as harmful a superstition as any?
one sense, after all, animals no more need liberating than babies and toddlers need liberating: they need looking after. Thus The Hedonistic Imperative argues that there is only one long-term way to abolish the ghastliness of suffering on a planetary scale. Such a strategy entails eradicating its biological roots. This can be done only by using genetic-engineering and nanotechnology. This major transition in the evolution of life will replace the DNA-driven pain and malaise of our evolutionary past. The molecular architecture of the old Darwinian Era will be succeeded by modes of consciousness that are more beautiful than anything we can currently imagine. Counter-intuitively, the world’s last unpleasant experience – probably some (relatively) minor pain in some (to us) obscure marine invertebrate – will be a well-defined event. It will be as precisely dateable as any other historical milestone; and far more important. For it will mark the end of the ugliest chapter in the history of l