Eddie Morra, Bryan Finch, Jimmy Neutron, Jason Borne and Sherlock Holmes all show signs of NZT abuse. They use unnaturally quick thinking to escape perilous situations while saving others from a similar fate. Essentially this fictional pill from the movie and TV show Limitless allows the user to make vast connections and identify patterns around them which allows the best possible outcome of every action and interaction. I like to think of it as having every decision backed by a team of experts or like cheating in one of those old “choose your own adventure books”. Regardless of how you look at it, a pill loaded with miracles— it’s tempting and you know you want it.
The attraction of brain enhancing drugs has been around since and obviously before Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra used NZT to transform himself from down-and-out writer to senator and future presidential candidate in the film Limitless. The allure is quite obvious, everyone wants to be wicked smart but few can make it through a stack of books that don’t contain magical dragons or a villain with neither name nor nose. Available cognitive enhancers such as OptiMind operate under the idea of NZT but obviously not at the same extreme level of effects. I personally have not tried the above mentioned pill or others like it because I believe that enhancement pills can’t make me a better person, especially considering that most if not all pills come with possible side-effects often worse than the initial “infliction” they are created to fix.
Relying on or trusting a pill to resolve your mental shortcomings seems so simple and advantageous. We are living in a time of extreme convenience and many of us have gotten a little too comfortable with being comfortable. It seems logical that with a physical excess we also will seek a mental excess.
This materialism comes from a fear of dying I think. Every trinket and doo-dad we acquire is thought to become evidence of us really being here. So much value is put into possessions that somehow we feel it’s us leaving a part of ourselves behind after we’re gone. Similarly, the higher our mental function, the further we are thought to be from death.
The irony this mythical drug manifests is in the relationship between heightened intelligence and safety. If you are smarter, you will be able to put yourself further from danger. However in the movie and TV show, the users if not already dead are typically always in extreme danger because of the lofty personal goals they acquire. They become targets, working in whatever arena their enhanced skills are useful for, namely politics, gambling, or some area of justice. What either saves them or puts them in danger is more often than not their morality. The problem is that they are taking a drug, the drug is addicting and with addiction can come a strain on morality.
With morality and intelligence, consider in the movies the ambition of an evil genius in their quest for power, or even with Trump’s misguided claims on our country (backed by a team of smart individuals). Both seek control but hopefully lack the ability to maintain it. The villain’s plans are always foiled by a Bond/Powers individual who operate under strong morals and not greed. (I hope to god there’s a Bond out there to force Trump into retirement, or actually it should be an Austin Powers in order to maintain the comedic element of the Trump show). Intelligence alone is not the one element of survival or success.
I know that using the movies as examples doesn’t always strengthen an argument but the content in movies stem from our cultural values and beliefs. The thought of a drug like this scares me because I’m afraid of where individuals might take their enhanced potential and what they might do to preserve it.
Here’s a quote: “Work smarter, not harder”. Why does it have to be one or the other? What is it about cutting corners that is so appealing? Miracle drug or no miracle drug we have been told that if we put our minds to something we can accomplish it. If our brains one day are able to be unleashed and near infinite possibilities unfold, what would you do? Would you become happier, safer, or is ignorance bliss?
