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THE HEDONISTIC IMPERATIVE
Heaven on Earth?

paradise-engineering

ABSTRACT

"...an all-pervasive network of virtual realities, however, will enable everyone to have their intentional objects of desire fulfilled, and at minimal cost. Interactive or solipsistic, artistic masterpiece or pornographic wish-fulfilment, an ever-growing software library of virtual worlds will enable everyone to have their dreams come true. Yet on its own such a scenario wouldn't, mirabile dictu, make most of us much happier for very long. The hedonic treadmill would still grind. For a revolution of rising expectations will eventually lead people to expect, as of right, to enjoy and enact any set of perceptions and narrative structures they choose. We'll expect to do so in virtual worlds with laws and body-images of our own choosing. In the absence of at least a minimal mesolimbic repair-job, then boredom, angst and other dormant negativities would periodically surface to spoil the ostensibly perfect idylls and utopias. For ironically, a mass migration into virtual worlds may come to represent Peripheralism's final fling. Only total control of one's notional surroundings may be enough to convince many people of the futility of pure environmental manipulation in chimerical pursuit of lasting happiness and fulfilment. The symbiosis of biologically programmed euphoria and mature virtual reality software engineering, however, is an awesomely good prospect..."



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