Happiness In Another Universe

I've just finished reading an immense novel by Neal Stephenson called Anathem. It's an interesting story that takes place in an alternate cosmos with characters who use words not known in our own cosmos (if I ever find myself in that particular universe, I am now fluent in their language). In addition to science fiction, there's a lot of philosophy in the story dealing with things such as knowledge and where it comes from, as well as how the acquisition of knowledge may alter everything else. And something I particularly liked about the story was the existence of secluded places (like convents minus the religion) where characters spent their entire lives largely devoted to the study of science, math and philosophy. I wouldn't mind living like that, I think.

There were also repeating themes in the story related to various methods for finding happiness. As an example, there's a chemical called "allswell" which, if you ingest it and have enough of it in your system, will make you feel good in general. In my mind, I equated this made-up chemical with real-world habits like drugs, television and fast food. It wasn't a huge leap to make -- in the story, characters referred to the difference between working for your happiness and obtaining it the easy way, i.e., by some type of shortcut. Here's a snippet found early in the novel:

We moved on across the pavement slab. "Look," I said, "it's been understood at least since the Praxic Age that if you have enough allswell floating around in your bloodstream, your brain will tell you in a hundred different ways that everything is all right --"

"And if you don't, you end up like you and me," he said.

I tried to become angry, then surrendered with a laugh. "All right," I said, "let's go with that. A minute ago, we passed a stand of blithe in the median strip --"

"I saw it too, and the one by the pre-owned-pornography store."

"That one looked fresher. We could go pick it and eat it, and eventually the level of allswell in our blood would go up and we could eventually live out here, or anywhere, and feel happy. Or we could go back to the concent and try to come by our happiness honestly."

Sounds like happiness in an alternate cosmos is not much different from happiness here. If only for the fact that the story dealt with matters like these, I would say that I enjoyed the book (although, because of the length of the novel, I do wonder whether the author was using some sort of allswell himself). Still, it was a thought-provoking story all around.