I adore Huxley. Brave New World, The Doors of Perception, Those Barren Leaves...

I think the overmedication facet of Brave New World is so very true. We know we have an opioid problem because people are addicted and then dying. I think it would be naive to think that we aren't doing the same with everything in psychopharmacology.

Over my life I have found that some things, yes I do need medication for, but I -personally- do not need anti depressants to be happy...

However people in society increasingly take the view of 'you need medication' rather than "maybe when this person tells me what is bothering them I should reflect on if I'm contributing to the problem"

I have been blessed with some very dear friends over my life. My first brush with the ills of psychopharmacology was with a woman I knew whose mother had just passed. I went to visit her a few days after the funeral and she was rather spry. I, being a man of little regard for my own well being asked the probing question "You seem rather upbeat". It was met with a resounding "I know, and I can't even cry". She removed prozac from her life shortly after, went through a bought of horrid depression (putting off processing things means you pay later). Today she's happy, bright and successful...

I have a current friend who is "suffering from anxiety and depression". Her life is hard, for a number of reasons. Medication makes her "happy" and she does not address the structural issues in her life. You can't help those who wont help themselves, I get that. But if you dont feel the pain how do you know to pull back from the fire.

Except kids.

Barbiturates were a problem for how many decades? How much over prescription were there of "mothers little helpers"? How about oxy? How many people did that kill? How about benzodiazepines? DO we even have accurate data on that, or did we just stop looking at the long term effects.

We're not studying the impact of over prescription of psychopharmacology. There is NO data on what happens if you give these drugs to people who DONT need them. Zero, None. And we would be very naive to think that we dont have that problem.

Edit: The only reduction in suicide rate of those taking SSRI's vs those getting a placebo is in the over 65 age group.

Psychedelics allow you to pitch a tent in your backyard to renovate your home. But eventually, you make your home as you want it and stop needing renovations.

This is the right attitude for all medicine.

And as any PT/MD will tell you, even getting people to take a full course of antibiotics or their drugs properly is difficult. 1 in 3 odds? 1 in 2?

Getting someone to finish a full course of PT? Nearly impossible. Like 1 in 20 type odds.

So, the system throws medicines and surguries/treatments at the patients when possible (because they can control those things, and they work!) whenever they can, and do tell people about the other options - and they do work and are necessary for issues to really work out well a lot of time - but almost no one really does it.

Then they blame the medicine or surgury for not fully solving the problem, or when it comes back in a different form/direction.

Like weight loss.

But what else are we going to do?

The parent poser never said anything about "evil big pharama mind control", however "pharma companies trying to make money disregarding long-term health of patients" is not a particularly narrow-minded view, anti-depressants are used to put people back to work disregarding their long-term health, and widespread over-prescription of SSRIs by physicians (not even psychiatrists), even to children, is a thing as well.

If 15 years ago, when I was 16, someone had told me that these meds would potentially make me lose the ability to feel pleasure, I probably would'nt haven taken them, but there was no such warning.

I was once told that ADs were as well-understood as insulin for diabetes. In retrospect I feel hard-pressed to find any other word for that than "blatant lie". I was 21 when I was put on Effexor.

There exist plenty of I don't like taking medicine people.

It’s the avoidance of pain that is the problem.

The main guideline of my thirty years on this earth has been to optimize for least pain and and I have been blessed with much more joy than I believe the average Joe experiences. I can assure you the curious mind, when unencumbered by crippling pain, will find in a lifetime's worth of enthusiasm for life.

Thats not an absense of pain.

You're essentially arguing on pedantic points. We know what they're trying to say.

That is what YOU want.

> We know what they're trying to say.

The argument your making shows your missing the subtly of what the poster and Huxley are saying.

If your house always smells like bacon, if all your drinks and food are sweet how quickly does thee joy from these things fade? A life, without contrast is one that only drives you to escalation in a single direction. At some point there would not be enough sugar in the world to indulge your sweet tooth.

Huxley was a student of buddhism, he understood that this flowed in the other direction. Chasing the pretty girl, the idea of catching her, of you and her is pleasurable. If you fail in this task it is pain... Buddhism would have you remove desire to remove pain. This idea, this theme, is the focus of Huxley's works and is present to some extent in this essay (the pleasure from passive consumption is a net bad).

Fixing the toilet isnt "fun". There is satisfaction in doing a "shitty" job, one that isnt had if you call the plumber.

Honestly though this is not the best crowd for discussing these ideas.

There is something about programming that tends to draw in people with control issues. Perhaps it's the deterministic nature of computers.

Pain is a signal from your body telling you something is going awry. I don't think you to have to be in pain in order to enjoy a night with friends or a good movie.

So yes pleasure does exist in the absence of pain and trying to avoid pain is a good idea.

Now if you are talking about effort that's something else. Your body and mind are normally equipped for effort and will reward you according to the result of this effort.

We can have nice things

The contrast was the idea I was putting forward. Pain defines pleasure if that makes sense and visa versa.

> Pain is a signal from your body telling you something is going awry.

I would say it is a signal from the mind (emotions can be painful) but I agree with your general point.

> Now if you are talking about effort that's something else. Your body and mind are normally equipped for effort and will reward you according to the result of this effort.

Cue, craving, response, reward. Is the craving not painful? If the response requires an unanticipated level of effort is that not painful?

Do you see how it isn't so much about avoiding pain and more about choosing what cues you respond to and understanding what pain is unavoidable and/or what pain you are willing to endure.

Are you proposing that pleasure and pain are unrelated?

It's waking up to the smell of bacon, and then 20 minutes later your nose blind to it. It is putting sugar and salt in everything and then having to add more and more to get the punch of either.

Libertines, and hedonists chasing ever growing excess because they have to to feel.

It's the relief of an ice pack on a sore shoulder vs the cold of snow in your jacket.

It's the spoiled rich kid who appreciates nothing because they have everything.

There is no pleasure with out pain. There is no point, without a counter point. It is why addicts chase every increasing amounts of their addictions...

I am interested in learning how the two vectors interact with each other if at all.

Perhaps model the relationship with some equations.

I would like to hear that from a real government employee or any employee who has no other choice but to HAVE a job...

Although it sucks to not have a pension

I think you missed the point of the essay if this is your response. He calls out actual toil later on.

This would be the government work. It isnt there to satisfy, it's there to keep a roof over your head. IF it was fun they would not PAY you would they?

>> In place of the old pleasures demanding intelligence and personal initiative, we have vast organizations that provide us with ready-made distractions - distractions which demand from pleasure-seekers no personal participation and no intellectual effort of any sort. To the interminable democracies of the world a million cinemas bring the same stale balderdash. There have always been fourth-rate writers and dramatists; but their works, in the past, quickly died without getting beyond the boundaries of the city or the country in which they appeared. To-day, the inventions of the scenario-writer go out from Los Angeles across the whole world.

The point he's making is to find that passion elsewhere, make music, play sports ... DO rather than CONSUME. And that everyone should do this in all things. These are the "pleasures" and they should be enriching you via your participation not your passivity.

>> Finding work you have a passion for that creates a positive impact in the world is something everyone should strive for

No one wants to work at the DMV, no one dreamed that in their child hood. But we need people to do it... he's speaking out against them going home and sucking down film, tv, tiktok rather than DOING things that enrich their minds and bodies.

>> So he's playing both sides, like a true philosopher.

So no this is not what he's doing at all!

That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day. I agree mostly that doing things is better than just consuming, but unfortunately the bigger part of the population just aren't able to do it.

Does no one read any more?

This is the very nonsense his essay rages against.

You leave work and:

Buy yogurt on the way home, make sure your kid does piano practice and watch soccer on TV.

-- OR --

You buy milk on the way home, make yogurt with your kid, play soccer in the back yard and then amuse yourself by playing music in the evening.

Same time investment, less money spent better engagement and an enriched life.

Well... this aged like fine milk in retrospect to what was coming 20 years down the line.

"Sometimes, I wonder if it took the collective organs to defeat one pathogen perhaps they were superior to all other organisms."

If we must, there are other rubrics by which to judge "superiority" than capacity for destruction and domination.

I hope you take a moment to consider what the world would be like if all lived according to your implied ideals

It seems like a surprisingly weak essay, from an otherwise pretty thoughtful guy.

This feels true in some sense for every generation; bemoaning the insolence of the current youth feels like a rite of passage. However, it also seems true that the youth of today have a lower barrier of access to “pleasure” than any other humans in history.

"Kids these days bad, older times good!" - as far as humanity has existed.

0. https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...

We can make the world an undeniably better place while also loosing vital things. It's not a zero-sum game. Have we been doing this for 2,500 years? Probably.

It feels like a contradiction only if it's zero sum. But we generate more vital things than we lose, so it feels like (is) progress. But that doesn't mean we're not losing vital things.

Aristotle saw the end of Athenian democracy and the rise of the Alexander the great, and the following Hellenistic period of mediterranean disorder. Horace was hardly the only one to discuss roman decline, look for Suetonius, Juvenal or Petrone for other examples of same era romans lamenting the decline of Rome.

As for Huxley, it is interesting that much of what is pointed out in this short commentary echoes Ortega y Gasset on the "Revolution of the Masses", Oswald Spengler also comes to mind.

Human history is that of the rise and decline of civilisations, we may well have already been on a downward slope for the past 100 years.

Nothing atrophies when it's needed.

Plato in Phaedrus warned about the forgetfulness implicit in the invention of writing as oral traditions would no longer need to be remembered and passed down...

More like things atrophy when not needed and then one day fuck.... "We didn't realize there was a cyclical component to this process"

I can play the piano and I can done some improvisation but, everyone doesn’t care about my improv because I’m not good enough but frequently you will get famous song is asked to be played live.

Comparing end products and foregoing the process itself, people don't know what they're throwing out.

It's not about old vs new, it's about consumption vs creation.

In a few years from when it was written, Germany would be devoting the full power of a modern industrial economy, not to pleasure but to wipe out undesirable people.

They would is the newly developing field of electronic data processing, not for pleasure to to better target people for death.

Planes would be built not for people to travel on vacation, but to drop bombs.

Factories would work around the clock, not producing goods for pleasure, but weapons of death.

The greatest group of geniuses ever assembled, would be given an unlimited budget not to develop new forms of pleasure but to develop a weapon that could vaporize an entire city in a few seconds.

(Having said that, this article is pretty much "old man yells at cloud" for me.)

Copyright is all about encouraging the production of "art" and has all these exceptions to ensure the exploitation doesn't restrict creation.

Without copyright we'd have guilds that enforce secrecy and fidelity.

It's a great abstract discussion. Increases in technology have made it possible to use human intellect to move society forward, but also make pleasure that much easier to attain.

I don't really have a point here but I find the topic very amusing to think about. I feel guilty watching hours of TV during the week to unwind. At the same time, it helps me to relax. Pleasure that comes from physical work seems to always have a greater positive outcome for me. OTOH, mental pleasure sense to leave me depleted even more so. TV is an interesting mental pleasure that does help.

Any context why 1918 peace would be considered 'stupid'?

The astronomical reparations Germany had to pay.

The lands taken from Germany ended up creating pockets of German speaking areas in surrounding countries. This was an amazing opportunity for the nazis to claim these lands and set up false flags operations.

- Huxley argues that the real threat to modern civilization is not external dangers like war, but the "auto-intoxication" of mindless pleasures and distractions.

- He contends that pleasures and entertainments have become progressively more passive and devoid of intellectual effort. People now soak up ready-made distractions like movies, radio, and newspapers without thinking.

- Huxley criticizes the sterility and sameness of modern distractions. The same movies and dances are consumed everywhere without local variation.

- He sees the proliferation of effortless distractions as promoting boredom, atrophy of the mind, and decline of civilization.

- The essay ends with a warning that the bored populace may eventually demand ever more violent entertainments, as happened in decadent Rome. Huxley fears we may "live to see blood flowing across the stage."

Maybe I just was not ready .... I'll give it one more try someday .

Same thing w LOST IN TRANSLATION.... Second try , turned out good.

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter is a non-fiction book written by Steven Johnson. Published in 2005, it details Johnson's theory that popular culture – in particular television programs and video games – has grown more complex and demanding over time and is making society as a whole more intelligent, contrary to the perception that modern electronic media are harmful or unconstructive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_Y...

This is the Cartesian distinction between understanding and imagination. Imagination requires a peculiar effort of the soul, which AI is unable to exert. Understanding is knowing that a triangle's interior angles add up to 180 degrees. Imagination is understanding that and being able to represent the image in your mind.

Fuck me, imagine what he'd say if he had a silicon valley programming job and had to put up with HR-organized online parties and friends wearing animal onesies at social events.

1) Many people are happy living life and never exercising their brain.

2) Some people, like Aldous, are not. Instead they choose to more often than not.

I suspect that this has been true for a very long time. It also seems less frightening than he is making it out to be. Assuming the ratio of critical thinkers remains roughly the same then the world should continue to get objectively better, right?

I wouldn't have expected it to have been viewed that way back in 1920.

I have realized that active recreation, although requiring overcoming a certain threshold of activation energy, is far more compelling and fulfilling than passive recreation.

lol, still so true.

> has resisted the combined attacks of these enemies wonderfully well

applies to the 'dumb pleasure seeking' he warns about in this article too. Society has not collapsed and in spite of pleasure-at-the-push-of-a-button being more than Huxley could ever have imagined and

> the democracy of the future will sicken of a chronic and mortal boredom

still being an ever-present topic

I think the 'bark worse than bite' still holds, for now..

Wow this is exactly true today, more than one hundred years later.

No one needs to fight, we can all see the game happening. We incorporate all the functions of pleasure into our identity.

Huxley cant recognize the social progress, calling it dumb. Smug enough to be funny, oblivious to the irony.

Not only did Orwell predict the total surveillance state, but his French teacher Huxley foreshadowed the necessity of the opioid crisis in maintaining the existence of such a society.

-- Chapter 1, ‘Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment’; David Lykken.

Welp, time for a re-read of Amusing Ourselves to Death. Pretty sure Neil Postman quotes Brave New World at least once.