Self-governance and self-control: Re-chipping the mind

What if instead of prisons, we could rehabilitate offenders no matter how violent or depraved instantly and release them into society harmless to society - Would you support such a move?

Potentially in the future some kind of form of this would be possible through some kind of technological mental hack, perhaps an implanted chip to control behaviours. I posted a piece last night about psychopathy prevalence and think that in some future, such crimes are either going to be dealt with post-incident like now or, pre-incident through identification or voluntary self-suppression.

This of course brings up many ethical questions such as the rights of the victims, punishment for crime and potential for things to wrong but, it doesn't hurt to hypothesize and put a little mental effort into such things now.

However, it isn't only crime that would benefit from such technology. In the US alone, over 200 Billion _source is currently spent on treating mental health problems. And I am sure that if one looks a little deeper, the costs are even higher if the knock-on effects are also considered.

Even though we would like to be able to claim we are in control of ourselves, this is hardly true at all considering most people struggle to do the most basic of tasks that they know will improve their lives like eating healthily or, quitting smoking. Once other complexities and stressors are compounded, our ability to adjust ourselves is not as great as what we may feel.

Taking out all of the operation risks and potential to be hacked etc, imagine if you had a chip implanted that you were able to give commands to in order to adjust certain psychological aspects of yourself. Changes to these things will of course then influence emotional states also, such as depression, addiction and the more basic happiness or sadness types.

This would give us an ability to truly self-govern as we wouldn't be bound by our willpower, personality type or access to specialized help. We would no longer need psychologists to correct our behaviors either as we would have the power to make the adjustments ourselves, at least on the things that are influenced by our thinking.

So, granted this tool, how do you think we would use it and would it make our lives better, or worse? Would we use it to improve ourselves in relationship to the community or, maximize ourselves much like we do now to the detriment of most?

Imagine if you want to lose a little weight but like me, your sweet tooth has a mind of its own or, your motivation to go to the gym or for a jog is just not strong enough to get you out of the door. Potentially, we could dial down the desire for sweets and dial up our motivation to go for a jog. Sound good?

Where would it end I wonder, would people become obsessive compulsive adjusters even if the obsession could be removed? Most likely, many people would make adjustments based on their current ideals of what life should be, what is already desired. They would attempt to become the best versions of themselves without thinking what that actually means. This could lead to a dialing up of the very behaviors that are destructive and harmful now.

It could also mean that people try to maximize the positive feelings without thinking about the consequences of their actions which would overbalance or underfeed certain necessary aspects. People already avoid pain, even if that pain is an important part of learning. What we want and what we need can be two very different things and humans generally overvalue the wants which leads to many of the problems a chip like this could potentially combat.

Just thinking about it a little should raise some interesting questions for each person and could make one reflect on not only the bad habits that might be unwanted but, the god habits that could be developed further. Of course, this isn't an option in this form yet so we have to rely on the tools nature has provided us so far.

That being said, we like to talk about living in a better, freer world with more opportunity so it is up to us to adjust ourselves in ways that we each think will help get there. It is up to us to make our own decisions and even though we can't switch things on and off, we can think about where we want to go, how we could get there and strive and struggle to deal with all the obstacles in our way. Including the largest of all, ourselves.

If you had a chip implanted that allowed you to change your thinking, what would be the first thing you would adjust? Is it important to you to improve or restrict in that area? Where could making that adjustment lead? What is stopping you now from taking the first steps?

Would you acting a little differently make the world a better place?

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]