Boredom.
Would we be bored without pain to reset our homeostatic mechanisms?
Certainly is true now. I love to exercise hard and get high.
Severe pain though can make us depressed and lack motivation.
It's hard not to think in terms of our present design.
I always argue to idiots who say, "without pain there is no joy," that try living with chronic pain, either physical or mental, and then see if when you do experience joy, you think it has been worth all the effort.
I am not saying you are one of these people, obviously you think the opposite of most people. But I do really think some pain is manageable and maybe, at this point in our evolution, is necessary to experience the highs, but too much pain, is nothing but detrimental, a stifling burden that is NOT necessary to experience for anyone. For instance does ANYONE NEED to experience what Holocaust survivors experienced? Of course not! No one needs to be traumatized for life, and unfortunately many chronic sufferers are.
I really hate the expression, "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." We have this innate instinct to think that when we struggle, some nirvana awaits us, or better put, "it will be worth the effort, and pain, because things will get better." I know from suffering with a debilitating mental illness that, in this case although I have got stronger, and it's made me a richer person in some ways, if I had a choice I would obviously choose not to have had this experience. I'm a firm believer that without serious pain, of any form, we can still learn to empathize with other people's pain, and even appreciate, fully, our fortune, and obviously go on to live a better quality of life. So, yes, the abolition of human suffering is necessary. And even if the first trials of hedonic engineering were to put me in an opiate like blissful state, I would still go for that over how I normally feel!
Depression itself, as you said, usually leads to apathy, avolition, anhedonia, and a very low low quality of existence. In fact depression kills. One study said serious depression may be as harmful to max life span as chronic smoking. I hope this is not true, but it can kill. I want to get off the hedonic treadmill, pleasure reward/ pain, suffering axis, and experience states of mental being, that I could only aspire to imagine at this point.
Edited by dfowler, 22 September 2010 - 08:23 AM.