How many more will desire destroy?
The swirling vortex of desire forever threatens to suck us into its eye and toss our shattered hulls hurtling through the sky to collapse back into the amoral waves.
If you were asked to summarize the strongest element of human nature in a word, you would be making a wise decision to reply 'desire'. To be human is to desire. Yet before we open up this artery of thought, let me try and define the word desire in philosophical terms.
Desire comes before choice. It has to. We cannot choose to desire something. Desire is a reactive, pulling force to some material object external to us. At the same time, we have inside us machinery that allows us to desire in the first place. So, desire is a longing for something outside of us, that exists in addition to the ability to choose (and is not necessarily stronger than choice), and we have a natural inclination toward this desire. In other words, desire is the product of an emptiness inside, constantly provoked by some external force.
But why does desire destroy some people and not others? What force inside a person makes them more resistant to desire than another? Should we be more resistant to desire? Are the happiest among us not the ones who allow themselves to be carried along by this force?
What does Desire do to us?
Desire does not relate to happiness, but to satiation. The anticipation of desires fulfilment is itself what the body remembers when it nostalgically fantasizes over its past pleasures. In effect, the greater the speed at which desire can be satiated, the less satisfying the satiation of that desire, yet the more seductive the fulfillment of that desire (the easier it is to access a desire, the less pleasure it will bring, yet the very fact that this desire can be easily satiated makes it a more hounding force).
Desire is a habitual force, engrained in us. The desires we have become an essential part of our identities, regardless of how detrimental they are. To try and overcome a desire, therefore, is to shed part of what binds us together. Every morning we slip back into our identities and seek after our goals - often that goal is the satiation of some desire. Quite simply put, desire gives us something to do. Without this busy chase after the tail-of-want, we would forever question how it would have felt to have caught it, and this feeling cannot be extinguished.
Many religions are littered with examples of asceticism (denying oneself the fulfilment of material desire). These romantic religions are damned to self-pity: By recognising fulfilment of desire as pleasure and then denying it, the religious figure is asking to be looked upon as a sacrificer. Yet this ascetic is just as empty as someone forever trying fill the 'leaky vessel' of want with the 'clichéd metaphorical water of satiation'. Denial of something is nothing to build ones personality upon. Polarizing oneself with the greater mass, and thinking oneself good for not participating in something is a negative means of defining oneself. The faith in God/nirvana that monks/nuns supposedly seek in the place of material fulfilment is just as much a whimsical dream. Asceticism - it's a load of bollocks!
The religious drives away from the material world will never succeed anyhow - the power of something shiny and plastic will win over "higher spiritual goals" every-time. The only way to overcome the endless tugging, clutching at things beyond us is not to play holier-than-thou, but to argue that those desires would never lead to happiness in the first place - thus we are not denying ourselves by turning away from mass consumption, we are actually approving of ourselves (for what should replace endless outward desire, but a philosophic introspection and the cultivation of ones own creativity; yet this is the seed of another article).
If each mastered their own desires, what would happen?
It is foolish to be arrogant. We all have desires we succumb to, be it sex, lust for power, food, gadgets, war-gaming miniatures and so on. The question is not whether humanity can escape its desiring doom, the question is to what extent humanity will limit the damage it does to itself and its surroundings.
Desire overrides a persons moral codes; it overwhelms the barricades a person has prepared against the impending flood. It drives people to act in an irrational way. It cuts off understanding of cause and effect, it blinds us to consequences.
If everyone we lived with was able to understand and to some extent control their desires, then our world as we knew it would cease to function. The foolish neo-peasantry, forever running upon the treadmill of work would have nothing driving them to perform tedious, machinate and/or physically demanding tasks if they did not have some trivial reward to pursue. We live in a society where being wise with power would lead to its collapse - thrift would clog the engines of civilization and the walls will crumble. Desire, on a wider scale, is the only thing maintaining the alienating, miserable (yet sadly necessary) experience individuals have of consumerism. Only as an individual can one duck out of this seductive (but ultimately fruitless) game, and live ones selfish life free from shopping malls, pointless purchases, and fast foods.
For the greater masses to wake up and realize they are living a lie is too terrifying a change for one to comprehend, far less wish for.
By Selim 'Selim' Talat
