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

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