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).

The Last Man - I Am Legend

THE LAST MAN - I AM LEGEND

Matheson, Richard. 1954. I Am legend. Orian Books: London.

Reading Irvine’s Last Man theory made me think of the film I Am Legend. I Am Legend is set in a world where a deadly plague epidemic has turned the world's population into vampires. The protagonist of the story, Robert Neville, finds himself to be the last living human being on earth. Neville locks himself inside his house at night when the vampires come out, and then during the day he roams the empty city killing the sleeping vampires as they hide from the sun as well as studying the vampire virus in a bid to try and cure it.

I Am Legend 2007 Trailer

Neville's only companion is his un-affected dog, but sadly one day when they are out his dog is attacked and infected and Neville must strangle his beloved companion as it turns into a vampire. In anguish he decides to end his own life and drives his car into a den of vampires only to be rescued by a woman and her son who are still human. They are cornered in his home by the vampires and in one last act he tells the mother and son to hide and gives them the antidote as he self sacrifices himself for their safety.

Sam the dog dies in I Am Legend (2007)

I researched the film and found that it was originally a book by Richard Matheson. Further I realised that most ‘end of the world’ and ‘zombie’ epidemic movies and stories originated from this original one written in 1954, for example, The Last Man on Earth in 1964, Omega Man in 1971, I Am Legend in 2007 and I am Omega in 2007. It was also the inspiration behind the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.

The Last Man on Earth Trailer (1964)

The Book Version of the Story:
In the book Neville is completely alone at the beginning and spends his days drunk and depressed about the loss of his daughter and wife: “He stared into blackness. What’s left? He asked himself. What’s left anyway?” (Matheson 1954, pg 69). One day he sees a dog and spends several weeks trying to befriend the scared canine with food at his doorstep. His hope at a companion is destroyed when one day the dog looks ill and he realises that it has been attacked and infected by the vampires. Haven given up on the dog, he one day spots a woman walking across a field in daylight. He goes to her and takes her back to his home where he begins to grow suspicious of her assurance that she is human: “His throat moved. Such thoughts were hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope” (Matheson 1954, pg 130). In the morning following his discovery of the woman, he wakes to find her gone and a note telling him to leave the house because a society of half infected 'half human’s' are coming for him to exterminate 'the last human'. He doesn’t listen and is captured and executed by the society.

 Matheson hits on the concept of history and time:

The silence of the library was complete save for the thudding of his shoes as he walked along the second-floor hallway. Outside, there were birds sometimes and, even lacking that, there seemed to be a sort of sound outside. Inexplicable, perhaps, but it never seemed deathly still in the open as it did inside a building. Especially here in this giant, gray-stoned building that housed the literature of a worlds dead…The red hands had stopped at four-twenty-seven. He wondered what day they had stopped. As he descended the stairs with his armful of books, he wondered at just what moment the clock stopped. Had it been morning or night? Was it raining or shining? Was anyone there when it stopped? (1954, pg 71)

When investigating the virus Neville stubbornly rejects that germs are the cause of the virus. However soon he changes his mind:

He felt a shudder run down the back of his neck. Was it possible that the same germ that killed the living provided the energy for the dead…He took a drink now; he needed it. He held up his hand until it stopped shaking. All right, little boy, he tried kidding himself, calm down now. Santa Claus is coming to town with the nice answers. No longer will you be a weird Robinson Cruesoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death” (Matheson 1958, pg 76).

Further he proves how vampires can scientifically exist much like the shuddering possibilities in the movie 30 Days of Night:

Vampires in 30 Days of Night

 'Eventually the poisons would reach the blood stream. Process complete. And all without blood-eyed vampires hovering over heroines beds. All without fluttering against estate windows, all without the supernatural. The vampire was real. It was only his true story had never been told.' (1954, pg 81)

 He further thinks about how it had been for the vampires:

'And then, Robert Neville thought, to have this hideous dread vindicated. To regain consciousness beneath hot, heavy soil and know that death had not brought rest. To find themselves clawing up through the earth, their bodies driven now by a strange, hideous need. Such traumatic shocks could undo what mind was left. And such shocks could explain much. The cross first of all (because in life it had been a focus of worship had failed them)…the soil (seeking solace in the only thing they feel safe and native in). ' (1954 pg 108)

What struck me most about the story was the power of companionship, especially with the dog. What gives Neville hope and reason to live in the 2007 movie is his dog which he cares for and lives with. When the dog dies he is utterly alone and who wants to live alone for an eternity? I’m pretty sure most of us would contemplate suicide. Food and Water may keep us physically alive but mentally PEOPLE keep us alive, or maybe I should say love:

 “Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog” (Matheson 1954, pg 90).

 In Matheson’s novel Neville remains alive for years utterly alone before the presence of the dog. What kept him going? Matheson hints that it is something Neville himself doesn’t understand and puts it down to human instinct:

And he hadn’t yet killed himself. True he hadn’t treated his body welfare with reverence…But using the body carelessly wasn’t suicide. He’d never even approached suicide. Why? There seemed to be no answer. He wasn’t resigned to the life he’d been forced into. Yet here he was, eight months after the plague’s last victim, nine since he’d spoken to another human being, ten since Virginia had died. Here he was with no future and a virtually hopeless present. Still plodding on. Instinct? Or was he just stupid? (1954, pg 89).

What he does have is his memories of love but even this he realises is a mistake because otherwise he cannot move forward with his day to day surviving if he dwells on the past. Maybe Neville never turned to suicide because he had hope of finding people again and perhaps that is enough: “That didn’t make him any happier. For always he, in spite of reason, he had clung to the hope that someday he would find someone like himself -a man, a woman, a child, it didn’t matter” (Matheson 1954 pg 94).