thought experiment

One thought experiment I always keep in the back pocket is, what if everyone was in bliss 24/7?

Most of people are motivated with an embedded promise in their ventures: this will be interesting, this will be fun, this will make me happy, this is where my real life begins. This is the foundation by which the economy moves, after all.

But suppose everyone was in bliss. Suppose that you no longer had to fidget this way and that for you to feel content. I am reminded of a comic which shows someone looking forward to exploring the world and living, but someone then offers them a Happiness Machine™ with a needle in the arm that simulates the best life and guarantees happiness. Of course the tone of the comic is unease and dread, gesturing this is fundamentally wrong.

Maybe it’s wrong because it’s a disdain of selecting the virtual over the real, but if we smudge that away, and the promise still stood, and you go about your day but you’re in bliss all the same, what then?

How different would the world look? How different would your life look? What would you do with all the freed up time, time previously spent on seeking?

The puzzlement only grows, indeed, as one looks upon their works and obligations, aspirations and their underlying motivations. It all crumbles apart. Whether one sits there for a thousand days or one builds an empire to set on fire a thousand days after, the emotional differential would stay the same.

If you have attained what you sought after so long, in all of your ways and all of your creations and relationships, goals and ideals manifested or pouring through difficult texts to harvest the glory an intellectual gladiator so mimed: to deeply acknowledge that everything was for this bliss you now have permanently, what then?

You no longer need to soothe, nor seek comfort. Nor force yourself up another Sisyphean rung to quiet the wandering mind.

It is a reality-shattering alternate world, isn’t it? What would be the point of doing anything? Emotions are what makes things go in our current world.

Suffering apologists would gesticulate to this and say, “SEE?!” because it’s not comprehensible. Others would dismiss this thought experiment as pure tomfoolery. But this heightened state is referenced everywhere, through all myths and religions.

Whatever the naysayers suggest, I keep this thought experiment in my back pocket. It helps when I survey around, wondering what is it exactly that I want to do, what is it exactly that I want to be. Want to experience.

Right now one could book a trip anywhere in the world, but choosing nowhere works too.

Right now one could get a lot of drugs and zoot a mind, but choosing sobriety seems okay.

Right now one could gather all their friends and play late into the night, snarfing pizza and root beer with peanut butter m&m’s, but eating the same two plain meals and staring at a wall and going to bed around 10pm is fine enough.

I am reminded of this analogy about a chain of rooms. Waiting for this one to shrink and unveil the next.

Because, whether you plug into the emotional battery of the world or not, it’ll still move forward. Things will still happen. Work will find you, friends too. Life still unfolds, whether you’re in that bliss.

歲月不居