One Possible Scenario - Happy Drugs

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I am not talking about SSRIs or MAOIs or any kind of medication or drug existing now. I am being purely hypothetical. What if some pharmaceutical company researched and manufactured a medication, put it in the water or distributed it without people knowing, and it made everyone happy and willing to do nice things for each other all over the world. It would be normal to see smiles on everyone's faces, no one would grumble when they were asked to do something for someone else. They would not always need to be asked, either. Everybody would do so many considerate things for others, no one would feel short changed, like they are the only one being nice and everyone else takes advantage. No one would experience burn out or cynicism because everyone would be helping everyone else out. There would be no crime or evil in the world.

The drug would be completely safe and once taken, niceness and happiness would be the result, so one dose would be all that's needed to alter one person for the rest of their lives.

Would this be such a terrible thing?

That's like a nice way to do slavery.

I think it'd be great, but I'd like people to have the opportunity to opt in or out. The contrasting societies would then make interesting sociology, though I suspect the non-happy part of the world would either try to destroy, or find ways to screw over, the happy part of the world.

If you live in the US or the UK, it may surprise you to learn that in other countries lots of people walk around smiling much of the time. I remember my experience of returning to the US after a couple of weeks in Mexico and Guatemala: I felt horrified when I went into a grocery store and it took me a while to figure out that I felt that way because no one was smiling.

i believe such a drug already exists, and its completely nature-made.

That doesn't work on everyone.

I would probably end up killing myself because the voices told me to if they snuck that into the food chain.

It's not good for some people to be happy...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0V4TZAyd8I[/youtube]

Weed definitely does not work for me. It has terrible effects on my CNS but you raise a good point. Social scientists orchestrating this experiment would need to be certain this new drug would have very similar effects on everyone.

Not opposed to weed. But its definetly not the drug the OP is looking for. Its a very idiosyncratic in how it effects you. And it would make most people more "autistic" in behavior. But thats another subject- if everyone started acting autistic.

you're looking for flouride for the soul- mental floss. I dunno. We would all become like the Stepford Wives. Kinda scary.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 12 Dec 2013, 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i won't go so far as to say there's no such thing as happiness, but it seems to me it could be anything.

In my scenario, everyone is walking around smiling and helping each other out without begrudging anyone or complaining. No one makes excuses they cannot help, they just do it and everyone is helping so no one sits on the sidelines, mopes and complains someone isn't doing their share and they won't because of them. I picture a Utopia of sorts. If everyone is always content and helping out without the psychological discomfort, wouldn't society be this wonderful place for everyone? If someone didn't have food, another person would help them find it and then the person who didn't have it would help someone else with something they don't have. Think of it as endless paying it forward.

Sounds like the drug 'soma' in "Brave New World"

Yeeeeah......, everyone on a "happy" drug will work out really well.

Sounds like an epic backfire waiting to happen.

I don't like the idea of my scenario being anything that's ever existed in a book. It must be completely untried and unseen except for my imagination where everything works perfectly. No unhappy people.

I think the happiness and helping others aspects could be broken down into 2 drugs. There are problems with pure drug-induced happiness. I.e. you could be being used/abused by others constantly, or starving every day but not care. Or, maybe you're the one who is abusing people and the drug nullifies your conscience.

OTOH, the helping-out drug could improve things so that maybe no one needs the happy-pill in the first place.

It would have to be global, though, because the way that most societies are structured if a few people are left unaffected they'll end up owning everything.

How about a different approach?

Take Prozium, the No-Emotion drug:



... Then you wouldn't care about anything ever again.

And then you can do awesome Gun Kata moves:



.. of course... You wouldn't *consider* the moves awesome, because you wouldn't consider anything awesome...

Yes, it would be a terrible thing. Unhappiness- much like physical pain- serves a purpose. It is awful when it spins out of control, but in controlled amounts it is our warning system that something has gone wrong, is out of balance, needs to be fixed.

Consider people with the rare genetic problem of being unable to feel pain. They spend their often short lives constantly being badly injured because they have no way to know that an injury or illness is happening and must be stopped before it destroys them. Physical pain is awful but it's the only way to know that you are currently burning away the flesh on your hand and must remove it from the fire or that your leg just broke and should not be walked on.

Emotional pain serves a similar though more subtle purpose. It's our way of knowing that something has gone wrong and must be addressed. Sometimes we get the feeling even though nothing has gone wrong (depression) or are unable to figure out the source of the problem (psychotherapy came into being to help find it) but those are a small price to pay (really!) for a something that keeps us vigilant against harm as surely as physical pain does.

Apple In My Eye pointed this out too and suggested separating the two components out into separate drugs and only using the one that induces helpfulness to others. Even there I am not in favor. Helpfulness to others is a virtue but that's because it is freely given. If you remove the free will aspect, you remove the virtue since you reduce it to the level of instinct.