“THE HEDONISTIC IMPERATIVE

A B S T R A C T

This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.

Why does suffering exist? The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they served the inclusive fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. Their ugliness can be replaced by a new motivational system based entirely on gradients of well-being. Life-long happiness of an intensity now physiologically unimaginable can become the heritable norm of mental health. A sketch is offered of when, and why, this major evolutionary transition in the history of life is likely to occur. Possible objections, both practical and moral, are raised and then rebutted.

Contemporary images of opiate-addled junkies, and the lever-pressing frenzies of intra-cranially self-stimulating rats, are deceptive. Such stereotypes stigmatise, and falsely discredit, the only remedy for the world’s horrors and everyday discontents that is biologically realistic. For it is misleading to contrast social and intellectual development with perpetual happiness. There need be no such trade-off. Thus states of “dopamine-overdrive” can actually enhanceexploratory and goal-directed activity. Hyper-dopaminergic states can also increase the range and diversity of actions an organism finds rewarding. Our descendants may live in a civilisation of serenely well-motivated “high-achievers”, animated by gradients of bliss. Their productivity may far eclipse our own.

        Two hundred years ago, before the development of potent synthetic pain-killers or surgical anaesthetics, the notion that “physical” pain could be banished from most people’s lives would have seemed no less bizarre. Most of us in the developed world now take its daily absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as “mental” pain, too, could one day be superseded is equally counter-intuitive. The technical option of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of political policy and ethical choice. ”

OKaaaaaay every one has an opinion…        I’m entertained, are you entertained?  There appeared to be more where this came from.   I will read it some day when I am in an alternate mood state.  I offer it now in the name of diversity, perhaps to illustrate the down side of diversity.   Diane

via   The Hedonistic Imperative – Abstract.;

An endogenous opiate mechanism seems to be involved in stress-induced anhedonia

by Zurita A, Murua S, Molina V

Departamento de Farmacologia, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina.

Eur J Pharmacol 1996 Mar 28; 299(1-3):1-7

ABSTRACT

This study assessed the effect of an uncontrollable stressor on the preference for a palatable solution (sucrose 1%), and on the preference for a context associated with a single administration of D-amphetamine (3 mg/kg i.p.) by means of the conditioning place preference test. We also evaluated the effect of prior naloxone (2 mg/kg, i.p.) administration on the influence of this stressful stimulus in both tests. Animals previously submitted to a 120-min–but not 60-min–restraint period showed a selective reduction in the preference for sucrose intake as compared to unstressed animals. Similarly, an identical restraint exposure elicited a diminished preference for the place previously paired with amphetamine. Both stress-induced effects were blocked by prior naloxone administration. These data demonstrate that a highly aversive experience decreased the reinforcing efficacy of sucrose and amphetamine, suggesting that uncontrollable stress may lead to an impaired capacity to experience pleasure, which could resemble the anhedonia observed in clinical depression. Furthermore, an endogenous opiate mechanism activated by stress seems to be involved in stress-induced anhedonia since naloxone normalized the reduction of the rewarding induced by both reinforcers.  Depression, stress, and anhedonia : the opioid connection.

To read more go here:  http://opioids.com/depression/index.html

Don’t read more if you are already depressed.    Diane

Today is Dr. day. I have to wait three months to see my Dr. and now I will have a short period of time in which to try to explain how not being severely depressed is not enough. Clinicians seem to think if I can take a shower, comb my hair, get dressed, smear on a little makeup and show up on time I must be okay.  I am much better than I was in April, when I felt suicidal.  Part of my brain was thinking up painless non-intrusive ways to kill me and the other part was saying “Bad idea!  We need more meds.”  I am much better than I was a few weeks ago, when I was getting things done, but walking around in psychic pain all the time, but it is not enough.  There is a huge space between feeling suicidal, entirely cut off, entirely unnecessary and wanting, really wanting to live. I fully appreciate not being in pain but I am so very tired of that huge gray space where I exist but never really get to live.  I exist and provide service to others and I exist and provide service to others-because I do not know how to give up and I do not know how to stay down long enough to die.  The best I can do is find some way to create an adrenaline rush and I have pretty much run out of energy for that, unless I become hypomanic….

Perhaps I can tell the Dr. I am not dead, but I’m not alive.  I can get things done, but I can’t see what I’ve done and I never believe I’ve done enough.  I am a work machine, and I have always been a work machine.  Decades ago I wrote a poem called Imitation “She’s a perfect imitation of a real person, she does her job. Then she turns herself off and goes home alone.” The only difference is now I work at home much of the time.  I could go to a party next Saturday night; part of me wants to go the other part is starting to feel ambivalent and a little sick already, so I avoid thinking about it.  That’s good, that will assure that I am completely unprepared, that I have not made the necessary plans.
The wonderful little aluminum trailer I was going to fix up has been sitting in the yard for over a year now. It’s now a wonderful little aluminum storeroom. I don’t have enough life in me to get started on it. 

I think of Halloween and what a pain it is to put up decorations.  It might however be nice to get in a good disguise and behave really badly…. I think of Christmas and what a pain in the butt it is to put up decorations, go shopping where there are lots of people, go any place where there are lots of people and watch all the cheer and not have access to a bit of it. I do it for the kids, for the neighbors, for my clients, for friends but I can’t do it for myself.  I want to feel what other people feel, I want to stop watching myself all the time.
           I read and I study – to escape ANHEDONIA.  I felt alive and connected once, for a week or so, over 20 years ago.  That’s the only way I know it can happen.  That time the meds were just right and I don’t remember exactly what happened.  Ultimately because of severe hypertensive reactions I had to quit taking that class of medication. I don’t even care if I have hypertensive reactions anymore.  I will try anything or anything again.
I always go to the doctor with my ‘papers’, new meds, new studies, or mood charts.  I’m taking a little lithium to protect and rehabilitate my brain.  I’m taking a little Metformin to protect my brain (I have the study someplace).  The Wellbutrin keeps me moving and producing.  The Buspar keeps me from having so much anxiety I can’t focus or breathe. The levothyroxine should help it all work.  5000u Vitamin D, lots of fish oil, melatonin, therapy, you should’ve seen me before I had all this stuff!!  Can you imagine a severely depressed person who can’t stop moving around but can’t focus or concentrate, who is always afraid “something bad” is about to happen, who is on the edge of a panic attack and trying hard to breathe, who is also trying desperately to look like they are okay-for 40+ years?  That was me.  So of course it’s better, incredibly better – but not good.  From a song, “It’s all very nice, but not very good”.  Later. Diane