The Freedom To What?

Freedom of choice is acclaimed in our society as something good. The greater the quantity of choice, the better. More TV channels, more species of chocolate bar, more movies to watch, more persons to fornicate with, and so forth. However, I think this acclaim is highly misguided. Freedom of choice is not a bad thing, I just do not think it is necessarily always a good thing. The ability to choose between various options is not in and of itself of any value, especially if those choices are poor (see all those TV channels!) A simple example of this is as follows: in scenario A you have a choice between a thousand poisons. In scenario B you have a choice between two cups of tea. However much you may dislike tea (a highly unrealistic proposition, but bare with it!) the latter scenario would be superior, despite the fact that there was less choice involved. Just having more things to choose does not mean our situation is any better.

So why do we as a society value freedom of choice, spectrum of choice, and quantity of choice as if it were the single most important facet of being happy and human? Why but because we are what we consume, rather than what we create. We have created a society of, if you'll excuse the cliche, nectar obsessed drones and all of us are responsible. Materialistic, individualistic hedonism is the dominator of our Age, and desperate shallowness the engine of growth. The freedom to have desires satisfied has been placed above the freedom to be left alone to develop and create wonderful things. We tolerate ever more intrusions into our privacy from ever more powerful states and corporations (provided we get our banal TV channels and little treats on the weekend). We have willingly given away true power, democratic power, for comfortable pleasure.

For the average citizen what is there to live for beyond pleasure and status-chasing, in this part of the world they happen to call the West? With little sense of belonging to society or to a meaningful narrative; with no natural blossoming of joy from the mastery of skills and creation of art, we must be given false joy by being constantly overwhelmed by material things and fleeting desires. And in order to shift these things upon us we must first feel inadequate, incomplete. An entire media industry exists to this end, trying to make us feel like we are missing out on something someone else has got; perverting our natural competitive streak into something far more ruthless and twisted.

A huge question mark now hangs over our heads: how long is this going to go on for before we are awakened? In truth, we already are waking up. But we are not enlightened just yet. We still have this entitlement to the bountiful gifts of the earth, and feel like we have earned the right to destroy natural beauty and creatures for the sake of an appetite which can never be fulfilled. Desire is still seen as an end in itself, rather than something to be channelled away harmlessly (or in the extreme, to be flushed away like any other bodily waste).

In this age of desire fulfillment, no one has the moral ground to attack any other. Desire is a universal malaise. The poor are just as desirous as the rich, women just as much as men. We are all desirous. The major problem is not that in our current state some people can fulfill their desires more than others. Balancing out the level of destructive hedonism is not going to make things that much better. The problem is that for the average citizen the highest value is desire fulfillment - rather than scientific endeavour, philosophical discovery, artistic creation, natural belonging, and so on. This is why freedom to choose between pleasures is problematic; it is no real freedom at all, enslaving us all to unfulfillable desire.

I am not arguing that freedom is a bad thing. I am not arguing that oppression of freedom, or conservative fear of freedom, is any form of solution to our goalless hedonism. I believe that individual freedom for all should be the end goal of justice. We should be free to be choose, but we should not use that liberty to choose poorly (the maxim 'harm ye none, do as ye will' sums it up perfectly). Nor should we see quantity of choice as important as quality. This doesn't mean that I believe we should never choose pleasurable (or even self-destructive) options, only that it should never be our ultimate goal, nor a regular occurence, nor something to be proud of.

We can be truly glorious -

We are in this part of the world they happen to call the West, perhaps the most imperialistic gathering of civilizations there ever was. The world has imitated our vices and vitues to a large extent, and because of this we are arrogant enough to consider ourselves the centre of the world - which is not entirely untrue. We needn't continue practicing our vices, which fuel wars in distant parts of the world for material enrichment. With a new value system, we could create a heroic individualism of universal Justice, which measures wealth in human cultivation; education, art, philosophy, science, and sees pleasure as a mere sideshow to these more pressing desires. To choose such greatness is to choose wisely. Our highest honour could be to those most virtuous, not those most self-important and parasitic (the rich!) With our power we could lead the world, not trammel it. We could answer the nihilism of God's death with a heroic humanism and environmental belonging, filling the void in our souls with a spiritual reconnection to the earth and its creatures.

The highest praise we might bestow should be upon the astronauts who risk everything to ascend to the final frontier, the scientists who work toward the nuclear fusion which will end our energy needs, the philosophers who help us make sense of a rapidly changing world and our place in it, the great artists who bring these human achievements to light, and everyone who ever lived for more than just themselves. We must turn away from the vapid, empty, soulless celebrities whose mere mention is enough to soil the whole of this newsletter, and who will leave us empty in our graves if we do not turn away from their sick light. We would have wasted it all for nothing.

The problem is that this transformation of our values requires us to challenge the comfortable, shiny, glamourous world we are fooled into thinking actually exists. I think this would take a heroic departure from evolution's path, the reversal of the natural instinct from danger to security, familiarity to newness, pain to pleasure. We would have to let go of all of our most comforting myths. We would have to be brave to even begin such a change, but brave in an intellectual sense, more than a 'run into a burning building to save a child' sense.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Why exist in the face of oblivion?

This response was written in reply to a wonderfully put question asking why we should continue existing in the absence of a benevolent creator.

The reason, I think, why we might exist in the face of oblivion is because we are, in addition to whatever soul or mind you may posit, a living organism. Why does moss grow on the windowsill? Its life seems futile to us, it continues to grow. Nothing inside of the moss will prevent it from growing and sustaining itself. We must be removed from the brute life-force inherent in all creatures of biology if we are suggesting that lack of cosmic relevance should indicate an early exit! This 'will to live against any odds' must surely be our axiom - the starting point, or truthism, upon which we build all else. This is the first and most obvious point. You exist because some part of you is 'programmed' to continue existing.

You breathe so that you may continue breathing. It is as simple as that really. You do not need a justification for this brute existence. Having said that, life requires sustaining. It is not a given, and we must endlessly nourish ourselves to cling on to existence. I suppose in that sense we must actively choose what is best, or sufficient, to maintain ourselves. Fortunately we have the apparatus to do so - a body!

Now you have life, but there is still a great expanse of time before you. What you live for is up to you; it cannot be generalized, handed down, or forced upon. Hopefully it is something artistic, self-caused and heals the wounds of Man. Hopefully it is not celebrity, fame and wealth. Again, another simplistic answer, but it is hard to say much else. If you respect philosophy, you respect your readers ability to work it out for themselves. In this sense, there is not a universal answer to be prescribed to all, only enrichment and refinement by posing clever questions. Maybe somewhere down the line we will coalesce into a beautiful whole.

Short and sweet, a succinct story -

The fact is seventy years, in the context of our species, seems long enough to do some decent stuff. Those seventy years are not nothing. Perhaps it is just about the right amount of time for us. A succinct story is better than a long and convoluted one.

Those who believe in an omnipotent creator often see this world as a sideshow for 'better things to come'. It is all about the sequel! Nothing they can do in the 'finite world' can compare to the 'infinite' and the transcendent. Yet to claim that our immediate experience of the world is completely and utterly nothing seems bizarre to me. I have no such pretensions. This is all there is. Responsibility lies with Man. Deliverance of justice lies with Man. Ideology and belief lies with Man. Creativity and the world-narrative lies with Man. Everything that is found, is found upon Earth. There is no philosophical position as life-affirming as this. Oblivion gives us ultimate freedom and responsibility: a weight heavier than the cross, a sphere greater than that which Atlas had to haul around upon his shoulders. For the former was a miracle worker who had the promise of eternal paradise, and the latter was a gargantuan Titan! We are just ordinary human beings facing down the abyss, alone.

I don't see why we need benevolent creators above our comprehension. I can't understand how we can practice absolute moralities which were beyond our ability to create. Is Man not enough? What about benevolent order and flexible morality which can adapt with the times? These things can be ours in this life, if only we were not such lazy, abysmal thinkers and mass-underachievers.

Oblivion -

Oblivion may or may not be nothing; the total annihilation of personality. We do not know, and may never do so. But oblivion comes after the fact. Oblivion needn't concern one for the present, and worrying about it will not alter its inevitability. To bring the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus into the fold: "Death means nothing to us...when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist."

Do we truly live in the shadow of oblivion? I do not think so. You have governments and corporations whose plans see no further than the next election or boom-bust cycle. You have next door neighbours whose concerns lie no further than organizing a birthday party and paying the bills. And guarantee yourself that any so-called deep-thinker does not confront their mortality every single day. Even the word death carries no weight until it is truly comprehended, and that is very rare indeed; occuring in spells which catch you unawares (oblivion is just like any other fascinating thing we humans do without realizing it, such as devouring organic matter and turning it into us, absorbing vitamins from sunlight, processing waste and making it come out, and so forth).

Oblivion, properly thought through, is like a sleep from which there is no waking. This is not easy to come to terms with, and may never be fully accepted. But why? If I may end on a wild speculation, our species inherited the ability to comprehend death rather late in day, and we are not designed to fully come to terms with it. For once we fully understood nothingness in our minds, how would we return to something?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Desire and Individualism

“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.” - Epicurus

How better to start an article on desire than with a quote by Epicurus - called by many the happiest man who ever lived. And before we continue, let us not equate the 'man' in his quote with an actual, male man. Epicurus was one of the few ancient Greek philosophers to teach women and slaves. Now, to deploy some counter-intuition!

The culture of desire we find ourselves in is often labelled 'individualistic'. This seems intuitive - a desire fulfilled means someone is getting what they want. Yet desire is not an individualism. Desire comes from outside of the self, and depends on an intrusive external object to manifest itself. It is not a creative flourishing or self-expression; desiring something and getting it does not make you a unique individual. We do not choose to desire things, we merely choose between desires. This means that desire can, and is, engineered from without.

If the ability to desire something were determined from within me, I could look at, say, a tissue and desire it! Yet the tissue is already mine, it is not separate from me. In the shaky language of property, I 'own' the tissue. Where is its mystique, its appeal? The tissue has none. I desire only the superior tissue - the iTissue 5G, with its multivarious (but ultimately futile) gadgets. This new, special tissue lies beyond my grasp, and that is precisely its appeal. Once something is claimed, tasted, possessed, it loses appeal, revealed as the charlatan it is. So, it cannot be said that my desire is individualistic, because once obtained the desire creates no inner-fulfillment. It is only when a desire is unclaimed that it can promise fulfillment.

By comparison, if I wanted a lute I could get one, but I would need to work on playing it. The lute would be the beginning of an endless journey of self-discovery and creation. My desire to become better at the lute is vague, an adventure through mist. It is a journey that can be entirely unique to myself as an individual. My creative urges on the lute would be spontaneous, seemingly emerging out of nothing; out of my self? Only I can fulfill this want to become a master-lutist! Whereas the desire for the iTissue 5G is direct, highlighted and colourful like the petals of a flower. Like a bee I would have to buzz along a certain prescribed path to then obtain the snazzy tissue of my dreams. Most people can fulfil this desire, ending up in the same place as everyone else, and so it does not differentiate them from other desirers.

To continue on from the previous point, the word 'individualist' is bandied about and hurled at those who are possessive of material objects. Yet to participate in rampant desiring (i.e. consumerism) is not 'greed', it is artificial 'need'. It is the lack of individuality, rather than an expression of it. It demonstrates the individuals inability to complete themselves. It is the most obvious form of conformity available to us today! It may be disguised as an individualism - promising uniqueness or identity for example - but this is a mere deception. Desire operates at the level of 'Man the herd-beast'. Desire is encouraged by our environment, it is generated by masses (if I had to simplify the history of Man into a single sentence, I would proclaim: 'He has one. Therefore I want one!')

This herd mentality obscures the true quality of the things we desire. Desire obscures quality, it does not indicate it. Things that are desired are desirable because they are desired. A thing will be talked about because it is talked about. This is herd, not an individualism. Furthermore, things can become ultra-desirable by virtue of being exclusive, to make one feel special for obtaining them. This is an equally spurious reason to desire something. To bring these general claims into reality, let us consider the following.

Advertising in the previous era would emphasize that by obtaining a product, this would raise one above all competition; towering over the meagre herd, offering a step-up into this dream-world of glamour and envy. Today's advertising tends to be different. It promises to share an experience with our herd (such as a party-inducing bucket of factory-farmed chicken) and to demonstrate just how much one is enjoying oneself among said herd. Both are deceptive ploys, and both are overly concerned with the herd. Again, it does not sound terribly individualistic to me.

This demonstrates how desire is dependent on what others think and feel. It is thus further removed from 'individualistic greed'. Intuitively, it is much easier to explain rampant material possession as an individual not considering what everyone else thinks. This I believe to be the wrong way round; it is someone all too conscious of what others think and feel who wants more than everyone else. Yet there is another reason why desire cannot exist within a healthy individualism: self-control.

For desire is not 'used up'. The faster one fulfills desires, the more one wants. For instance, suppose I desired a pair of new socks once every week. I would become accustomed to obtaining one new pair of socks a week. Without that one pair of socks, I would feel frustration, and emptiness. Yet suppose that one pair was not enough and I lost my discipline. I now purchase two pairs of socks a week. I now need more socks, and more, and more. When the novelty of two pairs falls away, I will need three, then four. Eventually, I am obtaining five new pairs of socks a week, and I become accustomed to this. Obtaining more socks hasn't made me want less socks, it has made me want more. Desire operates in cycles of wanting, followed by acquiring, followed by brief fulfillment, before returning to 'want'. Paradoxically, being able to get what one wants faster, simply leaves one desiring more, as the cycle of 'want' and 'acquire' is shortened.

These cycles of desire cannot be overcome in their entirety - we are desiring machines. For this reason, I do not call desire an individualism; desire does not represent our individuality (and to paraphrase Max Stirner somewhat, they hardly belong to us at all). An understanding of ourselves as creatures of 'yesterday-today-tomorrow' could help us understand where our desires come from, and such an understanding provides us with greater self-control. Yet nothing can extinguish desire itself, no matter how much we wish to. The pursuit of relinquishing desire is itself a painful task. The biblical saints used to go out into the desert to escape material temptation - something even I would balk at! Desire in and of itself is no evil, no guilt, nor shame. As imperfect beings we are bound to have a few vices. It is merely the means of obtaining our desires - namely how much harm they cause on the way - that should provoke ethical alarm.

My conclusion is simple. Being surrounded by desire is not an indicator of individualism. To be put-upon and judged is not the breeding ground of self-development and a healthy individualism. Freedom to be a self-mastered individual is freedom from rampant desiring. We should not measure happiness in how often we obtain what we desire; whoever dies with the most toys dies the emptiest.

How soon once one has possessed something, is one possessed by it?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The happiest person who ever lived...Epicurus

The word epicurean I imagine to be rarely used. It seems to be colonized by an impossibly pretentious gaggle of gourmet food enthusiasts, who have perverted the name of a great historical figure. Somehow, they have decided to take the least materially hedonistic philosopher in two and a half thousand years of western philosophy, and apply his name-label to the act of being materially hedonistic! It is akin to starting a philanthropic movement and calling it napoleonic.

Those of us who respect the word epicurean beyond the consumption of some tortured animals flesh, or a quaff of pretentiously overpriced, fancy wine, should fight to have the theft of our beloved word revoked. And of course, we are not only fighting for a mere word, but the legacy it represents!

Yet before this article resumes, let us take pause and consider Epicurus of Samos, a philosopher who lived in Athens for most of his (incalculably happy) life. Epicurus lived in an academy of his own creation, The Garden, surrounded by his disciples and friends. He opened the doors of this academy to women and slaves, who at the time were not given the same opportunities as manly, beard-stroking men.

In summary, Epicurus taught that fear of death and general anxiety were the ultimate driving forces of misery, and that to live a happy life we must be free from them. As he did not believe in gods (at best considereding them distant and unconcerned with our affairs) or an afterlife, this meant that Epicurus' goal was the seeking of happiness in this life, with happiness as an end in itself - thus making him a hedonist. 

However the epicurean is not a hedonist in the vein that the word has acquired, a pleasure seeker whose sole purpose is to obtain physical treats (the cyrenaics are an example of a greek philosophical school matching this description; a consumer is a modern example). Epicurus was a hedonist who considered friendship, independence, freedom from fear of death and an analysed life as the height of all pleasures. 

He taught that the small joys in life will lead to a state of content happiness, a freedom from anxiety the Greek's named ataraxia. The hedonist who wants it all will find herself plunged into a world of anxiety and uncertainty in order to obtain her every whim - she will have to work extra hard to sustain her material treats; if she steals, she will always have to look over her shoulder. By asking for little we can stay out of danger, we can appreciate what we have, we can be happy right here, right now.  We can gain control of our lives only when we have overcome desire.

This is the basis of Epicurean Virtues.

In contrast to ascetics:

We cannot truly call an epicurean ascetic. It is the contemplative monk we would call ascetic, for his self-denial is an extreme act of rejecting earthly experience in the name of some higher realm. The monk seems to thrive on a holier-than-thou attitude. He inadvertantly makes himself a novelty to be observed by people; his extremism is fascinating, but not inspirational. People will see the monk and think, 'Let us admire his holiness! Look at how he lives, what a moral character!' but they will not see the monk as a realistic example - the monk is too far removed from the onlookers goals of earthly physical pleasure to seriously affect those people. 

The epicurean lifestyle may appear similar to the monk's. The epicurean shuns the so-called material pleasures drifting around her. Her refusal to participate may appear to have the same motives as the monk; a rejection of earthy pleasure for the sake of some higher spiritual ideal. 

Yet how different the epicurean is from the monk! In fact, the epicurean has less in common with the monk than the holy man's supposed opposite; the pleasure seeker. The monk and the seeker have both acknowledged certain physical things as being desirable. The monk then refuses those desires, whilst the seeker indulges in them as often as possible. The epicurean says, 'Desire is not pleasurable'.  The epicurean is not refusing (so-called) life, but is refusing the facade of happiness offered her. She has come to realize that self-denial ultimately lies in the endless desire for physical pleasures, and that by passing over these transient treats she can reach a state of constant happiness which is far more rewarding. 

Unlike the monk, the epicurean is not chasing an afterworld, she is not relying on anything outside that which she can experience to give her life meaning - she is not denying this life for the next. The epicurean does not consider herself a sacrificial novelty for some higher goal - the epicurean rejects most physical pleasure and is happier for it! Whats more, the epicurean is not a novelty, but is someone who can argue her philosophy and actually live it. Epicureanism offers people the opportunity to be happy, not to deny themselves happiness like an ascetic.

To be fair, the word ascetic can also apply to one who 'abstains from the normal pleasures of life', yet even this definition, and its use of the word abstain, implies that the epicurean is somehow withdrawing from something; they are abstaining from normal pleasure. In my eyes, the epicurean has long since passed over those supposed pleasures, and is not so much abstaining as she is indifferent to them.

To conclude, please do not poison the concept and the word epicurean by associating it with the hedonistic morons who have so captured the beloved word, and next time you are at the table with a real epicurean, do not be surprised when she refuses your eloquently prepared veal steak, but rather understand that she is refusing your hard work in the name of her own state of happiness. She most certainly will not feel like she is missing out on anything, nor punishing herself for the love of some divine higher-realm.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

How many more will desire destroy? - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

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