Desire
Maybe Lacan’s view here comes in very handy. Maybe Schopenhauer’s. Maybe Freud‘s. Maybe Deleuze and Guattari’s. An incredibly easy concept to grasp yet we can never grasp it fully which is why Lacan comes to mind. The big other and the little other. We have a bunch of little others, but will never understand the big other, which is the ultimate reason why we desire.
Out of the New York Review of Books, which it paraphrases Schopenhauer stating, “if we stop and reflect, he writes, it becomes clear that our life has been spent chasing one thing and then another, none of which has ever finally satisfied the will.” Buddhism also hits a spot here. Before Noble true states that desire causes suffering. To extinguish desire is to either be dead or be enlightened. Truly not desiring is the best thing to desire. Desire keeps folding in on itself. It is sort of like what Hyder talked about us being thrust in the life in a similar way we are thrust in to desire. We don’t truly know what we actually desire, but we are desiring.
Everyone knows Chopin Howard‘s views were incredibly pessimistic and at times nihilistic and the sad truth is is he was a curmudgeon himself and miserable. Probably had a form of depression which was not helped by his views of life. However, he also had very clear moments, and sometimes the most depressed ideas are very clear. We just have to tweak them a little bit. I would say desire, never is truly satisfied as do the Buddhists. However, if it is not this that needs to be satisfied. It is realizing that this will never be satisfied, and that there’s something else to life than desire, which is being as fully connected to what you were experiencing as possible. If you can think back to a time you went to a restaurant and everything you ate set off and explosion neurochemical reactions, almost tingling afterwards, in awe of every bite, you have an experience of this is what life is all about. Like beautiful sex or experiencing great theater, great art in general, anything that fully connects you to your experience and makes it harder for you to drift off into your own thoughts or into something else. Like a hyper connected state. Similar to what my Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. A space where you lose the concept of time because you’re so focused on the experience at hand. It could be when you’re creating a fabulous piece of art yourself.
Being lost in time, being lost in the moment, not being distracted, but being fully in the experience, but there’s always a part of you. That’s not in the experience. Nothing is fully pure is it? It can’t be because every experience mailed them with other experiences.
Schopenhauer’s view along with Buddhist view is ways to curb desire and can lead to a more aesthetic life. However, there’s a form of moderation in Minnie sex of Buddhism that believes if you try too hard, it’s just gonna cause more suffering and that you can gotta find the middle path. And Co and Howard’s view you have to teach yourself not to want food sex or material goods in order to stop the suffering. However, Schopenhauer did nothing of the sort. He seemed to be somewhat of a foodie, somewhat of a partaker in living life at large.
Seems like he could’ve integrated his philosophy, a little bit better to be more accurate with his own reality.
