurate state of depression afterwards). Imagine the

     change in human existence if you could be happy every day (although
     simply

     feeling nothing would be nice for a change!) Not a zombie, but merely

     happy the way naturally happy people seem to be, or the way inately
     unhappy

     people can be for a while if blind chance favors them. Your mood would

     still change with events in your life, and tragedy could make you
     briefly

     miserable, but you'd snap out of it quickly, and your baseline mood
     would

     be cheeful. It's easy to say that happy people are that way because they

     are successful, but on reflection, more likely (at least in adulthood)
     that

     success follows their innate cheerfulness (opposite to the way in which

     failure follows that large fraction of miserable but theoretically

     functional Forumites like foot odor and bad debt). And new-found success

     would reinforce contentment. Personally, I'd kill the lot of you for a

     lifetime supply of such a drug (to invert Toast's (TM) signature
     aphorism,

     "I'd rather be happy than right!" (c)) Imagine all the man-years of

     productive labor created by the widespread use of such drugs; such an

     invention would certainly change the nature of society (perhaps in a way

     only noticeable in particularly thoughtful SF stories, though).

     I don't recall seeing such an idea in fiction (except in dystopic
     terms),

     although I recall similar drugs that suppress fear and expedite grief. I

     think fearless, but not foolhardy, soldiers would be highly effective: I

     don't think they'd be cannon-fodder, as New Trek(TM) has portrayed them
     in

     its two examples, but utterly calm and clear-minded fighters who are

     probably safer without fear than they would be with it, and surely less

     traumatized. As for grief, who needs it? (an interesting psychological

     question, which can hopefully be made moot by pharmacology). And,

     inevitably, there would be the sex pill...

     When I offhandedly mentioned the idea of "happy pills" to Doctor Rob
     (many

     years ago, according to the calender), he reacted with the healthy

     skepticism one would expect from a Forumite, specifically: even if we

     wouldn't all be zombies, surely we'd all be turned into perky
     cheerleaders

     with happy-face wall-paper. Even if so, BFD? Who needs poets when the
     sun

     is shining? Would we become worthless lotus-eaters? Nahh - not if the

     drugs work like normal happiness. Happy workers are productive workers.

     Yes, we'd become less soulful, but I'd say that's the trend of history

     anyway. ("The meaning of science is to make life meaningless. The
     purpose

     of technology is to make life purposeless.") A more technical worrry is

     the depressing thought that no one can be happy all of the time... that
     our

     serotonin receptors, or what have you, will become fatigued, thus
     resulting

     in limitations similar to those of intoxicants. I don't think that this
     is

     the case in basically happy people, so such an organic state should be

     artificially duplicable in basically unhappy people, if with difficulty.

     Besides, it is all too possible to be miserable all the time! (As I
     write

     this, I recall some of the current ideas about serotonin receptors,
     etc.,

     which suggest, in fact, a more productive method to be the stimulated

     growth of more receptor sites which, although technically more
     challenging,

     could result in permanant improvement of mood without drugs).

     Well, it's _something_ to look forward to. I need a drink.

     Gorno

       • f*******e@n*****t.com
         22/09/1997 00:00:000 UTC

         happy happy joy joy

         Jerry Katz

       • s******j@**.com
         23/09/1997 00:00:000 UTC

         On 22 Sep 1997 05:50:51 GMT, JohnGorno wrote:

         >Well, it's _something_ to look forward to.

         In the meantime, get a life.

         --

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