The Molecular Genetics Of Paradise.
AS genetic engineering matures from mere genetic tinkering. Gene therapy will be targeted both on somatic cells and, with even greater forethought, the germ-line. If cunningly applied, a combination of the cellular enlargement of the meso-limbic dopamine system, selectively enhanced metabolic function of key intra-cellular sub-types of opioidergic and serotonergic pathway, and the disablement of several countervailing inhibitory feedback processes will put in place the biomolecular architecture for a major transition in human evolution - and life itself.
The re-engineering of bits of psycho-neural circuitry sketched above may, it is true, seem somewhat ambitious. Perhaps it sounds impossibly futuristic. Comparatively, however, these techniques amount to a primitively inept form of piecemeal tinkering compared to the revolutionary redesign of the mind/brain likely to be undertaken in millennia to come.
For it won't just be the quality and quantity of consciousness in the world which will be transformed in the early stages of the post-Darwinian Transition. As humanity emerges from the psychochemical Dark Ages, enriched dopaminergic function in particular will sharpen the sheer intensity of every moment of conscious existence. For a generation whose lifetimes span both modes of awareness, it will be as if they had just woken up after sleep-walking through life in a twilit stupor. Thereafter their former mundane and minimal existence may be recalled only as some kind of zombified trance-state. Our own "ordinary" consciousness may be unmasked as a shallow and uninteresting vehicle of malaise whose properties we were physiologically incapable of recognising 'from the inside'. At present, however, we lack the neural substrates of a capacity to set archaic consciousness in a pre- and post-Darwinian context. Or as Einstein says: "What does the fish know of the sea in which it swims?"
Other neurohormones, transcription factors, opioids, tyrosine-hydroxylase activators, oxytocin-releasers, receptor density-regulators, intra-cellular second- and third-messengers, phosphorylated proteins, and genetic repressors and promoters which are implicated in the modulation of mood, emotional tone and psychophysical pain will be reconfigured too as the biological program unfolds. The details are messy and complicated. Naturally, our neurotransmitter systems finely interlock. They can be treated in isolation only conceptually and for purposes of expository convenience. They form a complex and delicate interplay of feedback loops that defies easy simplification and synopsis. In centuries to follow, however, they will be collectively enlisted to re-work the texture of experience. Our happiness will be chemically and genetically enhanced with ever greater artistry and finesse. Conversely, several vicious triggers of extraordinary nastiness (e.g. bradykinin, nociceptin, substance P) will be banished from the sensorium, one trusts for ever.
source: http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#cardinal
AS genetic engineering matures from mere genetic tinkering. Gene therapy will be targeted both on somatic cells and, with even greater forethought, the germ-line. If cunningly applied, a combination of the cellular enlargement of the meso-limbic dopamine system, selectively enhanced metabolic function of key intra-cellular sub-types of opioidergic and serotonergic pathway, and the disablement of several countervailing inhibitory feedback processes will put in place the biomolecular architecture for a major transition in human evolution - and life itself.
The re-engineering of bits of psycho-neural circuitry sketched above may, it is true, seem somewhat ambitious. Perhaps it sounds impossibly futuristic. Comparatively, however, these techniques amount to a primitively inept form of piecemeal tinkering compared to the revolutionary redesign of the mind/brain likely to be undertaken in millennia to come.
For it won't just be the quality and quantity of consciousness in the world which will be transformed in the early stages of the post-Darwinian Transition. As humanity emerges from the psychochemical Dark Ages, enriched dopaminergic function in particular will sharpen the sheer intensity of every moment of conscious existence. For a generation whose lifetimes span both modes of awareness, it will be as if they had just woken up after sleep-walking through life in a twilit stupor. Thereafter their former mundane and minimal existence may be recalled only as some kind of zombified trance-state. Our own "ordinary" consciousness may be unmasked as a shallow and uninteresting vehicle of malaise whose properties we were physiologically incapable of recognising 'from the inside'. At present, however, we lack the neural substrates of a capacity to set archaic consciousness in a pre- and post-Darwinian context. Or as Einstein says: "What does the fish know of the sea in which it swims?"
Other neurohormones, transcription factors, opioids, tyrosine-hydroxylase activators, oxytocin-releasers, receptor density-regulators, intra-cellular second- and third-messengers, phosphorylated proteins, and genetic repressors and promoters which are implicated in the modulation of mood, emotional tone and psychophysical pain will be reconfigured too as the biological program unfolds. The details are messy and complicated. Naturally, our neurotransmitter systems finely interlock. They can be treated in isolation only conceptually and for purposes of expository convenience. They form a complex and delicate interplay of feedback loops that defies easy simplification and synopsis. In centuries to follow, however, they will be collectively enlisted to re-work the texture of experience. Our happiness will be chemically and genetically enhanced with ever greater artistry and finesse. Conversely, several vicious triggers of extraordinary nastiness (e.g. bradykinin, nociceptin, substance P) will be banished from the sensorium, one trusts for ever.
source: http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#cardinal
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