Acidentally deleted my previous post to your page! feels weird to repost it, so just leaving a comment here to clear any potential confusion, my mistake lol
All my old friends became different people. I covet the kind of relationship you portray.
I have exactly 1 person that fits that description. Maybe a few more that I do occasionally talk to from university. But live long enough and your current friends eventually become old friends.
I think people would only fulfill their base instincts. There's no consistency to what makes you feel good/bad, so you can't learn from your experiences. Consistent reactions create social norms. Prisons only "work" as a deterrent because people don't want to be in them, and illegality only exists because we can claim through shared experience that some actions are objectively bad.
If your emotional state was entirely independent of what you do, then why bother doing anything that doesn't serve your immediate survival?
Considering happiness is all about chemicals been released in body and been controlled by hormones and a million other things, this is partially true. Your genetics can screw you up and can make you an unhappy person for life. And there are things like dopamine depletion. You cannot just be happy forever unless you are a junkie.
@brennholz If you don't have any control over your emotional state, then maybe there are other meaningful things that could motivate us. Like doing the pragmatic or logical thing rather than just following emotions. I don't think emotions being out of the picture would lead to only decisions concerning basic instincts and survival.
@metamorphosis, many philosophers do acknowledge that happy and sad times will come and go whether you like it or not. But I find that if you live on the fringes of empires, there is a feeling that a lot of your fortune is out of your hands.
Thanks for sharing, i like those short stories :)