Evolution - from preservation to happiness

This is an idea that occurred to me the other day as I sat around thinking about a Nova special on dogs. The special itself was a little dry, and I'm not sure why scientific, intellectual shows need to be boring. Anyway, I was reading until they started talking about narcoleptic dogs and studies being done on narcoleptic dogs to try identify the gene to help people with narcolepsy.

I have never known a person who had narcolepsy, although in college my friend's professor used to fall asleep in lecture every week so we called him professor narcolepsy. I think that was more an indictment of the class though than a real medical condition. Anyway, they had a little wiener dog that got so excited when it received a "good" brand of dog food it would hop around, wag it's little tail, then take a bite and fall asleep. This was the same dog that they showed "escaping" down the hallway. You have to picture this little wiener dog running down a very generic hospital, doors on all sides and a swinging door at the end. The dogs isn't going to make it anywhere, but I could still hear the song "Freedom" echoing as they showed him running. He made it about 3 doors, sat down, and fell asleep. It was great drama.

So I got to thinking. Evolution is by all accounts a slow process. If you speak to something like 40% of Americans, it doesn't even exist. In my mind, I can see a future where a large number of the people in the world are so unhappy that narcolepsy becomes epidemic. Follow me here, and you may need to think about with a slightly negative cynical world view. I think most people would answer the question "what do you want from life" with some sort of response including money, love, family, a better car, whatever. I think if you break the answer down, we are associating these items with happiness, and whatever that person thinks will make them happy that is how they are responding. Fine. In my mind, given the events of the world, the hatred, the move toward ignorance rather than intelligence, avoiding realities, people are really just looking for a little corner of happiness in a tv show, or a movie, or love or drugs or booze. It just seems to make sense, that short term happiness.

I would argue that narcolepsy is the body shutting down. We sleep when we are tired, or when we are sad, or because of habit. Whatever the reason, our bodies should be recharging during that time. However, we are not only recharging but we are also dropping out of life for some number of hours. What if, like the dog in the NOVA special, when we became happy our body shut itself down and went to sleep. This could be the next step in the evolution of happiness, as opposed to what historically has been our evolution for self preservation. It will be slow, but I think it could happen. The next evolutionary step? Instead of slipping into a short narcoleptic sleep triggered by happiness, we would slip away forever. The best time to go is with a smile if you ask me.

Here's to my great-great-great-grandchildren having miserable lives but living forever.