Visions of Julia filled my head. I wanted to know what she was doing every second of the day; I wanted her to be happy, I wanted her to be safe. Why? Because I’d chosen her. But … why had I felt compelled to choose anyone? Because in the end, the one thing that most of the donors must have had in common was the fact that they’d desired, and cared about, one person above all others. Why? That came down to evolution. You could no more help and protect everyone in sight than you could fuck them, and a judicious combination of the two had obviously proved effective at passing down genes. So my emotions had the same ancestry as everyone else’s; what more could I ask?

...happiness itself meant nothing. Life without it was unbearable, but as an end in itself, it was not enough. I was free to choose its causes—and to be happy with my choices—but whatever I felt once I’d bootstrapped my new self into existence, the possibility would remain that all my choices had been wrong.

..our descendants, and in principle perhaps even our elderly selves, will have the chance to enjoy modes of experience we emotional primitives cruelly lack: sights more majestically beautiful, music more deeply soul-stirring, sex more exquisitely erotic, mystical epiphanies more awe-inspiring, and love more profoundly intense than anything we can now properly comprehend…
..our mood-enriched descendants may view us as little better than sociopaths. When naturally loved-up and blissful on a richer cocktail of biochemicals than anything accessible today, our post-human successors will be able, not just to love everyone, but to be perpetually in love with everyone as well. Whether we’ll choose to exercise this option just because it’s technically feasible is another question. Cynics may argue that the scenario of lifelong egoistic bliss is more plausible. It’s been well said that when we’re in love, we find it astonishing it’s possible to love someone else so much – because normally we love each other so little. This indifference, or at best diffuse benevolence, to the rest of the world’s population is easily taken for granted in a competitive consumerist society – or on the plains of the African savannah. Quasi-psychopathic callousness to our fellows is an ingredient of ‘normal’ archaic mental health. Yet our deficiencies in love are only another grim expression of selfish DNA. If humans had collectively shared the greater degree of genetic relatedness common to many of the social insects (haplodiploidy), then we might already “naturally” be able to love each other with greater enthusiasm. Sociobiologists would then explain why we all loved each other so deeply, not so little.