"I have a theory,“ writes Robert Wright in his essay titled "E-Mail and Prozac (The New York Times, 17 Apr 07). "The more e-mail there is, the more Prozac there will be, and the more Prozac there is, the more e-mail there will be."
This is the sort of bizarre challenge issued to us by dreams. Or nightmares.
"When communicating via e-mail, questions arise. 'Is Joe – who once answered e-mail promptly but has fallen silent – mad at me? Or has my social status, in Joe’s view, dropped a bit, so I’m not quite worth his time?‘ And if the latter: 'Who the hell does Joe think he is?‘ There are two cures for this condition: (1) Chanting, 'It’s the spam filter.‘ (2) Prozac (or one of its rivals)."
This is the craziness of dreams. The paranoid fear of nightmares. Man against machine.
Wright grounds this nightmare in the waking reality of science. "Serotonin, the neurochemical Prozac boosts, was shaped by natural selection to help us handle social hieracrchy. Respect and other forms of positive feedback elevate serotonin, raising self-esteem and leading to the sort of self-assured conduct that befits a high-status primate. Disrespect and criticism can lower serotonin, leaving us open to self-doubt.“
Our emotional response system is logical, it serves a purpose. "Self-doubt can be valuable when it’s reality-based – if, say, Joe is really mad at you, and self-doubt leads you to wonder why and then make amends. So the serotonin gyroscope was a useful thing in the environment natural selection designed it for: the hunter-gatherer landscape of clear communication.“
This is the balanced world into which the nightmare intrudes, causing things to no longer work as they should. "The landscape of e-mail is full of noise and imagined signals. Serotonin can gyrate dysfunctionally.“
The solution to this waking e-nightmare? "The Prozac temptation: Just open that serotonin throttle and cruise through your in-box, unhampered by fancied slights, groundless anxieties and other impediments to bliss. ... With the time you don’t spend worrying about Joe, you can crank out e-mail to Jim, Sally and Sue. And efficiency is what e-mail is about, right? By ending the need to coordinate schedules, it lets us interact with lots of people – and interact along such narrow channels that we skip the bother of getting to know an entire human being.“ Better e-living through chemistry!
While the dreamy dream of e-communication promises us more and better connection with our fellow humans, the waking reality is different. "Technological change makes society more efficient and less personal. We know more people more shallowly.“
The human reality heretofore has been based on deep emotions and interconnection. "The reason we’ve always carved out a place for deep human contact is because we deeply need it. Some contours of the mind are so firm they lead us to selectively defy the imperative of growing efficiency. Ultimately, technological evoloution has had to accommodate human nature.“ This is how it should be: technology serving human needs.
But the dream has turned on us. "Now we enter the age of pharmacology and approach the age of genetic engineering. We can, in effect, change human nature to accommodate technological evolution. If the deft use of e-mail makes each of us more successful, we may, one by one, amend the structure of our selves until we are the optimal e-mail animals.“ The Disney-esque dream of support has shown its dark shadow, becoming a devouring nightmare. The tool has become the slave master. Humans, who like to flatter themselves as being the crown of creation, have become vassals in the servitude of addiction to both e-communication and pharmaceuticals.
Whose e-dream is this anyway?