On Desire, Why We Want What We Want

ON DESIRE, WHY WE WANT WHAT WE WANT

A BOOK

Irvine, B William. 2006. On Desire Why We Want What We Want. Oxford University Press: New York.

The Ebb and Flow of Desire

 “When we are lovesick, we lose a significant amount of control over our lives…Freud called lovesickness ‘the psychosis of normal people’” (Irvine 2006, pg 12).

Our desires choose us and not just the loving kind but the commercial kind as well.

 Other People

 Irvine helps us understand how the strongest purpose in our lives derives from caring for someone “To be alone is one of the greatest evils for man” (Irvine, pg 31). He says that even if we were totally fulfilled by our rituals we would still seek out people, illustrating this using The Last Man theory where a man wakes up to find himself all alone in the world, realising that the things he ‘wanted’ he no longer does without the presence of people. What he longs for is company, “If we compare the lifestyle of the last person with our own we will quickly recognize the impact the presence of other people has on our lives” (Irvine 2006, pg 42).The movie I Am Legend is a perfect example of this where one man continues to live utterly alone in the hope that someday he will find more people.

 The Wellsprings of Desire

Irvine explains that we do what we do to feel good and to avoid feeling bad, where the intellect is the thing in charge of our ‘needs’ and our emotions are the things that drive our ‘wants’. We need things to stay alive; we want things to make us happy, but sometimes it is quite difficult to listen to the intellect. Irvine compares our emotions to that of a whining five year old child – if we always give in to them then we lose our power over them (like a parent with a five year old child) but by listening to the intellect we can maintain power.

Today we have more wants than we have needs and most of these are un-fulfilled. Marketing knows that the way to penetrate human happiness is to make us want things.

Imagine you lived only by needing things, you’d be like a puppy or a tree, content and totally in the present however you’d also be pretty robotic and dull without desire. We’d also maybe all be the same. Our desires give us personality.

The Psychology of Desire

Sometimes we miswant because we fantasise about what will make us happy, so Irvine suggests tying to only want things we will like having when we get them. He says that miswanting and adaptation lie at the heart of all human instability like a satisfaction treadmill: want, get, and want something else. He also says that “The mind commands the body. The mind commands itself” (Irvine 2006, pg 115).

Religious Advice

Buddha, the Enlightened One, believed that the best way to end the evil and sorrow of the world was to overcome desire. He advised overcoming desire through recognising a series of ‘Noble Truths’:

1/ The First Noble Truth is that life is full of suffering (our lives are not satisfactory).

2/ The Second Noble Truth is that this suffering is caused by desire and ignorance.

3/ The Third Noble Truth is that by overcoming desire and gaining wisdom we can overcome suffering”.

4/ The Fourth Noble Truth tells us that the best way to deal with desire is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path.

Buddha rejected hedonism and asceticism and advises us to follow the ‘middle path’ i.e. between the two extremes of self indulgence and self mortification.

How can we overcome desire? Not, says Bondhi, by repressing our desires but by “changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. By not stealing, causing pain, lying etc mind free of unwholesome thoughts e.g. sensual desire, ill will, dullness and drowsiness, restlessness and worry, and doubt. (Irvine, 2006)

Zen practice is supposed to allow us to overcome desire without desiring that we overcome it. The enlightened person is spared much of the anxiety of decision making, able to make decisions very easily.

In Christianity the goal is not to extinguish desire but to overcome sinful desire by means of prayer with the incentive of going to heaven.

The Islamic take on desire is similar to Christianity: Muslims pray to overcome forbidden desires.

Philosophical Advice

Hellenist Philosophers believe the primary reason for doing philosophy is so we can have better lives.

The Stoics argue that the key to a good life is to master desire “The Key insight of Epictetus is that it makes no sense to fret about the things that aren’t up to us” (Irvine 2006, pg 241).

What I love about the Stoics is their attitude to power: they say “Do not seek to have events happen to you as you want them to he declares but instead want them to happen as they do happen” (Irvine 2006). Irvine describes having power as something achievable if we listen to our intellect and don’t give into our desires.

The Sceptics valued tranquillity and believed that the key to happiness was to refuse to form beliefs about the world around us: “The Physical pain might be identical to that inflicted by the doctor, but the psychic pain will be extreme (this claim echoes the Stoic claim that what hurts us is not so much the world around us as the thoughts inside our heads)” (Irvine 2006, 252).

The Eccentrics are people who live without feeling like they need to fit in with society. “Aristotle said that a man who feels no need to live in society must either be a beast or a god” (Irvine, 2006). Some remove themselves from society as is seen in the movie Into the Wild a real story about a man who ran away from societal pressures to be self sufficient and reliant in the ‘wild’.

The eccentrics don’t feel compelled to prosper financially, pray, meditate - instead they suggest watching other people and learning from what these people call ‘success’ and seeing how miserable it makes them. Most eccentrics are not that way by choice.

Eccentrics are like children because they take obvious and intense delight in things the rest of us find commonplace or boring. “Many elderly realise this and take to eccentricity like a duck to water. At long last they can be themselves, a right they feel they have earned” (Irvine 2006, pg 275).