Someone told me earlier this week that "The world would be so much better if everyone smoked weed because then no one would care enough to start wars." No wars sounds good to me, so I started thinking about a world where everyone is high on a depressant. What would it really be like? The answer I came up with is clearly portrayed by the Eloi in H. G. Well's "The Time Machine." Really the novel is a protest against capitalism, but I think it's also about people who are high.
It takes place 802,301 ad. When the time traveler gets there he finds a civilazation that is perfectly peaceful and lives in perfect luxury and contentment. At first this sounds utopian, but soon he finds a library full of rotted books that have not been touched since before anyone there can remember. When the time traveler starts reading from the Bible and no one understands or cares about the concepts of time, eternity, or mercy. Not one of them can read or write and their language is very limited. There is a decaying museum in the city with a whole bunch of artifacts considered useless by the population, which has no clue what any of them are for. Some of them are weapons but others are pieces of art and history, completely useless to people who just don't care.
Some drugs cause people to get billigerent, some cause them to hallucinate. Maijuana just relaxes people and places them in a state of passive euphoria. They are very rarely criminal. They sit around and enjoy colors and sounds. No class, no conversation, no work. They just sit around and "be happy" just like the Eloi. Is it worse to have wars or to have nothing worth fighting for? I'm interested in your opinions.
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