10. Desire leads us
Now and then its good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Here, and throughout this work, I have made a distinction between genuine desire and substitute desires. I use genuine desire in the sense of something very basic and fundamental to our consciousness. It is genuine desire or ecstasy that is said to be lost and denied early in childhood and results in the sub-conscious and in substitute desires. Desires are simply pleasures that stand in – usually unconsciously — as compensations for the genuine desire that has been suppressed and denied. Desire is the image of pleasure. Just as we saw images set up for other ideas — in religion, in politics and in our relationship with our bodies — so there are images for pleasure that are false images and lead us away from genuine desire. Therefore to talk about desire leads us into having an abstract goal that then instigates an unending pursuit for the unobtainable. We will talk mainly of pleasure henceforth. Nevertheless, we will want to distinguish between pleasures that are compensatory and are pursued as individualistic sensations and those pleasures that are grounded in relationship with others, with the wildness of nature and ultimately with mystery.
According to Antonio Damasio, emotions are essentially the bridge between mind and body. The mind/body, subject/object split is so central to Western thought that it is difficult to conceive of any kind of continuity between the two worlds. Damasio himself has gone to great effort to challenge what has become the ‘common sense’ view of reality, best articulated by Descartes. He reminds us of the legacy of a more unified philosophy, exemplified, in his view, by Spinoza.
Very often the body is much more connected with what is really going on in our lives and indeed far more adept at knowing what would be best for us in terms of our short-term and long-term happiness. The body ‘remembers’ our genuine pleasure therefore. However, Western culture has put far more emphasis on mind. As such, to our minds, our body’s attempts to communicate to us via emotion and physicality can appear to be random or confusing or are simply ignored and suppressed.
Ego fears looking silly. Ego regards itself as wholly rational. It fails to see that emotions such as envy, pride and fear play a big part in its decision-making process or that genuine desire underlies its presumed rationality, but is itself suppressed.
Theologian Grace Jantzen says this:
‘Desire is both the indispensable substantiation of rationality and its danger; it is the other of rationality. By setting up rationality and desire as alterities, indeed as separate functions and attributes, it becomes impossible … to speak of rational desires or desirable rationality. The self is radically fractured into a binary opposition of the rational and the irrational, familiar since Plato. But whereas passion and desire have traditionally been conceptually linked within the irrational (and with the female and the body) … desire also subtends the rational even while [passion and desire] are rationality’s other and its source of danger.’
Grace M. Jantzen — Becoming Divine (author’s emphasis).
In other words there is pleasure rooted and underling our attempts at rationality but rationality itself denies pleasure.
There are various ways then that mind and emotions get confused and with that our understanding of where pleasure might lie. Without resorting to therapy, how are we to uncover these matters and see and understand our reactions to people and events? How do we reach our genuine pleasure?
In The Art of Being, Erich Fromm suggests four ways in which we can help ourselves towards a deeper understanding of our own nature. Paraphrasing, these are:
All of these methods, but in particular the last one, are means by which we can know the real motivations in our lives, the fears that we may cling to and how we might realise genuine pleasure. Fromm is suggesting mainly looking at fears and problems, unravelling their root cause as a means of then letting these things go. The image others might have of us is also a means toward achieving this. We are not being asked simply to create a better image of ourselves, either for our own sakes or to present to others. We are at least being asked to present a more honest image. Ultimately, we are just looking for an ‘unveiling’, an openness to the world. This in turn allows for pleasures that are not simply superficial distractions. We might also describe Fromm’s suggestions as self-disruption — a deliberate stepping back from the normal flow of thoughts and impressions. Troubles and misfortunes - provided not deliberately sought — can also perform this task. Problems can be turned around into opportunities to know ourselves and to see where letting go may be appropriate.
The oneness of ultimate reality has led some to suggest that there really is no self. The notion of an individual self is just an illusion; therefore, it is suggested, there’s no reason to worry or to investigate the inner workings of the mind or emotions. Within the economy of human affairs however, the self is undeniable. So, whilst realising it is ultimately a delusion, a certain amount of effort seems justified in exploring our own inner space. We could also say that whilst the self might ultimately be an illusion, consciousness is not! The wonder of being is known as much within ourselves as by looking outward to nature. Knowing ourselves is also the beginning of compassion. It is a mistake to think that we can love nature and other human beings without first loving and accepting ourselves.
Psychoanalysis now seems obsessed with examining desire, especially personal desire and how this can be gratified or frustrated. By contrast, much of what we have looked at in terms of self-awareness is to do with examining the negatives in our lives and how these can be let go. The search for happiness and the fulfilment of desire somehow needs less examination. It will always be there as a cascading waterfall, a never-ending flood of new adventures. To examine this in any detail is perhaps to cut off its vigour and its mystery — to try to tame desire is ultimately like trying to tame a tiger — foolish and pointless.
All we need to realise pleasure is acceptance and honesty. We do not need to be afraid of who we really are — we need to be able to tell ourselves and others where our true pleasures lie. To really bring this home we might say: I am my pleasure; I am the object of my pleasure. Our self and genuine pleasure are intimately linked. Knowing yourself is the only way to know pleasure and the only way to satisfy it. Also, it must be the starting point for genuine compassion.
So our societies have a confused view of things, thinking that pleasure is some kind of self-indulgent added extra to life rather than central to it. In this we are denying our true motivations and thinking that we live our lives primarily as rational beings rather than embodied and emotional, pleasure-driven persons. The economy of descendancy that harmonises the aspirations of spirit with soulfulness, recognises that we are embodied persons, understands genuine pleasure and seeks its fulfilment within interbeing and compassion.