David Pearce

Around 7 or 8 years ago I began a "virtual friendship" with an Englishman by the name of David Pearce (it has been entirely mediated through e-mail and telephone calls). Dave is an extremely fascinating person, but he's a little shy; that's why he made me take down his real picture (which I replaced with the little boy and bunny rabbits!). A resident of Brighton, a city on the western coast of the UK, Dave has managed to establish himself as a sagacious armchair philosopher, an informed student of contemporary physics and biology, and above all, an extraordinarily self-taught authority on pyschiatry, drug culture, and the cutting edge of psychopharmacology. Despite having arguably bold and controversial views expressed therein, his writings on drugs are to my mind unsurpassed in clarity, fascinating detail, and in an openness to intriguing yet by no means outlandish speculation. Dave's corpus of work is entirely available on his exstensive, or should I say gargantuan, website. The centerpiece of his site is a lengthy and carefully argued manifesto by the name of "The Hedonistic Imperative". In this tract Dave outlines his vison of how life in our world can be rid of all pain and suffering through genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and safe designer drugs. He takes as a primary assumption biologist Richard Dawkin's hypothesis that genes are more or less viruses whose sole direction is toward self-replication. In this (rather pessimistic) view, the various forms of life on earth are essentially the vehicles of their completely amoral genetic drivers. Organic being is epiphenomenal to elemental genetic dynamics. To put it in yet another way, we are unwitting, tortured victims of natural processes; hapless fools manipulated cruelly by our slave-driving DNA. To our genes it is more beneficial than otherwise that we be selfish, ruthlessly competitive, and chronically unhappy: hence David's call to arms, a philosophic declaration of revolt against the Darwinian status quo of "Nature, red in tooth and claw" and what he likes to call "the psychochemical ghetto" in which we are forced to dwell. He wishes (and he says this explicitly) to bring about paradise on Earth, an aim to be achieved through the application of the liberating potentialities of hard science (rather than through well worn religious, social, or economic means).

As an aspiring Christian who has returned to the Catholic Church, I can no longer support Dave's agenda wholeheartedly. Although I would never wish that science be discarded by humanity, I believe it is an error of the modern world to believe that the physical sciences can deliver us from all unhappiness. My religion also challenges me to not view all pain in this world as necessarilly a bad thing, but instead to sometimes recognize it as a purifying agent which can spur us on toward greater love, joy, and humility. On the other hand, it is certainly harmful to embrace a distorted Christianity which makes suffering an end in itself- a grim, stoic belief system more fixated on agony, martyrdom, and death than on liberation, compassion, and charity. I should add that as a Catholic I am called to believe in the compatibility of faith and reason, which would of course include scientific reason. Though his muse Richard Dawkins is an avowed enemy of theism, it is still not impossible that many of Dave's insights could be integrated into a Christian philosophy and ethic. However, given the absolutist direction of his thought, by which I mean a tendency toward an all-encompassing scientism, as well as his goal of a completely earthly utopia, the possibility of a reconciliation with Christian Orthodoxy is mostly a long shot. The Society of Jesus at the University of St. Louis presides over a major center for the study of pyschiatry and religion, but I'm not sure if even those most liberal of clerics could baptize the Hedonistic Imperative. A number of Catholic theologians during the last century made impressive strides toward bringing Kantian critical philosophy into the realm of Christian thought, and some more recent thinkers have tried to do the same with the theories of the French anthropologist Rene Girard. As for David Pearce, however, I'm not holding my breath yet for him to be cited in a papal encyclical. (I don't think Dave is holding his breath either!) I am merely content to have enjoyed extensive communication with him- a man deeply unique, intelligent, creative, and humane; and I will always owe it to him that I know more about psychopharmacology than a Catholic could ever imagine what to do with. If I ever make it to purgatory, after I request to meet Kurt Cobain and Charles Baudelaire, I guess I'll ask where the nearest otherworldly pharmacy is and then purchase a theological MAO-inhibitor: a special anti-depressant blocking the deamination of the neuro-transmitters mediating faith, hope, and charity. More seriously, I suppose I owe it to Dave that I have a tiny idea of how the psychiatric meds I take for chronic depression are manipulating my fragile and sensitive brain chemistry.

LAST, AND BY NO MEANS LEAST, I have the obligation to thank David for encouraging and inspiring me to create this little website, "Breathing Space", which has slowly grown in expanse and (I would hope) in depth of content since I started it about 6 years ago. I love working on my website, and it is truly a consolation to me in my often measly, uneventful, and unremarkable existence. By temprement I am an idiot with computers and basically all other things technological. Without Dave's continual guidance and frequent intervention none of this would be possible. Thanks Dave, and may all be well with you!