The above cover is for the Russian edition of The Final Circle of Paradise
by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a novel raising a number of
provocative philosophic questions revolving around politics, society and
what it means to be human.
I'll focus on a key element: a newly
created drug called "slug" that comes in the form of a small electronic
piece that can be easily plugged into an electrical outlet. And once
activated, slug generates an artificial reality decidedly more intense,
more pleasurable, more ecstatic than our normal waking reality, so much
so one can become instantly addicted and spend nearly all day and night
lying in the bathtub under the spell of slug, "the final circle of
paradise"- until (gulp) the probability of brain hemorrhaging causing
death.
So the obvious question: to what extent should the
manufacture, sale and use of slug be permitted? What if slug would
instantly relieve people of their chronic pain, depression, anxiety,
insomnia or obsession to things like food, sex, pornography? But how
about slug being used as simply a recreational drug? And what if, as in
the novel, there is a real possibility of the entire human population
becoming addicted to slug leading to the end of any striving for social
and cultural development and change?
In our brave new 21st
century world of addiction to things like opioids, computer games, TV
and mass media, these questions have a weight far beyond the abstract.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
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