If we could spray a happiness spray in the air and make people happy, should we do it?
Alternatively, if there was an anti-grief pill, would you take it? (If you were to discover the loss of a loved one, would it be ethical to rush to the medicine cabinet and pop an anti-grief pill?)
Where do anti-depressants come into this discussion? Millions of people take them, need them, and cannot survive without them.
14 comments:
NO! it's simply unnatural, and even unethical. Trying to manipulate our emtions would take the 'reality' edge of life and everything would be a synthetic, artificial mess!
Thats something to think about. I believe i would be much more comfortable taking the spray in a drastically hopeless case. Think about all those forlorn individuals who have been afflicted by a tragedy and can not help drowning in misery, no matter how much they wish they could be joyous again!
It wouldn't be my very first and immediate option, I would always recommend other treatments such as talking to a friend, therapy or even watching comedy shows! But in an utterly helpless case, Is it really better to do nothing?
...there was a Doctor Who episode like this. There were emotion-vendors selling emotions in alley ways. Forget, happiness, love, etc.
The thought of having a happiness spray is pretty nice. But the idea of an anti-grief pill makes me really uncomfortable...
Life wouldnt be the same if we did not feel different emotions including grief.In order to live you need to go through some pain.
I would not be in support of either the happiness spray or the anti-grief spray.But then if someone consistently feels grief or sadness then i would understand if they were to use the products.
In the example of losing someone dear to me, I think I can honestly say that I would not take the happiness spray neither the anti grief pill. This is becase grief would be a sign of the significance of that individual or tragedy in my life it would show how much I valued what I had lost.
Artificial happiness can never take away the fact that it's gone. It could only make your care less to the point where it doesn't bother you.
But wouldn't it be wonderful to know that you were missed or something was valued beyond the point of tears?
I would feel so undervalued if the persons I held dear to me didn't mourn.
On the subject of anti-depressants IO have not and never will support it. They teach you that when things get tough you should just give in and search for the easiest way out of your problems. That's definitely not the mindset you need to survive in this world.
We must be strong and fight to the end, life was never meant to be a joy ride, you fight for what you want. That's how you add value to something, that's how you become victorious. Only after you've went through some level of pain and came out on the other side.
I wouldn't touch it. Humans are supposed feel different emotions and that is what makes us who we are. It is something that gives us personality. There are people that need to cry once in a while to let their grief out. There are people that need to become pugnacious in order to accomplish something.
I think anti-depressants should be banned. Who was the smart scientist that invented it and manufactured it? Why would doctors prescribe it when they know the side effects? Do these people really need them?
As it is our nature to be rapacious towards things we dont possess, at first instance I would consider using the spray and those anti-grief pills.
However, when contemplating all the consequences and unethical options and how it is unwise to manipulate emotions, I probably wont do it.
I might want to use them in utmost desperation and hopelessness.
But then again, it's those situations that teach us life lessons and edify our approach to certain circumstances. It is such conditions that mould us into who we are today. We learn to become more tolerant and accustomed to such cases.
It’s pretty easy to say that you wouldn’t use a happiness spray or an anti-grief pill, but if presented with the situation, I wonder what I’d say.
If there was a pill, that without any side effects could make one feel less unhappy, then I don’t know. I mean, I know that the way anti-depressants work is by blocking certain receptors or increasing the production of serotonin( this is me guessing), but if there was something that without doing any of that, and therefore without having any of the long term effects of taking such a medicine, I’m just saying that perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.
At the same time, I understand why no one would want it. The fact we feel such nuanced emotions is what makes us human, and so it’s really hard to think of a world where everyone is happy. It reminds me of the novel Brave New World, in which people take drugs on a regular basis just to feel happier. The result is being surrounded by extremely creepy people who are ignorant of their real feelings.
So we probably should go without the happiness spray, but when it comes to medically diagnosed people with depression, I wonder why they can’t have the right(without being frowned upon)to feel emotions they don’t technically know how to feel.
I'd just like to start by elucidating the fact that the happiness spray and anti-grief pill are just fictitious objects whereas anti-depressants are very real. This main difference between them makes the usage of anti-depressants, in my opinion, the topic which is comparatively more worthy of debate. As Mr.Roberts said in the post, millions of people take anti-depressants, need them and (most importantly) cannot survive without them.
Shaday, you are badly mistaken when you say that anti-depressants only teach us to give in and search for the easiest way out of our problems when things get tough. Anti-depressants do not represent the 'easy way out'. You want to know what the real 'easy way out' is? It's suicide. And that's exactly what the vast majority of anti-depressant users would succumb to if they didn't regularly take their anti-depressants. When these people take their anti-depressants, they're not running away from their problems, they're resorting to drastic measures in order to fight their problems and that takes courage. Sure enough, life was never meant to be a joy ride. But anti-depressants hardly turn these people's miserable lives into joy rides, they simply make their hells marginally more tolerable and they do even that at costs, which include side-effects.
You say that you must fight for what you want. But what if the only thing you want, and are fighting for, is to live and you're losing that fight? A fight you can't afford to lose because if you do lose it, you'll die. What if the only way of becoming victorious is to cheat? What if you won't come out on the other side unless you cheat? In that case isn't it more courageous to cheat, win and keep living rather than to play fair, lose and die through suicide. By the way, Nikita, the smart scientist who invented anti-depressants has probably saved countless lives through his invention. And to answer your last question as well as I can, yes, most, if not all, anti-depressant users really do need their anti-depressants. Because, if they didn't really need them, they probably wouldn't choose to go through all the trouble of taking them in the first place.
It would be ones first instinct to pop an anti-grief pill after receiving bad news, yet we tend to take even the little things in our lives for granted, because going through challenges helps train us for greater things in life. I believe that we should go through every emotion as human beings, as certain emotions and experiences help us mature, also, if we've never been down or sad, then we'd never truly know what being genuinely happy is like. Many people can survive certain emotions, we were created that way, yet sometimes the emotions and circumstances are so overwhelming, we think we can never get through them because they seem so great and up close, yet life has a cycle, a pattern, and in order to say you've truly lived, we have to go through various emotions and roller coaster rides. Therefore I believe that a happiness spray and anti-grief pills are not entirely necessary.
I suppose this would depend on the person and situation at hand. If a person let's say faced depression all their life and forgot how happiness was like, then sure, a little spray of happiness would be beneficial. Or if, like the example given, one discovered the loss of a loved one and can't cope with it even after so much time has passed, then yes, an anti grief pill or two is in order.
With that said, one cannot, or should not get addicted to them. In the sense that it shouldn't be the thing that runs their lives, their very essence or the thing that gets them through each day. One should learn to live life with all it has to offer, the joys and sorrows. It's only when depression goes into such extremes must one feel the right to in take these artificial things.
I think Nnamdi pretty much summed it all up. "Joy wouldn't feel so good if it weren't for pain". We need to feel certain emotions to live life to the fullest. We need to experience all sorts of things and not just ignore these sort of emotions. We learn from everything we experience and so I believe we need to experience everything.
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