As an aspiring neuroscientist, one of my (unlikely) ambitions is to eradicate pain, and replace it with some sort of system that simply alerts the person in question to bodily harm. Also, if somehow the mind could be manipulated to find extreme pleasure in a simple thing like stroking your hair. However this raises some philosophical questions: how will human's cope with no pain? We know that depression is more prevalent in modern culture because the human mind is not evolved to cope with modern life, so the small stresses get blown out of proportion, and we overlook the things we should be greatful for, like good health and life expectancy. Depression sets in as we ignore the advantages of modern life and focus on the small inconveniences. So if suffering is eradicated, and pleasure is accessible by everyone at anytime, what if the periods of slightly less happinness become periods of suffering? What if we start blowing it out of proportion again, and getting depressed when we're not stroking our hair? What if suffering is an essential part of human existence and we can't avoid it? Would the solution to be to make humans feel a constant and unchanging level of happinness? Does that not destroy our humanity?

What do you think?