Life is shit. I believe I have established that already. It is intrinsic ingredient of life. The misery contained within.
Recently I have realized a new reason this holds. In the Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave new World, there is a drug, called soma, that does precisely that what is in my opinion impossible. It silences the bad within and gives way only to the good seemingly without any hangover or withdrawal effect.
We all would love a no (bad) consequence drug. And (even though I haven’t finished the book yet, I believe I know which way the author’s conclusion is headed) that is not all. I would argue it would stop progress. If you are happy, you don’t want anything to change. Nobody does.
In another place I have said that happiness can not be a valid goal of anyone. This I still believe. Nothing would be done if everyone were happy. But still everyone wants exactly that. It is because happiness is a state of mind and at the end of the day, our brain is just a FSM. A complex one, but still a Finite State Machine. With one goal state, whole lot of ways to get there and even more ways out. This goal state is named happiness.
I should probably quickly explain why this is not a contradiction. It’s because while we are ‘programmed’ for that goal, we choose (as much as anything like a choice exists) the path, the way to get there. So choosing happiness is like choosing death. Some ways towards that are better than others.
My main point is, whatever drug one uses to get his moment in the sunlight, even if no other consequence, the withdrawal effect, the hangover, the pain of abstinence, the state when one falls from the sunlight back to the mud bellow can not be removed from this path. Because it is quick and easily gained it is quickly and roughly lost. Trust in the capability of the world designer, whatever (or whoever) it/they were. Human mind is complex enough to take care of a simple pattern. If one is happy too much too often, they will not want anything else.
What do I know? Maybe this is the ultimate goal of life? Maybe people who overdose are in fact reaching nirvana and just deciding to not come back? Maybe we are all supposed to end in a public bathroom stall with a needle in our hand, belt tightened and puke all over our grimaced face.
One thing is certain. The closest thing to soma already exists. It has the slight downside of being a real drug, but it still is just as effective in getting people to the right state. Most people know it as heroin.