Comments I shared with Alex Gugie on his latest journal, "Transience of Desire" which I believe are relevant to my own project.
First, just a small thing. You say that “the conscious existence of nearly all people is characterized by a desire to feel better in the coming moment than we did in the previous one.” This is not strictly true. Now, there’s not a lot of people who would’ve caught this nuanced distinction, so it’s probably not necessary for you to know this. I only point it out because you said something similar in your "A Basis for a Moral System" journal, and I don’t want you to continue under a misapprehension. Strictly speaking, it’s not that we want the future to be better than the present. We want the future to be better than it would have been without our interference. When human beings act, they are always comparing hypothetical future states, not intertemporal states of existence. This follows from the nature of value. Value is subjective, yes? It cannot be objectively measured. And it cannot be objectively measured because value is really just a preference. Valuation is a choice between alternative ends, a preferring of one to another. As value cannot be measured, different values cannot be compared. There cannot be any intertemporal comparisons of utility. It’s not just impossible; it’s nonsensical. So, we act not to make the future better than the present, but to achieve the best possible future we can bring about.
I dwell on this point about value because I think it implies a bigger criticism of this piece. From my perspective, I don’t think it’s true that desires are all ephemeral and that the satisfaction of one desire leads to the creation of a new desire. It’s more like: we all want a lot of things. But we can’t attain all of our ends. We live in a world of scarcity, which means that there aren’t enough means to attain all of our ends. There’s the specifically economic point about the resources available to us not being plentiful enough to satisfy every human desire. But there’s also the more general limitations of scarcity in that we have a limited amount of time in our lives and only one body with which to enjoy each minute. This scarcity necessarily implies choices. We have to prioritize which ends are going to be attained, and which aren’t. Action doesn’t so much reveal our desires as it reveals our choices. And I think this point clears up some of the confusing points in your journal, such as when you were describing the phenomenon of people going to work every day even while griping about their jobs, because they actually wanted their paychecks. It’s not that they didn’t actually want to stop working. They just wanted the money more.
In this present moment, there are a lot of things that I want. I want to work the night shift somewhere so I can make some money. I want to study so that I can get good grades. I want to write this feedback. I want to read some Bastiat. I want to sleep. I want to fuck a girl. I want to get high. There are a lot of things I want. But I chose writing as most important, so that’s what my action reveals. As soon as I get done writing this (and, indeed, at every moment in the process of writing this), I’ll have to choose again. Sleep? Get high? It’s not that these desires appeared after I satisfied my desire to write. They were always there. We always want everything, don’t we? It’s that I had to set these desires aside in the pursuit of my most valued end, and, once I’ve attained that end, I can now choose another end to pursue. The “enlightened” complain that people always want more. I contend that people always wanted more. But, as they get some, they become positioned to seek more. I think that your journal shows some confusion on your part about this.
As I hinted above, some of our desires are more long-term, and these we generally call more virtuous. We do go to work, even though we say we’d rather sleep in the moment, because we value our long-term end of a steady income more than the short-term gain. We study at night not because we prefer studying to video games, but because we prefer good grades to video games, and studying is a means to this important end. So, I think your journal was a little confusing in that it was kind of saying that desires were only short-term things. The truth is, every action of man is always a pursuit of his currently most-valued ends. Eating the gallon of ice cream and going to the gym...it’s the same mechanism driving both actions. It’s just a choice of ends. So, this new direction for your project, getting people to put the needs of society over their own short-term desires, is an attempt to change the ends people choose, not to make people give up their ends. Do you see what I’m saying?
And that leads to a comment on the relationship between individuals and society. Their interests are not opposed. And I think you know this, but your journal was a little unclear, and this lack of clarity, coupled with your affinity for declaratory statements, made it seem like you viewed the desires of individuals as conflicting with the needs of society. But it’s important, I think, to reflect on what, exactly, society is. Society is comprised of human beings, yes? And human beings act, yes? That is, everything they do is the outcome of a choice. Which means that people chose to be a part of society. Indeed, people chose to create society. Society is a product of human thought and will. And because society is a product of human action, and because human action is always purposeful, then society must have a purpose, yes? What is the purpose of society? You said it in your last journal: it provides us with things, it satisfies desires that we could have never had or gotten satisfied in isolation. Society is a tool. A tool that helps us achieve our individual ends and desires. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t bother with it, as it does, indeed, restrict us. So I think it’s a mistake (perhaps just of word-choice) to describe the interests of individuals and the interests of society as conflicting. Society, after all, is a product of, is composed of, and exists to serve, individuals. As your close companion on this journey, I understand what you mean, but I would urge you to be a little more precise with your language for the sake of a wider audience.
All that being said, I think that there were some good things in this journal. First of all, I liked that you returned to natural science a bit. It seems that you’re very comfortable there, and I think that makes your work better. The idea that desire is ultimately a component of our biology is an important one, and could have a big influence on your project. At the same time, there’s no real argument in that point. The argument you seem to be making in this piece, in the part that makes sense, at least, is that we don’t have to let our desires control us. Again, I think this is imprecise, in light of that fact that we’re always driven by our desires. It’s just that sometimes we desire things that are more socially beneficial than others. The idea behind your argument, though, seems to be that, because desires are so transient, because they’re randomly generated by our biology, and because there are other, better desires to choose from, we can disregard our momentary urges and focus on long-run goals, like the preservation and flourishing of society. Okay. Fair enough (besides the language). You also say, at the very end, that desire both drives and limits us. Again, sloppy language. Desire always drives us, whether for good or bad.
I think changing that last sentiment, that desire both drives and limits us, could be tweaked, in light of the discussion above, to say something like desire can both drive and limit us. That is, that competing desires, for short-term pleasure and long-term gain, can balance each other out, so that we can act to preserve ourselves in the present and we can act to preserve society in the long run. Because desire is a common factor in all our actions. It’s just a matter of what we desire.
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