T HE H EDONISTIC I MPERATIVE
Heaven on Earth? "Whatever was the beginning of this world, the end will be glorious and
paradisiacal, beyond what our imagination can conceive"
Joseph Priestley
Try summoning up the most delightful fantasy you can imagine. Try and imagine feeling more blissfully fulfilled in pursuing whatever you love and value than you've ever felt before. Unfortunately it's quite futile. We run such simulations on legacy wetware. Even the most virile imagination glimpses only a shadow of the biological nirvana awaiting our descendants. For decoding the human genome allows happiness beyond the bounds of contemporary human experience to be genetically pre-programmed by rational transhuman design. In a post-Darwinian era of paradise-engineering, life on earth promises to be inconceivably good. The Hedonistic Imperative (1995) predicts we are poised to explore a spectrum of outrageously beautiful states of consciousness. States of consciousness far more sublime than today's fleeting "peak experiences" can potentially imbue the texture of everyday life. In contrast to our animalistic mix of pleasure and pain utopian biotechnology will permit our genetically enriched descendants to be animated by gradients of immense well-being. In the new reproductive era of "designer babies", an informational economy of mind based on innate bliss can form the bedrock of invincible mental health. | |
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