File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9811, message 19


From: "David R. Jones" <david_r_j-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: To a 'Deleuzian' cornudo
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 17:54:35 PST


Has any of you ever visited www.nietzsche.com? It had a link to a 
"hedonistic web" thing, whose motto seems to be "better living thru 
chemistry". I didn't get to read all the texts, but here goes the home 
page:

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and
nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. 

    This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also
instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic
pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they once served
the fitness of our genes. They will be replaced by a different sort of
neural architecture. States of sublime well-being are destined to
become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. 

    "Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and
surgical anaesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain
could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed
crankish. Today most of us in the urban-industrial nations take its 
routine absence for granted. The prospect that
what we describe as psychological pain, too, could be banished is 
equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its
abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy 
and ethical choice".

I find it hard to relate Nietzsche to such a thing. I will just quote G. 
Colli: "Il dolore è nel gusto de Nietzsche - ed è contro il gusto del 
mondo moderno".


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