Desire and Satisfaction
In ethics class this week, we’ve been talking about hedonism as an ethical theory - a lifestyle perhaps? Or at the least, a lens through which to see the world.
By and large, hedonism is an entirely selfish approach to ethical decision-making. Yet it seems we all do it. We all make decisions based on our own happiness, with little to no regard for how our actions will affect those around us.
Desire: it’s literally not something that can ever be fulfilled. The very nature of desire is that you want more. Yet we combine this with satisfaction. We believe, somehow, that we can fulfill our desires and be satisfied, that when we get what we want, we will want no more, that we will be happy, and fulfilled, and life will be complete.
That’s not how it works, is it? My mother-in-law is at the end of her life. She has had cancer several times and it’s returned. She has macular degeneration. She stopped caring for herself but she did not tell anyone just how much help she needed. This has nearly destroyed her. She hung on to desire, however, which she sustained through buying stuff. It’s really just stuff - bath mats, shoes, Pringles cans. And she put it away. Surrounded herself with it. It was smothering her but somehow also comforted her.
How do we find comfort in the thing that is killing us? That’s what we do, isn’t it? In another class, they were dealing with Nozick’s “Experience Machine.” In the past, I have posed that scenario, and 1 or 2 students admit they would plug in. Now: nearly all of them are willing to plug in. What has changed?
Do we realize that desire cannot be fulfilled and experience is meaningless, no matter how real it is? Nozick’s early claim was that there was something to be said for “real” experience, the doing rather than the seeming. Yet here we are, immersed in the seeming. I’m writing this to post to a blog. It’s not real. I’m going to link the blog later to my social media. Those aren’t real.
Have we sacrificed our being for seeming? Are we striving to seem like we exist rather than striving to truly exist?
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses
me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am
Untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Do we have any sound left to make?
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