I was having a discussion with my wife last night regarding the nature and source of desire. I made the following observation: Proof that desire is innate in human beings can be found in the instinct to explore and experience. Every person is driven, from infancy, to explore new sensual and mental experiences. We are all driven to see, smell, taste, touch and hear the world around us – to learn – to explore. That instinct may die, or be killed in some, but we are born with it. Without this, we would not survive. Without desire, we would do nothing. As long as we are not starving, or facing some other means of perceived imminent death, we are looking for a new experience. Those who are “comfortable” (by “comfortable” I mean basic needs are met, assured – or at least relatively easy to acquire) have the luxury of exploration, and always will engage (or at least attempt to engage) in that luxury. Innate desire for sensual experience is channeled into specific desires based on our surroundings and environment. You desire what you perceive you lack. The marketing industry’s job is to convince you of what you lack – they do this largely by seeking out, or infusing people with, insecurity and invoking/provoking feelings of inadequacy in an effort to exploit this dynamic. Innate desire, insecurity, perceived lack and feelings of inadequacy is a very potent mix. It makes for a perfect consumer. This leads to the “Bigger, Better, Faster, More” mentality in people who are comfortable. Most of us rarely buy anything “for ourselves”, regardless of our greatest protests to the contrary – we buy to fill the gaps of our inadequacies (real or imagined) and improve our self-esteem based on what we see as our outward-projecting image. We sense this lack, and “know” that everyone else must also see it. We are “keeping up with the Jonses”, whether or not we realize it. We buy into the marketing bullshit, and internalize that lack so well, that we not only convince ourselves that it is real, but that “Bob must be better/happier/more complete/more attractive/etc. than me, because he is not lacking this”. We want to be as happy as Bob, when Bob is at least as unhappy as we are, because he is constantly trying to fill that void the lack creates with placebos. We are literally killing ourselves to fill that void when all we really ever wanted beyond the basic necessities of life is new experiences, and so few realize that trinkets will not give us what we lack – all that will is exploration. We are programmed to love learning and exploring – it makes us happy – yet what do we do with our time? We work jobs we hate to support industries which feed off us like leeches, destroy the environment, wreak havoc on our quality of life and create divisions of classes among people that do not exist without the industries. All for what? I loosely define freedom as lack of concern for food, shelter health and safety – perhaps the four most co-opted, capitalized, expensive and difficult things to obtain in the “Land of the Free”. Is this coincidence or power grasping onto power? If you had freedom what would you do with it? I would learn and explore.
I have that freedom and I have no personal concept of lack, insecurity, or inadequacy. I have chosen my current profession as a way of giving back (to God and country).
I agree with much of the OP. Thought I would start here and then get to the personal side in a later post. I immediately thought of the marketing aimed at pre-teens and teens. Surges of sexual desire and the desire to be in with people and not too low on in the domination order are running high in this time. At the same time these young people are forced to sit still and be passive, at a time when they have more energy and curiousity than perhaps any other time in their lives - I will qualify that by saying that younger children can compete, but they often need less stimuli - staring at the cat can be a deep learning experience. So pulsing hormones, forced to sit still - which adds to anxiety, and a period of time where group dynamics and sexual romantic dynamics are very intense. Bang. In comes the marketing. This will make you cool. This will put you above others (read: not on the bottom). And so on. All produced using the latest manipulative techniques from psychologist consultants and Hollywood special effects. What Dad manages to say at the door when the kid is heading out does not have millions of dollars of expertise and technology behind it. In their terror the kids grab and this and develope their 'individuality'. And learn to look down on those who do this less well than themselves - at the very least thanking God they are not them - and to look up at those who do it better. All with heavy costs to the environment, bank accounts, sanity and real relationships.
But I wanted a response and kudos and a little gold star, or if, sadly, it is necessary, some debate, before moving on.... that said..... Sure, learn and explore. And I suppose if you really stretched those words beyond commonplace usage that covers quite a bit of it. Let me add what might be missing. I WOULD RELAX! I would learn to really relax and explore states that would look like I was doing nothing. I would create more - I can see this as a form of exploration, but....- art, music, writing, etc. More sex. Which has elements of learning and exploring of course, but I do not think these terms cover all of sex. I guess relaxation and the expressive dimension, a yin and yang combo, would be my main additions to those terms.
But I don't have anything to argue. I agree with you. You said you agree with much of the opening post - that implies "not all". Why don't you tell me what you disagree with and we can have a nice, fun argument. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I should watch my mout', you canny lad. I am not sure we are all the same. IOW the OP seems to be assuming that we have all been diverted from our innate desire to learn and explore, and this diversion is something we could (would?) all come to realize. I realize some of this is what I would call 'implicit' and not stated. I am not sure that is true. I think some people, perhaps many, are much less interested in learning and exploring and this is not simply caused by poor parenting, trauma, marketing, schooling. I think some creatures - that get batched up in the set homo sapians, may truly like sameness, control, repetition and what you and I would consider stagnation much more than we do and that this difference is more essential than your OP implies. And that this tempermental difference, which I am arguing is more innate, is part of the problem we face, you and I and others like us, when we try to navigate a world that is being killed.
If we were nto driven to explore and learn, we would not learn to speak - we would not do anything but suckle our mothers until she dies and we die of starvation.
Which I am taking you to mean.... so everyone must love exploring and learning. let me know if that was off. I think there is a qualitative difference between people and that some want to get settled in, are happy with what they know - and I certainly do not restrict this to Bible thumpers, I know secular people with doctorates like this - like control, distrust exploration and much of what you and I would categorize as learning. I used to think that REALLY, deep down, they are like me, and society or their parents or the media or................all of the not written out above has made them the way they are, but essentially we are the same. That model feels wrong to me. I can't prove it to you. But I can say this.... When I stopped assuming this and started taking them more at face value, it felt more accurate. The horrifying thing is how much power they have.
They were all born with an insatiable lust for exploration and knowledge - just as you were... Their environments and genes shaped them into who they are today, but if they did not have the drive to experience, they would have simply died.
How do you know this? How do you know that what we share with them are basic drives - to get food, to learn basic stuff - but that we differ in the breadth scope and strength of our interest in learning? What makes you so sure we are all, really, the same? Clearly many people have much less interest in learning and exploring. You can imagine groups and individuals that are examples of this, I would guess. How would you go about convincing them that they really would like to explore, when they say they are content with what they know, they know what TV they want to watch, what they want to do on a saturday night - which never seems to change - etc? What makes you so sure they are the same as you? The OP is suggesting that if you were truly free you would engage in certain activities and feel good because you could pursue them (more). I do not think other people would respond to freedom in this way. In fact when one examines the freedom they have, they often avoid new choices or exploration. And we cannot say that all experience is learning and exploration or freedom then has no effect on these things. I just noticed the phrase 'drive to experience' in your last post. To me one can have a drive to experience but little interest in learning or exploring. One can have a closed set of experiences one wants to repeat.
You are talking about people who have already been shaped to a great extent by their environments. Tell me... Have you ever known a toddler (one that isn't handicapped in some serious way) that did not marvel over a new toy, play with it, examine it, try to figure it out... They do this with every new thing they see. Why? Because they are naturally curious. If they were not, they would be vegetables.
I have worked in day cares and I see even at very early ages rather startling differences. Yes, pretty much every child is curious, but with a rather wide range of degrees. And a childhood curiosity does not mean that all these adults out there are REALLY the same except for environmental factors. For all you know some of these homo sapians were curious UNTIL they found certain things out, and then were satisfied and the environmental factors were much less important than you think. It is an old assumption that we are all deep down or really or fundamentally all the same. But I no longer buy it. In fact I think it is presumptuous. There are children who grow up in environments that punish curiosity and some of them retain it and some do not. I find members of each group who seem content with their temperments. The curious ones like the fact that they are curious and the repetition based ones are pleased with what they know, often finding the other ones weird. Right now you are talking to me about a third party, but would you really feel comfortable telling someone from that second group that they REALLY at root are very curious people who love to learn and explore but their environments kept them from being that way? Interesting topic, but I do feel like I have, at your invitation, taken us off on a tangent. I would like to see if others respond to the core portion of the OP and then I will come back and keep the tangent going.
Punish curiosity was too restricted... I also mean environments that offer little opportunity for exploration, including a lack of parental inspiration and encouragement.
Wow. That is a real shame. You should set aside your posessions and live with lack, insecurity and inadequacy so that you can become whole as a person.
If I had freedom? True freedom? I would cause everything in existence to cease. I want to put away my toys and go home and have a nap. I have followed my drives and found emptiness in them. Where's my teddy?
Very interesting thoughts, raven. I mostly agree with you. Our life is all about exploring the world and our own borders and restrictions. I think we all want to find out who we really are and what we are capable of.
You forgot about HIGHER, like in Olympic games. When you want to go higher, you sow always growing and asking yout body to do so.
I was thinking about this issue in relation to 'boredom'. I put that in citation marks since I am not sure people even allow themselves to find out if they would be bored without all their toys. When I was a kid I went out and played. We used city streets and parks and made up games and adventures, often with nothing or a ball or some chalk or stuff we found in the garbage or a stick, etc. Even in my teenage years much of my free time required little technology. A ball of some kind, a neighborhood to walk in. Friends to talk to, in person of all things. Nowadays in another city, I see that childreen require unbelievable amounts of technology, and advanced technology at that for their free time. This horrible void of nothing seems on the verge of torturing them to death if at any moment the tsunami of information and communication and computer games and artificial sounds and images suddenly stopped. How much this panic is marketed into existence and how much comes from innate patheticness - to be vicious about it - I don't know. I see adults in much the same situation. (And before I am accused of hypocrisy.... I only use the internet at work where I am basically on call, in case, and have permission to use computers that would be on anyway. In my free time the most high tech thing I use is a one speed bicycle. I have no TV. I do listen to music. So I am a hypocrite, but on the low end of the scale. And when I have had other kinds of work, the internet has not been a factor at all.)
