How odd. My attempt to eliminate all desires which do not originate with myself seems to have left none. I didn't do anything this weekend. If I had wanted to I would have. But that's just the thing--I didn't really want to do anything at all.
Granted, at times I thought of doing something to improve myself, of learning something, or having some unusual experience or another. Then I traced the desire to its source and found that it was only in order to appear more learned or more interesting to others. Perhaps one could mistake these desires for one's own--in fact I would argue that the lifelong process of becoming socialized consists of learning how to--and go through life merrily oblivious to the second-hand nature of them all. Ignorance might be bliss. But as for me, having exposed a desire as not my own, I cannot forget this fact and can only act on the desire in the most robotic and unsustainable way.
In physical terms, some people are sources, but the vast majority of us are either flux-conservative regions or, worse yet, sinks.
Posted by Alan at October 20, 2002 07:28 PMIf we tried to satisfy only desires which are not our own we would transform ourselves in beings without will, just robotic instruments that others use to satify THEIR OWN desires.
Posted by: at October 22, 2002 07:42 AMOr worse yet, we become enslaved not to other individual's desires, but to some anonymous mass desire which may or may not have actual human faces (or actual human desires) behind it. These are the one's I'm afraid of.
Posted by: alan at October 22, 2002 09:45 PMThe quest for self betterment and exploration does not necessarily have to be for other people. What else is life about than learning about the world around you and expierencing it? If you do not, I believe that you are not truely living.
Posted by: Grace at October 24, 2002 04:17 AMHave you ever stepped back and thought: maybe I am collecting experiences like one collects stamps, or stuffed animal heads? Just to drag them out for display, for the impression they make on others? I have--but of course this is just me here.
It seems like every stone I overturn has the same thing under it.
Why this quest for culture, this pursuit of learning? If I suddenly lived alone with no hope of ever seeing or speaking to another human being again, how quickly, I wonder, would I abandon the standard pursuits of the modern intellectual? What pursuits would replace them? That is an interesting question to me.
I encourage you to trace your desires to their point of origin. I suspect that if you are being honest with yourself you will find what I have: that (excepting the most basic ones) they do not come from inside, but outside.
Posted by: alan at October 28, 2002 09:31 PM