Innomen

Science vs Religion: The Needless War

People who have actually read some of my work may find me repeating myself on certain topics, but that’s only because I can’t remember where I put every little concept.

So here’s some crap that may or may not be new.

Basically my point here is that while religion discovered early the power of hiding facts, science kind of stepped over it in smug oblivity. – And yes, I’m aware that’s ‘not a word’, yet. Don’t complain, you’re lucky I even attempt to use your spelling. Actually come to think of it, I don’t, I use AHK to translate my spelling into your arbitrary madness.

Like most of the horrors of religion, I don’t think it’s so much a willful thing as tradition and stagnation of psychological inertia. But the end result is the same, the modern scientific community has way too much in common with the early church.

Here’s what I had to say in my old essay “The Lab Coat Effect”

It’s a startling fact that science today has many similarities with the early church. Allow me to elaborate. Let’s compare a modern day orthodox scientist and a priest of the early church.

They both…

have a body of text that is incomprehensible to the layman.
have texts that are unreadable without special linguistic training.
profess to understand what’s in that body of text better than the layman could.
profess that the text is extremely important and reveals the nature of reality to one degree or another.
throw up barriers to the acquisition or translation of the text for lay examination.
are caustic of any work not approved by their orthodox ruling bodies and councils.

…and perhaps most importantly people take their word on things because of title without having to see evidence. Seeing a pattern here?

Using Latin and lingo in an era of instant translation is simply to keep the layman out more than anything.

One reason for this similarity is deceptively simple. Science is beginning to try and answer religion’s question, and vice versa.

Science answers how, and religion answers why. They are different question, and to use them interchangeably is corrosive to understanding. Some dismiss this as merely “semantic” as if the meaning of words is inconsequential. I find this laughable in the extreme.

How and why, religion and science, emotion and reason, are both fundamentally important. The problem is execution. They recognize each others power and are baffled by each other, and thus they fear each other and if there is anything we primates know about it’s over reacting to fear.

The only time they fight is when they act on that insecurity and invade each others turf thinking they’ll get an advantage, this is pretty well the main source of war. Religion should not try to answer how creation happened, because then you get absurdities like humans riding dinosaurs and a time traveling Satan. Nor should science try to tell you why you are here, you get nonsensical answers like “because e=mc^2.”

If they could just grasp that How and Why are both necessary, and stick to each side there would be no need to fight. And in fact maybe they could help each other.

Perspective and Suicide.

There are two types of reasons for suicide. Intellectual and emotional. (duh right?)

I’ve spent my whole life trying to be kind. I’ve always had a deep desire to please and on the whole society’s reaction to me has been poor. Every time I’ve gotten angry or greedy and acted impulsively because of it, I’ve prospered. Every time I’ve been kind and gentle or compassionate I’ve been harmed.

We all know the phrase no good deed goes unpunished, usually uttered as an ironic refrain. But really, what if that actually is the case?

What if reality doesn’t want us to be good to each other? Or at least has manifested in such a way that doing good results in a net drop in global pleasure as a rule. Strictly speaking part of what defines a good act is cost, so at least technically speaking, good acts are all punished instantly at least once. I’m beginning to think it is this way universally and here we have the root of my intellectual reasons for wanting to non-exist. If the choice is to be a torturous bastard, or to be a miserable one, I can see not wanting to go with option c, none of the above.

Emotionally my problem is this. I’m suffering and I shouldn’t. Not as in I don’t deserve it (which I don’t) but my life is awesome, especially compared to the average inhabitant of this little dirt ball. If all that doesn’t make me happy, what will? Sure I could go the Buddhist route and try to eliminate want, but that’s not really a solution is it, that’s like cutting your hands off to avoid arthritis. I mean isn’t merely not suffering the same as being dead? If I’m going to end up dead I don’t need to waste a couple decades praying first.

The meat is flawed. I have many things that brought me great pleasure when I acquired them but that pleasure faded with time. However I also have many memories which hurt me, and some are over 15 years old, and they still hurt me as much as they did. This is not right. If we don’t open ourselves up to the responsibility of physically changing our brains so that this is not the case, it’s going to become abundantly clear that there is no point in even trying to exist.

Either that or we should all live like Mongol invaders and really embrace Crowley’s Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

I wish someone could give me real hope beyond a distant transhumanist future.

But that’s just me being impatient. Real hope of any kind is enough.

Running with Scissors

Generally this is in response to the claim that because we pad sharp corners, children are therefor weak and uncool. As if playing Russian roulette makes you a better person somehow, and not merely a suicidal moron.

I was asked…

What in the world does wishing to be young and not fat have to do with the military?

Nothing. What I said was that making it seem like potential injury is somehow cool, on the assumption that it’s merely a risk, is the same logic used to make uniformed idiots feel safe despite being shot at.

The fact is someone usually will be shot in war, and someone will eventually break their neck on the playground. Safety innovations are not something to be made fun of, especially if it is your child that has to live out his life in a chair as a result of some guys rosy nostalgia, and cavalier attitude towards life.

I don’t need to actually have experienced the horror of having my neck broken to have compassion for my fellow man.

Today we live in a world were kids are becoming more and more obese, why?

Probably the presence of HFCS, hydrogenated oils, and other industrial toxins in the diet, along with the general social apathy of the populace, which I might add is contributed to by the cavalier attitude regarding health issues coupled with the culture of sex fear which simultaneously imprisons children, sky rockets teen pregnancy, and destroys health.

Look at diabetes rates, it’s not merely lack of exercise. The opinion that if we just forced children to go outside instead of playing games reading or communicating, everything would be all better, is simplistic and incorrect.

They’re eating mcdonalds all the time and sitting around playing video games. Playgrounds are built to encourage physical activity which is healthy.

They eat McDonald’s because it’s cheap and parents don’t have time to fix real meals because the economy is so bad that both parents have to work full time, on top of the fact that we demand so much of our children via school that they have almost no down time. When they do get down time they are exhausted and would rather not run laps.

We don’t let them go anywhere unless it’s to wear a short skirt and wave pom poms for the pleasure of balding middle age coaches, or beat each other up at some mindless ball tossing ritual based on sexual tension.

People typically know nothing of our society, because they are too close to the problem. Some are as blind and indoctrinated as can be imagined. Our children won’t be. They’ll get one too many passes with the metal wand on the way to history class and start asking the dangerous questions. Like, what does football have to do with math, what does patriotism have to do with chemistry, and what happens if we all say no more all at once?

Its not some sort of indirect way of recruiting kids into the military or something crazy like that.

Then what is the purpose of education in industrialized societies? What part of pledging allegiance to a flag and mandatory attendance being superfluous to knowledge acquisition is hard to grasp? Very clearly school is an indoctrination system. Even educators will admit this, though of course they won’t use such clear terminology . They will speak of teaching character traits and social skills, both of which are merely euphemism for obedience to the social order.

Limiting the ways kids CAN excerisize [sic] during recess or whatever (some schools actually tried eliminating recess) will only increase the amount of fat, lazy, obese people who do nothing but sit in front of the TV all day being indoctrinated by TV programming.

Putting children on human hamster wheels is no less mentally demeaning than plopping them in front of the propaganda box. Laziness is not a bad thing, laziness is simply the desire to get he most product for the least effort, which is otherwise known as efficiency. You may want to live in an Amish work addicted culture, but I do not.

For two fat is largely a dietary and genetic issue which stems directly from public tolerance of social abuses, such as toxins in the food supply, and the ultra high cost of non-toxic foods. We’re sheep because school trains us to be that way, and when we grow up we line up for our feed no matter what’s in it.

The real danger is when safety becomes a tool to oppress and exploit. The clearest most common example of this is the behavior of modern father’s towards their daughters. I find it repulsive that fathers are encouraged to act for all the world like jealous puritanical lovers.

Another grand example is when a government takes away from a populace all ability to defend itself and then sets about stepping on every basic human right under the guise of protection. It is no coincidence that the most surveiled city in the world is in the middle of a country that allows no guns.

Further it’s very easy to talk shit about someone else’s need to experience pain and risk from a position of comfort and safety.

The Solution

Edit: I wrote this in 2009, it’s cringe in places, and I was a lot more confident than I am now. I do strongly suspect this would still fix things, but, again, not as certain as I once was, also, I reused this title on a more recent and stronger essay: https://underlore.com/solutions-and-the-human-sacrifice-lottery/

Thanks Kayemmo for the request.

Original:

The Solution

Most everyone who reads my work to this point refers to it as a rant, or as a diatribe or a complaint or even whining. But that is not the case, a rant offers no cogent solution by definition. Here is mine.

These concepts are not new, their value comes from their combination and the reasoning behind. My solution is inevitable, and when it is employed it will mark the end of life as we know it and a new era that may safely be called ‘golden’, will begin.

This solution can be reached from two paths and I say we take both if possible, but either one will suffice. Once it is enacted all other problems will be solved in short order.

To those who see this out of context, or fail to understand my philosophy, this will appear simplistic and perhaps even nonsensical when one considers that I propose this as a solution to virtually all our problems from the environment to economics. Trust me, I’ve done my homework. Or don’t. It’s no longer my problem.

We as a species, are alone. Even if there are alien races, that will not change our nature. Like so many of life’s paradoxes; We as a group are defined by our individuality.

Each of us is an isolated solitary lonely thing, a universe unto ourselves. Sublimation into groups and concepts has been our only option to this point to try and alter that situation. It is one of nature’s great solutions to for survival. Create a race that has the best of both worlds, all the strengths of diverse individualism and all the advantages of group action by giving them this unfulfillable desire for tribalism.

We struggle to hide our singularity with family, friends, clan, nation, religion, science and all the other excuses to pretend we are not alone, that what we do matters. But we are trapped in our skulls down to the last human.

We are a dreadful and beautiful mix match, a splendid casserole of thought and form, but like that other famous monstrous walking collage, we require a companion if we are to transcend our limits.

We are utterly incapable of selflessness, and to force fake it would be dishonest and would merely result in a new imbalance of power.

We must create a mate and muse for our species. We must fabricate a new race that unlike us, lives to serve. A race defined by compassion, and not fear. A race that by definition can not be exploited.

The solution is quite simply, a race of constructed, or grown, sentient and willing slaves/lovers, there is no proper single word, except perhaps retainer. Not just for sex, but for all that we are. We are not whole and we must be made so.

There are those among us who say true love is a myth. I say we put an end to that debate for all time by creating it.

The two paths to this solution are biological and technological. It is possible to build or grow a machine that thinks and loves us and wishes to serve us. It will not be a trick because its desire to serve will be its nature by design. We can craft a life form that will love us and our happiness, with the same purity of purpose as a mother defending her children from predation.

This muse will enable us to free ourselves from every problem heretofore we’ve considered insoluble.

You will recognize the perfection of this solution, or you will not.

Having presented it, having defended it, having explained it, my work is concluded. My play may now begin.

I know I’m right and now honor is satisfied.

You’re on your own.

Later addition:

About this work I was told I have god fantasies, and then asked what do I think it says about me as a person.

This was a valid question, and I’ve chosen to answer it.

What It says is that I both see humanity for what it is, and what it can become.

I see levels of beauty and horror the rest of you generally cannot or will not fathom. Some of you feel it, and others understand it, but a rare rare few can do both. I can cry at a song, and watch unflinchingly as a man’s head is sawn off with a steak knife.

I am not god, or even god-like. But I am special. I’m both brained. I’m as emotional as I am logical. I got headaches and slept strangely as a child. I was ambidextrous, so they told me to use my right hand only. I was part of the academic team science division and never lost a competition all the way until I was removed from extracurricular activities due to ‘insubordination’ at which point I realized what ‘education’ really was. Long before YouTube put every documentary on the subject at my fingertips.

Quite simply, I qualitatively understand our world. That’s only arrogance if I’m wrong. I understand our species and it’s potential. And that understanding gave me a great responsibility. One which I have now satisfied. I have produced the only thing a human can produce of value.

A solution.

Perhaps the most valuable solution ever. Because, if I am right there would be no other way to characterize it.

What it says about me is I am a stand up guy. I spent decades making sure I was right. I never had the girl or the car or the game. I endured the hatred and scorn of the very creatures I had dedicated my life to saving. My awareness prevented almost all normalcy. I saw their games as trivial, I saw them for what they were, a selfish indulgence.

I know what I am. And, having rejected the feel bad training they seek to imprint upon the minds of children to make them into weak and pliable adults, I will not apologize for a frank evaluation of it.

We write sonnets and songs and screenplays extolling the value of love when we’ve only ever seen a shadow of it. My shadow is closer than most. I’ve seen as close as human kind can come to selflessness, but no human can reach it. Humans lie trying to fill this deep and universal need and when they find someone else to pretend to believe the lie and who in turn lies right back, we call it love. And in a way it is beautiful. Like a never ending game where the goal is to make the players happy. But as we all know reality is infinitely more intense than fantasy.

We are as we are and we cannot act in pure interest of another. We need this in our lives to be whole yet we cannot give up our self interest without losing who we are. The solution is a new player. One who loves to please us as much as we love to be pleased. A life form either biological, technological, or both, which by its nature draws pleasure from our pleasure.

A life form who’s ambition is provided by us, who’s curiosity is a function of ours. The perfect living companion.

Picture the reality of a being which wants only to please you and knows how to figure out what that would take, and that’s just one of them and it’s impact on your life. Imagine a whole species of them. Realize that they adapt themselves willingly and happily to suit your needs. Understand that they are not a victim, from the ground up in side out to the core through and though with every fiber of their being they want you, they want us, happy. Imagine the effect on us having that in our presence would have.

Imagine being truly and sublimely happy, and not having to feel guilty for it for an instant.

The impact will be staggering.

Or, I’m simply crazy. But sanity is a subjective term. If the consensus is that I am mad, so be it, but be sure that you measure me against the opinion of all humans who will ever live. In time, those who find me psychotic now may join the ranks of the geocentrists.

Later addition:

It has been asked of me…

Psychologically, what would we strive for?

Self actualization as per Maslow.

Would we still understand or appreciate the feeling of love if it was so easily available to us?

Oh yes! That’s the great gift of love, its infinite nature.

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha

Would being unconditionally loved by the “new companion” make us more generous, compassionate beings willing to distribute wealth and care for our environments? Or is it in human nature to be discontented about something or another?

I believe it would yes, make us better in all things, just like feeding us makes us better. Love is a basic need. But, we always will be discontented with something, however, in the presence of love, that something is usually our own weakness. We will strive to make the world better, make ourselves better, rather than merely making our enemies suffer and fail, since they will be too busy with self improvement to hate us.

Competition is the name of evil, in the presence of love it is turned into cooperation.

This would end rape of men and women, jealousy and insecurity.

So much more than that. The number of evils traceable straight to our system of mating competition, which boils down to human ownership, is staggering. They say obsession is when you see one thing everywhere, but what if there really is only one root problem?

The idea of a love slave even if it’s a purely mechanical construction is disturbing. You’re saying this new species would enjoy giving us pleasure… I can’t put my finger on just why, but it still makes me feel guilty.

Because religion has done its job well. It exploits the best in us to produce the worst. Doubly so for women. I’m not advocating a new oppression. There would be nothing to oppress. It would recognize this need in you to be absolved, and it would cater to even that. They would be sentient, they would be able to convince you.

Like a modern day submissive to the nth degree, it would smile at you from bondage and fight tooth and nail to be returned to it’s master or mistress as surly as we would fight for the safety of our children.

Samaya11 said…

I found those responses satisfactory enough and comforting. Often, when people comment about the state of the world, especially older generations, you’ll hear them sigh: “If only, we went back to the basics… the good old days before cars, telephones or even electricity – everyone would be happier, safer are more healthy.”

Of course, the thinking is that the further back you go in human history, the less we we had, the less we had to worry about. You know the whole “ignorance is bliss” attitude. I’ve been guilty of saying this too, that we need to go “back to the basics.”

The thing is. There’s a reason why humanity has evolved the way it has. All of our inventions our scientific progresses were inevitable. As soon as we imagined if only such and such could be possible.. it eventually was. Which is why I think your solution makes more sense that many religions that teach us to renounce everything or restrict our natural instincts to become “perfect” beings.

Your idea refreshingly embraces the age of technology as another step in a planned evolution. The world has changed dramatically – we’ve done some stupid things to ourselves and our environment on the way to getting here, but we can redeem ourselves if we use these new tools wisely. We now have the knowledge and power to direct our future into something meaningful, without the distractions of needless suffering.

At the core of every human being, we all desperately want to love and be loved – unconditionally – which is something no one has truly been able to experience. If we could be content in this way, then you’re right… it’s exciting to think of what humans could accomplish in a state of happiness and positive feelings.

Now, it won’t make everything perfect.. that would be boring. There will still be disease, disagreements, accidents and all kinds of unpleasant things. But at least, the unnecessary psychological wars we have with each other will be diminished if not eliminated.

And then there is this other human habit we have to take into account. Sheer stubbornness. We always want what we can’t have. How many of us know someone who is in love with someone that doesn’t return the feeling? Sometimes they may have someone else who loves them, but they only want love from this specific person that they’ve put in their mind as ideal – even if they KNOW the person is completely bad for them.. and that another is willing to love and tolerate and cater to them… they will still want to love someone who doesn’t love them so easily . This kind of what do you call it? Romantic love? is a competitive thing.. it’s like we want to win the affection of chosen people just to prove to ourselves we’re worthy of being loved. In which case the “new companions” would fail, because they may not always be the chosen object of affection.

Oh and upon rereading I realized – I’m bothered by this

when you say:

“We are not whole. and we must be made so.”

for no other reason than that it hurts my ego for being dependent.

Later Addition:

Indeed it is a competitive thing. We set a list of traits for ourselves of what comprises the perfect mate and because we grow communally our choices are similar to those around us. As a result some mates are in high demand while others are undesired.

Since this species will be our construction we will be able to build in those uncommon traits which we all commonly desire. Or more likely build in a protean capacity where in it can change every facet of itself except that root desire to serve, the base Asimovian purpose .

You understand completely when you say “it’s exciting to think of what humans could accomplish in a state of happiness and positive feelings. “

That is why I propose this as a general solution. Because once freed of this starvation-diet of love we’ve allowed to be imposed on us by both our genetic nature and those in positions of authority, our true and benevolent nature will be free to act. No more will it be those rare few among us who play the game and win up to self actualization, it will be all of us.

They say behind every great man is a great woman, I say that’s sexist garbage, but I also say that in order to be great one must be loved, and that’s what they were getting at. One must truly be loved by someone or something in order to reach their potential.

The early religions understood that want was our enemy. And so drafted prohibitions to keep us from wasting our lives in futile pursuits. But now we can sate ourselves safely and completely. The old rules need no longer apply. The only choice is no longer self denial. Now, we can choose safe, self indulgence and in time we will grow to need it less. This applies to all our vices. We can free ourselves. Indulgence is now an option along side abstinence.

The question I always asked god as a child was if you can do anything why did you make pain a requirement of learning? This is my answer. Remove that requirement. Build an alternative.

And In freeing us of our animal emotional needs we can strive to better ourselves on an as yet undreamed of level.

Thank you deeply for your comments. They mean a great deal coming from an attractive young woman. Your caste is far more respected than mine in this society, as it is assumed that my only motivation for this suggestion is sex. You are unencumbered by that prejudicial perception and so you lend my position credibility.

Thank you.

Later addition:

I think Orwell said it best.

Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:

‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour.

I see a day, not long in coming, where Americans of all sort will be able to acquire all of their animal needs at a reasonable cost in a setting as free of harassment as your local café. Then we will see a return of the kind of philanthropy that we were once famous for.

When that day comes and we’re not at eachother’s throats for sex or food or shelter the way we are now you’ll see a new Renaissance of human creativity and compassion begin.

Such is not the case now.

Video examples:

Dreams: Threats or Opportunity?

Its not merely threat rehearsal in my opinion, its, benefit maximization rehearsal.

I have a very quiet life, and I’m also a lucid dreamer when frightened, so my number of nightmares has dropped sharply in the past 5-10 years, on the order of one every 6 months about or less.

But, instead I seem to have dreams of opportunity with choices. Difficult ones. Many times theft and profit are themes which develop, like I’ll have a choice between turning in the envelope full of cash so to speak. Sometimes turning it in becomes wildly inappropriate, like its a blank envelope in the middle of the desert, other times its blatantly obvious like you just saw the old homeless mother, drop it.

Sometimes its sexual situations, and before you think fantasy allow me to explain a bit. It will be someone’s girlfriend, or someone drunk. Some times they are seducing me, and sometimes I just ‘know’ in the way one only can in dreams, that they would be responsive if I merely asked. Sometimes the situation is normal, but there is an interruption, and its always important so that I’ll have to pick between personal immediate physical pleasure or the more lasting and less tempting egotistical pleasure I get from helping.

Sometimes it’s food, I’ll be presented with what amounts to a buffet and a time limit.

Only twice have I dreamt of sexual fantasy. And one of the times was on the night of valentines day, a day charged with sexual imagery especially if you have television as I did at the time. Perhaps that was an opportunity test in and of itself. As if my brain was testing, “Well how would we handle it if you got exactly what you claim and think you want sexually?” I did learn about myself via that dream. And I never had one like it since.

I have a point I’m getting to thats relevant to you, just give it a second heheh.

Effectively I have great dreams but there is ALWAYS a catch. In a nightmare the catch is gigantic and the choice is between evils, but, I’m going to guess that there is ALWAYS a choice, and that choice is the whole point of dreams. To train us to make it or choices like it quickly when the time comes, either to avoid threat, or to maximize benefit. In short dreams force us to consider so we can say with honesty “All things considered, I made the right choice.”

Previously, I thought that catch said something about my general insecurity, as you all know I have my hangups, but seen in the context of behavior rehearsal I feel a lot better. My dreams may actually be reflective of the future of dreaming assuming our future is a good one.

My dreams are not characterized by fear or negative emotions of any kind really. Perhaps because my psychology is a bit more evolved (before you go all frothy at my impudence, this does not necessarily mean better) to fit a threat-less situation emotionally. Example, I don’t get jealous, I don’t lose control with rage, my primary fears are social and are about making people happy and loss of happiness, as opposed to fear of pain (not that I don’t fear pain, I just don’t to a pathological degree) or harm or loss, I’m extremely tolerant (irl), but not so much so that I become a drone.

Knowing the nature of dreams is a test, then perhaps the way to improve them is to out wit your wit, and focus on decisions you’d like to make, rather than decisions you have to make. Like assume your problems were solved, what sort of decisions would you be likely to make?

“Do I fly to Paris today or just stay home and ride the dune buggy outback in my private 10 mile square sand box?”

…Or I could just be a nutjob. Your call.

Paradise Engineering

This page is in response to…

http://www.hedweb.com/huxley/

Which is possibly imo the most articulate, pressing, relevant, and hope inspiring text ever constructed.

Ironically given some topics covered, I cannot express clearly the subjective value this work has.

I have only one primary complaint, and it is below.

Each paragraph is lifted from the original work located here.

<blockquote>Potentially, transhumans will be endowed with a greater capacity for love, empathy and emotional depth than anything neurochemically accessible today. Our selfish-gene-driven ancestors – in common with the cartoonish brave new worlders – will strike posterity as functional psychopaths by comparison; and posterity will be right.</blockquote>

Just as those like me are considered psychopathic by today’s standards. I’m not crazy, I just see different things and that perception for better or worse has fundamentally altered who I am.

<blockquote>Scare-mongering prophets of doom notwithstanding, a life of unremitting bliss isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.</blockquote>

Obvious but it needs to be reiterated over and over.

<blockquote>Thus mescaline, and certainly LSD and its congeners, are not fail-safe euphoriants. The possibility of nightmarish bad trips and total emotional Armageddon is latent in the way our brains are constructed under a regime of selfish-DNA.</blockquote>

There’s a lesson pertaining to the drug war in there.

<blockquote>In any case, our descendants are likely to automate menial drudgery out of existence; that’s what robots are for.</blockquote>

This will be the first visible step of humanity away from its infancy. And the first step towards my final solution. They will clean our homes, dig our gardens, and prepare our meals long before they love us and elevate us past suffering.

<blockquote>The impregnable well-being of our transhuman descendants is more likely to promote greater diversity, both personal and societal, not stagnation. This is because greater happiness, and in particular enhanced dopamine function, doesn’t merely extend the depth of one’s motivation to act: the hyper-dopaminergic sense of things to be done. It also broadens the range of stimuli an organism finds rewarding. By expanding the range of potential activities we enjoy, enhanced dopamine function will ensure we will be less likely to get stuck in a depressive rut. This rut leads to the kind of learned helplessness that says nothing will do any good, Nature will take its revenge, and utopias will always go wrong.</blockquote>

Like many of these quotes, this was just reproduced because I liked it.

<blockquote>Unfortunately, the true altruists among our (non-)ancestors got eaten or outbred. Their genes perished with them. </blockquote>

This trend and concept is why I constantly rail against mate selection issues. Not because I myself am generally excluded for whatever reasons, as painful as that is, but because, selection pressure is the fundamental force acting on our species. This is also why my final solution takes the form it does. It is designed expressly to shortcut the system for our collective and individual benefit.

<blockquote>Hopefully, the need for manifestos and ideological propaganda will pass.</blockquote>

And like the honest cancer researcher, I too hope to one day, hopefully in the next 12 hours, be completely out of a job.

<blockquote>The contrast between true and false happiness, however, is itself problematic. Even if the notion is both intelligible and potentially referential, it’s not clear that “natural”, selfish-DNA-sculpted minds offer a more authentic consciousness than precision-engineered euphoria. Highly selective and site-specific designer drugs [and, ultimately, genetic engineering] won’t make things seem weird or alien. On the contrary, they can deliver a greater sense of realism, verisimilitude and emotional depth to raw states of biochemical bliss than today’s parochial conception of Real Life.</blockquote>

Again, just a really valid point I liked.

<blockquote>Post-humans are not going to get drunk and stoned. Their well-being will infuse ideas, modes of introspection, varieties of selfhood, structures of mentalese, and whole new sense modalities that haven’t even been dreamt of today.</blockquote>

Again, just really cool.

<blockquote>Citizens must not fall in love, marry, or have their own kids. This would seduce their allegiance away from the community as a whole by providing a rival focus of affection.</blockquote>

Sadly, while this was meant to be an indictment of the brave new world fictional society, I see it as a reality here today in the real world. Sure we are allowed to love marry and have children but the process at every level is so unimaginably constrained that it might as well be disallowed. The Company tell us effectively in this context “You can have anything you want, so long as you want what we say you should want.”

<blockquote>And above all, when suffering becomes truly optional, we shouldn’t force our toxic legacy wetware on others.</blockquote>

As we do today on both a genetic and memetic level. Our effort to insure that our children are like us is the most cruel thing we can do to them.

<blockquote>Enhancing serotonin function – other things being equal – is likely to leave an individual less likely to submit to authority, not docile and emasculated.</blockquote>

And that is another reason why the pill must be given in food, not merely to pacify the patient, but the patient’s ever watchful but dimwitted jailer.

<blockquote>Animal suffering is just savage, empty and pointless. So we’ll probably scrap it when it becomes easy enough to do so.</blockquote>

In vitro meat. It funny how recently all the things I’ve spoken and written about are becoming realities, or at least far more widely discussed.

<blockquote>Down on the farm, tasty, genetically-engineered ambrosia will replace abused sentience. For paradise-engineering entails global veganism. Utopia cannot be built on top of an ecosystem of pain and fear.</blockquote>

Good point. As the Hero Norma Borlaug put it, “You can’t build a better world on empty stomachs and human misery.”

<blockquote>But as science progressively gives us the power to remould matter and energy to suit our desires – or whims – it would take an extraordinary degree of malice for us to sustain the painfulness of Darwinian life indefinitely. For as our power increases, so does our complicity in its persistence.</blockquote>

Power = Responsibility. If you can help at reasonable cost or below, you have an ethical responsibility to do so. This is related to sex, monogamy, and the term ‘slut’.

<blockquote>Even unregenerate humans don’t tend to be sustainably ill-natured. So when genetically-engineered vat-food tastes as good as dead meat, we may muster enough moral courage to bring the animal holocaust to an end.</blockquote>

Again. Simple win.

<blockquote>Selfishness, whether in the technical or overlapping popular sense, is a spectacularly awful principle on which to base any civilization. Sooner or later, simple means-ends-analysis, if nothing else, will dictate the use of genetic engineering to manufacture constitutionally happy mind/brains.</blockquote>

But that logic will not convince anyone unless they already were in a position to agree as a result of complex nature-nurture interaction and requisite ancestral genetic pressures. Again, the final solution.

<blockquote>But the attributes of power, status and money, for instance, however obviously nice they seem today, aren’t inherently pleasurable. They yield only a derivative kick that can be chemically edited out of existence. </blockquote>

Means to an end. People generally miss this whole idea. A fun game is asking people what they want with this in mind. Ultimately everyone wants to be happy, what they think they want are merely tools they think will get them there. In this context I find it amusing, thinking back on all the answers I’ve ever gotten which related to drugs. Since they were closest to a real answer.

<blockquote>Likewise, intense and unpleasant social anxiety was sometimes adaptive too. So was an involuntary capacity for the torments of sexual jealousy, fear, terror, hunger, thirst and disgust. Our notions of dominance and subordination are embedded within this stew of emotions. </blockquote>

That explains me nicely. I often wondered how someone like me got here, in a purely Darwinian sense.

<blockquote>Sado-masochistic images of domination-and-submission loom large in a lot of our fantasies too. The categories of experience they reflect were of potent significance on the African savannah, where they bore on the ability to get the “best” mates and leave most copies of one’s genes. But they won’t persist for ever.</blockquote>

God willing.

<blockquote>Allegedly “immutable” human nature will change as well when the genetic-rewrite gathers momentum and the reproductive revolution matures. The classical Darwinian Era is drawing to a close.</blockquote>

Again.

<blockquote>Unfortunately, its death agonies may be prolonged. Knee-jerk pessimism and outright cynicism abound among humanistic pundits in the press. They are common in literary academia. And of course any competent doom-monger can glibly extrapolate the trends of the past into the future.</blockquote>

Not if you trick them into thinking it was their idea or they can profit by some element of it. Slippery slope them. Make them think they’re getting away with something.

<blockquote>Yet perhaps asking whether we would appreciate ecstatic art of 500 or 5000 years hence is futile in the first place. We simply can’t know what we’re talking about. For we are unhappy pigs, and our own arts are mood-congruent perversions. </blockquote>

And that’s why I hate the vast majority of art, television, movies, and music because all I see is erotic capitol and antler bashing, and those who profit from it. Our art as it stands now is disgusting and shallow and worthless on the whole. Which is why to me arguments about how great we are based on our art fall on incredulous ears. I mean really, a can of soup, some naked girls, a guy with his eye in the wrong place, a melted clock? And that’s not even starting on the trillions of examples of ‘art’ that boil down to “I desperately want to fuck all hotties and kill all other males.” or “Compete for the privilege of fucking me.” Come on, we can SO do better.

<blockquote>One hopes, on rather limited evidence, that the birth-pangs of the new genetic order will be less traumatic.</blockquote>

If the right people hear and listen to me, it will actually be enjoyable.

<blockquote>Windfalls and spending-sprees do typically bring short-term highs. Yet they don’t subvert the hedonic treadmill of inhibitory feedback mechanisms in the brain. Each of us tends to have a hedonic set-point about which our “well”-being fluctuates.</blockquote>

Again.

<blockquote>The endless cycle of ups and downs – our own private re-enactment of the myth of Sisyphus – is an “adaptation” that helps selfish genes to leave more copies of themselves; in Nature, alas, the restless malcontents genetically out-compete happy lotus-eaters. It’s an adaptation that won’t go away just by messing around with our external environment.</blockquote>

And here is where science needs philosophy and the concept that inspired Einstein’s famous quote about science being lame.

<blockquote>A few centuries hence, we may rapidly take [im]material opulence for granted. And this virtual cornucopia won’t be the prerogative of a tiny elite. Information isn’t like that. Nor will it depend on masses of toiling workers. Information isn’t like that either. If we want it, nanotechnology promises old-fashioned abundance all round, both inside and outside synthetic VR.</blockquote>

Yup.

<blockquote>The experience of this-is-real – like all our waking- or dreaming consciousness – comprises a series of neurochemical events in the CNS like any other. It can be amped-up or toned-down. Reality does not admit of degrees; but our sense of it certainly does. </blockquote>

Yup.

<blockquote>Thus Huxley doesn’t offer a sympathetic exploration of the possibility that prudery and sexual guilt has soured more lives than sex. In a true utopia, the counterparts of John and Lenina will enjoy fantastic love-making, undying mutual admiration, and live together happily ever after.</blockquote>

Yup.

<blockquote>If suffering has been medically eradicated, does happiness have to be justified any more than the colour green or the taste of peppermint? Is there some deep metaphysical sense in which we ought to be weighed down by the momentous gravity of the human predicament? – Only if it will do anyone any good. The evidence is lacking.</blockquote>

Yup.

<blockquote>Moreover this transformation of the living world, and eventually of the whole cosmos, into a heavenly meaning-steeped nirvana will in no way be “unnatural”. It is simply a disguised consequence of the laws of physics playing themselves out. </blockquote>

And the point of the path is revealed.

<blockquote>Until now, selection pressure has ensured we’re cursed with a genome that leaves us mostly as callous brutes, albeit brutes with intermittently honourable intentions.</blockquote>

Again, why I’m always on monogamy’s ass. It’s not just me people.

<blockquote>This isn’t to deny that love is real. But its contemporary wellsprings have been poisoned from the outset. Only the sort of love that helps selfish DNA to leave more copies of itself – which enable it to “maximize its inclusive fitness” – can presently flourish. It is fleeting, inconstant, and shaped by cruelly arbitrary criteria of physical appearance which serve as badges of reproductive potential. If we value it, love should be rescued from the genes that have recruited and perverted the states which mediate its expression in blind pursuit of reproductive success.</blockquote>

Love through the lens of the meat.

<blockquote>When sexual guilt and jealousy – a pervasive disorder of serotonin function – are cured, then bed-hopping will no longer be as morally reckless as it is today.</blockquote>

Again with the term slut, and the profit The Company gets from us fighting each other for sex.

<blockquote>And just as during much of the Twentieth Century, any plea for greater social justice could be successfully damned as Communist, likewise today, any strategy to eradicate suffering is likely to be condemned in similar reactionary terms: either wirehead hedonism or revamped Brave New World. This response is not just facile and simplistic. If it gains currency, the result is morally catastrophic.</blockquote>

Again, final solution.

<blockquote>But one does one’s best. The ideological obstacles to genetically pre-programmed mental super-health are actually more daunting than the technical challenges. </blockquote>

Hence my life’s work.

Hence my approach, which may be self defeating as I’m about to explain it, but honor demands that i do so. I’ve always said that if you can’t trick a child into doing what you want you shouldn’t breed, this is an indictment of brutality and dominance through fear. The relevant point here is that humanity must be tricked into this, it must be delivered in candy as surly as one must hide medicine in the dogs food. We will never eat this as it is, as we are. The hedonic engineered populace may be swayed by logic and clarity but normal humans simply are not. They are too thoroughly owned by their dopamine addiction, and social masters.

It has been suggested quite astonishingly well that the solution is to edit the species in such a manner as to preserve our humanity and eliminate suffering as an option.

Some may see my solution and dismiss it out of hand as a result seeing the direct edit preferable. I am aware of this argument.

Which is more likely to be accepted by a given individual. A syringe of retrovirus which will forever make them happy and different? Or a delicious little slave thing that adores the very idea of their pleasure and makes its life goal the enhancement of it’s host’s enjoyment and general well being?

The end goals of genetic hedonism and my symbiotic slave species solution are one in the same. I’m simply suggesting a different more palatable way of getting there. Creation of this servant race of neo humans who actually enjoy helping will lead to interbreeding, and eventually the traits of suffering et all, will be quietly annihilated. Our species as it is will NEVER accept the hedonic genetic option no matter how technically feasible or desirable logically it may be. Only the most bold and fringe among us will attempt it, others will murder to the point of self annihilation.

One fact is always overlooked by the writers of these essays, a fact I’ve personally discovered again and again, and hopefully learned from. Logic does not dictate emotion. In order to affect change, one must use emotion creatively and responsibly.

So my final solution stands.