I guess we have to trust that after we have written software that does what we do, replaced our organs and body parts with wetware that does more, and have regulated our moods and focussed our intelligence with drugs, that we really will be in a better place. Do you think so? Do you secretly hope not?
I believe we’re far enough from that where I don’t have to worry about it in my lifetime. This is good because I have more than enough things to worry about now as it is.
How do you define the quality of what we do? If it is only in the eye of the beholder, and the only beholders are human in nature, then by that very notion we have claimed full possession of everything that involves ourselves.
If so, why be satisfied by that which we were naturally given?
Unless the gift itself is beauty far beyond anything our sight can ever presume to grasp.
What will happen when everyone among us is equally good in school, equal in writing papers for work, equally strong and just?
We will all be the same. Thus, we will be dead; by using drugs to control children who are too “full of energy”, who fail to concentrate “enough”, we have made the first step to become manufacturers of ourselves.
Three Words: A Clockwork Orange.
Modern society is already trying to control and modify “unacceptable” behaviour with drugs–so much easier than seeking the causes of that behaviour. If you only treat a symptom, the disease goes merrily on.
“I had a dove, and the sweet dove died,
And I often think that it died of grieving.
Why, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied
With a silken cord of my hand’s own weaving.
Why, pretty thing! Would you not live with me?
I kissed you oft, and gave you white peas.
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?”
(author unknown)
Interesting point from nrst’s comment to broader debate. When is medicating not the answer? Is medication for depression and schizophrenia changing ‘who you are’? how is it different to medication for polio? if you change the words in this sentence, it helps. ” I was born unhappy/crippled, so it is my duty to live my life this way”
I would say that medication crosses the line when it begins to tamper with the mind. The human body is simply a tool for the thinking brain to interact with reality. When a tool breaks, you replace it. When synthetic interference begins to affect a person’s rationality and reason, it’s gone too far. Even if these are things that are meant to heighten one’s rationality, to deliver our thinking mind from things such as emotion, it goes too far. A person’s individuality is not in their bodies; one human is strikingly similar to the next in purely physical aspects. It is in our mind that such idiosyncrasies occur. When you affect the human mind, you affect the human self.
i grew up with my mom taking anti anxiaty medicine, and am forever grateful; i remember the times she decided she didn’t need it, it didn’t really help. as much as i would have hated not having her as a mother i wouldn’t have wanted to grow up with her without it.
According to a lot of advertising I see on TV it seems like medication is always the answer no matter what the problem. If the medication happens to have some negative side effects there’s additional medication you can take to fix that as well. While I’m sure some of the medications advertised do have their uses when a specific problems are encountered. I typically avoid such things as much as possible personally. I believe an ounce of prevention in eating right and exercising is worth a lot, even if in practice I usually end up scraping by with the least amount either of those necessary to keep me healthy
Personally I believe that if the side effects from a medication are worse than the problem it’s supposed to correct it’s not worth taking to begin with. Why would I want the possible side effects of dizziness, insomnia, explosive diarrhea, and premature heart failure when I’m suffering from mild allergies?
there’s the rub, sarah. A mind is made of parts, as much as a body, though massively more complicated. While we acknowledge how little we understand of how it works, certain chemicals and cellular constructions seem to be vital to it functioning. The problem is defining functioning. Medications that are constructed to specifically address ‘chemical imbalances’ are MADE to tamper with the mind. @Sarah where do you stand on the brain / mind division, and the relationship between the two? to what extent does one’s individuality reach before the broader social construction it operates within classes it as a disfunction rather than an idiosyncracy? Why do you draw the line betweena medication made to alter the body’s chemistry to suppress the production of insulin, in order to prevent a diabetic from dying, and a medication made to alter the body’s chemistry to supress the production of serotonin, to prevent a depressed person from dying?
The brain is the mind. When there are complications with brain chemistry it shows in mental condition. The thinking mind is the direct result of the operation of the brain. They are one in the same.
Dysfunction is defined by the function itself. In a society where it is functional to simply go along and get along, a free thinker becomes a dysfunction. In a society that relies on personal responsibility and individuality, a co-dependency becomes a dysfunction. In most cases idiosyncrasies and dysfunctions are interchangeable definitions depending on who you ask.
I draw the line because one medication will affect a person’s physical self, but not their mental self. I guess it goes a little deeper than that for me though, really. So many people have lost the idea that their individual mind is what makes them human that they’re willing to medicate themselves to either fit in better, or feel better about themselves. In many cases these people have no *reason* to feel better about themselves. They medicate themselves into a false complacency. No longer attempting to make a better situation of their lives, they wallow in their own ineffectuality. So it isn’t the idea of the medication itself, but the idea that people have been taught that they need such medication.
how serious an idiosyncracy is a dysfunction? one man’s free-thinking is another man’s senseless slaughter.
hijack topic.
Norman Spinrad’s short stories ‘Lost Continent’ and ‘No Direction Home’ covered this rather well. Zager and Evans viewed it ‘In the year 2525′. 2000AD/Eagle Comics showed us ‘Judge Dredd’ and his associates. Which way do you want to go?
i’ve read enough sci-fi to know that it is after we reach dystopia, that a rebel comes in and starts to fix things.
a better place for us wouldn’t make us robots.
and what happens when we begin to malfunction?