On Desire: Why we Want What we Want, was published in 2006.
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Part I: The Secret Life of Desire
He starts off the book by prefacing that the book's goal is not a tutorial on how to master desire. However, he does concede that knowing where our desires come from and how they work will give us the intellectual power to perhaps dissuade ourselves from what he terms 'undesirable desires' and persuade ourselves into desires we can rationally visualize are good for us. He seems to hint that it may be possible with some effort, and of course, through the strategy of "knowing the enemy" as he says in the book several times.
One aspect of human behavior that he pointed out is one that one sooner or later inherently understands is true, but (at least for me) never stopped and think about how this is actually the case. And this behavior is the desire to be noticed. Whatever actions it will take to fulfill that desire, will be the actions that people will naturally seem to take.
"If others won't love me, then let them fear me. If others won't respect me, thne they will have to put up with my disgusting or belligerent behavior. I will not be ignored!"
Expounding on this idea, he sets up a thought experiment which goes: If there were no people in the world, would you still want the things you wanted prior to the absence of people? Probably not.
This is an insightful understanding, because one realizes that a grand majority (if not all) our desires depend on the acknowledgement of other people. This includes desires that may even seem extremely personal. For example, the desire to write a piece of music simply because you wanted to. Well, then what good is writing a piece of music if there is nobody to show it to? What good is reading a book if there is nobody to talk about it with? What good is studying something if one does not get to put it in practice?
Another aspect (dare I say maxim?) of human behavior is that one is truly himself when he is alone. This one seems to make a bit more obvious sense.
Quoting Schopenhauer: "A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free."
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Part II: The Science of Desire
He introduces a bit of terminology to differentiate different kinds of desires, in order to make it easier for the reader.
Terminal Desires are what are sometimes called intrinsic desires. It's not just physiologically driven, but psychologically as well. It can be wanting to eat, but it can also be wanting a nice car, simply because you want a nice car. In other words, an end goal.
Instrumental Desire are desires that are materialized in order to ultimately accomplish a terminal desire. If one's terminal desire is to obtain a biochemistry degree for example, then one might want to take certain classes, and hence, instrumental desires materialize.
Hedonic Desires are desires that strive to feel good, and avoid feeling bad. These are motivated by our feelings. (Sex, food, going to the movie theaters, etc.)
Non-hedonic Desires are desires that are formed "just because". (Clicking one's tongue)
From this one can extract several interesting points, such as:
"Imagine a person incapable of feeling good or bad. This person would never form hedonic terminal desires. To the contrary, the only desires he would be capable of forming would be nonhedonic desires, such as a desire to click his tongue. This person, it should be clear, would be quite unmotivated. He would not feel compelled to eat, to care for himself, or to seek companionship, fame, or fortune. He would resemble a deeply depressed individual. Unless others looked after him, he would soon perish."
"One source of desires is our emotions—Hume called them the passions. The emotions, I would like to suggest, are the source of our hedonic terminal desires—our desires to feel good and avoid feeling bad."
"Fortunately for us, though, we have within us a second source of desire: our intellect."
"Chains of desire, then. are formed cooperatively by the emotions and the intellect. They divide the labor of desire formation, with the emotions specializing in the formation of terminal desires and the intellect specializing in the formation of instrumental desires; and in forming terminal desire, the emotions are concerned with feeling good and avoiding feeling bad. Something like this view can be found in Hume, who tells us that it is "from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion of propensity arises toward any object: And these emotions extend themselves to the causes and effects of that object, as they are pointed our to us be reason and experience."
Essentially, he talks about how the intellect can rationally figure out what is best for us, but the emotions might trump those desires that will make the person want to do something else instead.
However, I disagree that it's purely emotional. I think emotion is definitely a component of desire, but I think the "emotional desire trumping intellectual desire" effect is instead (or can also be) just a result of not having an understanding of all the steps it takes to commit to the task that was brought up by the intellect. For example, the desire to become a neurosurgeon quickly changes for many people once they realize it may take certain sub-tasks to accomplish the task of becoming a neurosurgeon.
He then suggests that the intellect may be able to trick the emotions into doing something, which I do agree with. The example he gives in the book is that after his lecture, he hears a student say something like "Irvine is a bad philosopher." After feeling hurt by the comment, he tricks or convinces himself into thinking the student actually said, "Irvine is a bad(ass) philosopher." This types of 'trickery' is especially effective when information is ambiguous and may be able to be interpreted in another direction, namely, a direction in which a desire is more preferable intellectually.
So in essence, it's a battle between the intellect and the emotions. One cannot help but think a cliche` picture of a battle between the brain and the heart. He says that emotions are stronger, of course, since even the smartest people on the planet, when depressed, have no desire. (Not desiring anything, or a lack of motivation, is a symptom of clinical depression.) Therefore it can be inferred that emotions create terminal desires and the intellect creates instrumental desires.
Again, I don't agree with the statement "emotions create terminal desires and the intellect creates instrumental desires." I believe it may be that in most cases per se`, but there are cases (as Irvine conceded) that the intellect can trick one's self into creating a desire that is more preferable intellectually. I also think it's the case that one's emotional desires, as arbitrary as it sometimes may seem to be, can at times happen to align with desires that happen to be preferable intellectually as well.
He then talks about how we're more motivated to go up chains of desires when we're anxious. This information would make it preferable so that we should be anxious with our goals all the time. Unfortunately, life is not that way.
Then when talking about the psychology of desire, he points out that not all our desires come up as a result of assessing the pros and cons of something.
"For evidence in support of this claim, we can turn to the word of experimental neurologists. Joaquim Brazil-Neto and his colleagues, for example, appear to have created desires in people. Subjects heads were placed in a transcranial magnetic stimulator, which made a clicking noise and randomly stimulated the motor area on one or the other side of a subject's brain. Subjects were asked to move, at their discretion, either their left or right index finger when they heard the click. Subjects thought they were deciding which finger to move, but 80 percent of the time they moved the finger opposite the side of the brain that was stimulated. This meant that scientists could predict which finger a subject would "choose" to raise with 80 percent accuracy. In this experiment, magnetic stimulation apparently affected brain processes of which subjects were unaware and thereby caused them to want to move a particular finger. In other words, investigators influenced a subject's choice without disrupting the subject's feeling that the choice was voluntary.
For even more striking evidence of the unconscious control of conscious choice, consider the work of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet. He wired people to detect electrical activity in their brains and instructed them to initiate a voluntary motion—a flick of the wrist—at a time of their choosing. Libet recorded what took place in their brains before, during, and after the decision to move was made.
We would naturally expect the decision to flick one's wrist to precede the resulting flick, since it takes time for the signal to get from the brain to the wrist and for the muscle to contract, and this is what Libet found: on average, a person's wrist flicked 200 milliseconds after the person decided to flick it. What is striking is that Libet detected a buildup of activity in a person's brain 350-400 milliseconds before the person "decided" to flick his wrist—that is, before the person was consciously aware that he was going to flick his wrist. This makes it look as though the desire to flick began in the unconscious brain, which started preparing for the move and, after about a third of a second, informed the conscious brain of its decision. In other words, it wasn't the conscious decision to flick a wrist that caused it to flick, instead, a deeper mental event first caused the person to "choose" to flick his wrist and then caused the wrist to flick. In the words of Libet. "The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously well before the person consciously knows he wants to act!" Libet's work, I should add, is controversial, and his results are open to other interpretations. Nevertheless, experimental work by others appears to confirm the core of Libet's findings."
This actually ties in with what Sam Harris was talking about in his book Free Will, because these are the studies that are cited to make the neurologically-based case that our decisions aren't controlled by "us."
He expounds:
"That our will is not a solitary thing becomes apparent when we consider cases of so-called alien hand syndrome. In one such case, a forty-year-old man experienced a brain hemorrhage that interfered with his brain's internal communications: one hemisphere of his brain could not communicate with the other. As a result, his left hand came to have a mind of its own, a mind resembling that of an obstinate two-year-old. During dinner, his left hand would refuse to give the fork to his right hand. During a game of checkers, his left hand would make move he didn't want to make. He would correct the move with his right hand, only to have his left hand move it back. When he was reading, one hand would turn the pages of the book while the other hand attempted to close it. His legs were also somewhat affected; once he found one leg trying to go down some stairs while the other leg was trying to go up.
In another case of alien hand syndrome, a thirty-nine-year-old woman had been the victim of a gunshot wound to the head. The injury partially severed her corpus callosum, the function of which is to allow the two hemispheres of the brain to communicate. As a result, her left hand came to have a will of its own. It had an annoying tendency to grab her throat during sleep, and to prevent this she kept her left hand tied up when she was in bed. In yet another case of alien hand syndrome, a woman's left hand tried to stop her right hand from smoking cigarettes."
Schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, and etc. are also evidences of a divided mind.
"this isn't the only evidence of the existence of multiple sources of desire within the brain. Neuroscientists Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph LeDoux have studied the consequences of corpus callosotomies, operations in which the brain's corpus callosum is cut, thereby preventing one hemisphere from communicating with the other."
"Gazzaniga and LeDoux devised an apparatus that flashed words on a screen at which split-brain subjects were staring. Words flashed on the left side of the screen would go into the right hemisphere of a subject's brain (because of the way the optic nerves "cross" on their way to the brain), and words flashed on the right side would go into the left hemisphere, the left side of the screen—thereby sending it to the right hemisphere of a subject's brain—the subject would laugh. When they asked the subject why he was laughing, the subject's brain directed the question to the speech-processing area in the subject's left hemisphere. Because the subject's inter-hemispheric communication was compromised, the left hemisphere had no idea what the right hemisphere had "seen."
One might therefore expect the patient to say he didn't know why he was laughing, but this isn't what happened. Instead, the patient's left hemisphere made up a reason for laughing—like that the patient found the experiment amusing. Likewise, when the right hemisphere was presented with the word wave, the patient would wave; when asked why he was waving, he would rationalize his behavior and claim to have seen someone he know. LeDoux and Gazzaniga concluded that people routinely don't know wht they do what they do, inasmuch as the behavior in question is caused by brain systems that operate without their conscious knowledge."
In the biology chapters of the book, he explains that we have a biological incentive system (or BIS for short), which highly influences our behavior. For the most part, that's all those chapters were saying. Things that allow for survival feel good, and things that allow for extinction feel bad, and so we tend to do things that feel good to survive. This BIS also changes over time depending on context, and also changes via both physiology and psychology. (Ex: puberty vs a traumatic experience)
The concept of "miswanting" comes up.
"According to psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson, we have an unfortunate tendency to "miswant"—to want things that we won't like once we get them. "In a perfect world," they observe, "wanting would cause trying, trying would cause getting, [and] getting would cause liking." But ours is not a perfect world. In a particular, our predictions about what we will like tend to be mistaken, and as a result, we tend to want things, when we get them, will make little difference to our level of happiness. (The problem, quips Gilbert, isn't that you can't always get what you want; it's that you can't always know what you want.)
Quoting Gilbert and Wilson: "People tend to overestimate the duration of their emotional reactions to future events—especially negative events—and this can lead them to miswant in the long term."
So in sum, human insatiability comes from both a miswanting an ability to adapt to stimuli. For example, if one worked many years to obtain enough money to buy a fancy car, due to a desire to have a prestigious car—after one gets the car—eventually, they will stop loving it or thinking about it, and will want to get something else, perhaps completely unrelated to a car.
*Human Insatiability = Miswanting + Adaptation*
"In the seventeenth century, philosopher Benedict de Spinoza argued that "human beings think themselves to be free in so far as they are conscious of their volitions and of their appetite, and do not even dream of the causes by which they are led to appetition and to will, since they are ignorant of them."
Philosopher David Hume was outspoken in his rejection of the rationality of desire. In the eighteenth century he wrote, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and reason. Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." According to Hume, reason is capable of telling us that if we do X,Y will result. It is incapable of telling us, however, whether Y is worth obtaining, and therefore whether we ought to do X. It is only when reason is coupled with a value system—with a feeling that something is worth having—that reason can motivate behavior.
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In talking about the biology of desire, Irvine talks about incentive systems, the birth of desire in the kingdom animalia, and thought experiments that puts his theory of desire's birth into perspective.
"One theory is that instinctive behavior is just a complex form of reflexive behavior. Thus, when the hen see her eggs, her knees reflexively weaken and she plops herself down on them. I would like, however, to explore an alternative, rather more plausible—but nonetheless speculative—theory suggested by philosopher and psychologist William James. He proposes that instinctive behavior is triggered by the likes and dislikes of animals. (Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer suggested similar theories of instinctive behavior, only they stated theirs in terms of pleasure and pain.) In particular, James suggests that the hen tends her eggs because she finds them "utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon." It not only feels good to sit on her eggs but feels bad not to sit: if we prevent her from sitting, she will feel anxious. Likewise, a squirrel buries nuts because he likes to bury them and dislikes being prevented from burying them. Because of these likes and dislikes, the squirrel finds himself in the group of a but-burying mania.
With instinctive behavior, I think, came the first true desires. Why does the hen sit on her eggs? Because she wants to, and the reason she wants to is because it feels good to do so and it feels bad not to do so."
Lack of desire (depression) and desire (non-depression) have a neurological basis:
"In another case dating back to the 1950's, brain stimulation had the opposite effect on a patient. Dr. Robert Heath stimulated the setpal area of a depressed patient who had just attempted suicide. The effect was immediate: the patient started to smile. He described his mental state in the following terms: "I feel good. I don't know why, I just suddenly felt good."
It is astonishing, as well as a bit scary, that something as fundamental as the will to live can be turned on or off with a tiny electric current applied to a certain part of the brain. It is also scary to see, when this "organic" will to live has been knocked out, how ineffectual the intellect is in its attempts to "prove" that life is worth living."
"One could argue, to begin with, that the ability to desire and the ability to feel bad and good are logically connected. More precisely, one could argue that in the same way as it is logically impossible for a bachelor to be married, it is logically impossible for a creature to possess the ability to feel bad and good without also possessing the ability to desire. Things that feel good to a creature are intrinsically desirable to it: to say that something feels good to a creature means that in the absence of other factors, the creature would rather experience the feeling than not experience it. Likewise, things that feel bad to a creature are intrinsically undesirable to it. Things cannot be desirable or undesirable, though, to a creature that lacks the ability to desire. But if this is true, when the engineers endow their hen with the ability to feel bad and good, they must simultaneously endow her with the ability to desire."
In sum, most of the biology of desire can be viewed through the scope of incentive systems. A hen with inventive will be the one to survive. A hen without incentive or desire won't.
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Part III: Dealing With Our Desires
In discussing the philosophical portions of desire, namely the chapter on philosophical advice, he focuses on 3 Hellenistic philosophies:
- Stoicism
- Epicureanism
- Skepticism
"For the Hellenistic philosophers, by way of contrast, the primary reason for doing philosophy is so we can live better lives. Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) argued that "vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man." Stoic philosopher Seneca (3 B.C.-A.D. 65) offered similar sentiments: "A person who goes to a philosopher should carry away with him something or other of value every day; he should return home a sounder man or at least more capable of becoming one." And what is the proper goal of philosophy? According to Seneca, "Philosophy. . . takes as her aim the state of happiness."
Stoicism:
"Among the Stoics we find Posidonius of Rhodes, who is described as being "versatile and learned, a historian and a traveler, a man of scientific interests who calculated the circumference of the earth and proved the connection between the tides and the phases of the moon,." We find Cato the Younger, who valiantly opposed the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. We find Seneca, who as one of the most remarkable people of his time or any time: he deserves a place in the history books not just for his philosophical writings but for acting as primary adviser to the emperor Nero, for his skill and success as a dramatist, and for his financial acumen—he was a first-century equivalent of a modern investment banker. We also find Marcus Aurelius (121-180), who, besides being the last great Stoic philosopher, was not just an emperor of Rome but was arguably one of the greatest."
"Other people can also disturb our tranquility by insulting us. Epictetus therefore offers advice for dealing with insults: you need to realize, h says, that when someone insults you, what irritates you is not the insult itself—it is merely words—but your mental reaction to the insult. If you think, "I have been grievously insulted," you will feel the sting of the insult, but if you instead think, "The person who just tried to insult me is of no consequence. he is like a child or a barking dog. It would be foolish for me to take his words to heart," you will neutralize the insult. In other words, whenever you feel insulted by others, you have only yourself to blame."
This interpretation of Stoicism is, I think, mistaken. In making the above remark, Epictetus isn't suggesting that we should be emotionally distant from people. We should allow intense attachments to form .At the same time, we should realize that there is much in life we cannot control, and that if we try to control things that are beyond our control, we will experience much needless grief and turmoil. Unfortunately, the death of a loved one is often beyond our control."
"This aspect of Stoicism has a parallel in Zen Buddhism, which also emphasizes the impermanence of all things in life. Because things can be snatched away without warning, we need to work on enjoying them while we can. Along these lines, writer and Zen practitioner Natalie Goldberg tells a story about how loos is dealt with in Zen. She and other students at a Zen meditation center learned that a fellow Zen practitioner—Chris Pirsig, son of Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—had been stabbed to death for no apparent reason. She waited for her Zen master's daily lecture, on the assumption that he would say something that would "make it all better." His comment: "Human beings have an idea that they are very fond of: that we die in old age. This is just an idea. We don't know when our death will come. Chris Pirsig's death has come now. It is a great teaching in impermanence." That was it. No anger, no tears. Goldberg was shocked by her master's apparent indifference to the death.
Stoicism is concerned not so much with dealing with grief as preventing it. If you live the life of a Stoic—or the life of a Zen Buddhist, for that matter—you will enjoy the good things that life has to offer while it is possible to do so. When these good things disappear, you will therefore have less cause for grief that if you had assumed that the things in question could be enjoyed forever. You will not plague yourself with "if only" thoughts.
Stoicism doesn't require its followers to live grim, unfeeling lives. It does require them, though, to realize that there is much in life they cannot control, and consequently that many of the things that give them pleasure are transient: possessions will be lost or stolen, friendships will end, loved ones will die. This realization might make them appear emotionless distant, but it also allows them to be emotionally present in the sense that they live "in the moment."
Stoicism is concerned not so much with dealing with grief as preventing it. If you live the life of a Stoic—or the life of a Zen Buddhist, for that matter—you will enjoy the good things that life has to offer while it is possible to do so. When these good things disappear, you will therefore have less cause for grief that if you had assumed that the things in question could be enjoyed forever. You will not plague yourself with "if only" thoughts.
Stoicism doesn't require its followers to live grim, unfeeling lives. It does require them, though, to realize that there is much in life they cannot control, and consequently that many of the things that give them pleasure are transient: possessions will be lost or stolen, friendships will end, loved ones will die. This realization might make them appear emotionless distant, but it also allows them to be emotionally present in the sense that they live "in the moment."
Epicureanism:
Epicurus found the school of philosophy named after him, to which the students were called Epicureans. They shared the idea of tranquility with the Stoics, but disagreed with the idea of Stoic fatalism. All in all though, they had much in common with the Stoics. They both disparaged material wealth for example, and they both thought it would be better to "live unknown" rather than to seek fame.
Skepticism:
Pyrrho of Ellis founded the Greek school of Skepticism, also known as Pyrrhonism
They think that our misery largely comes up from the opinions and beliefs about our world. For example, our belief that money is a good thing swill give us misery for not having any. However, taking this philosophy in full application would label one as extreme, and realistically is extreme. One cannot help but to form beliefs about the world. Moreover, some beliefs are rationally justified, and to play a skeptic card to every belief is in itself extreme.
The Eccentrics:
Irvine talks about a group of people who are called "The Eccentrics". These are people who are inherently non-conformist to the bone, and don't care to follow any of societies' rules. They are often poor and also live to do the things that they want to do, even if it goes against societies' expectations. This forms a lifestyle for the eccentric, that is structured in a way that they enjoy their own company so much, that they don't feel the need to obtain other people's company in order to feel happy.
"Although Thoreau was not a hermit—not even during his years at Walden Pond—he had minimal need for social contact. As far as Thoreau was concerned, the costs associated with human contact clearly exceeded the benefits: "My acquaintances will sometimes wonder why I will impoverish myself by living aloof from this or that company, but greater would be the impoverishment if I should associate with them." Elsewhere he commented that "society, man, has no prize to offer me that can tempt me; not one. That which interests a town or city or any large number of men is always something trivial . . . . It is impossible for me to be interested in what interest men generally. Their pursuits and interests seem to me frivolous."
"Scottish neuropsychologist David Weeks has probably encountered more eccentrics than any other person. Week set out to do a study of eccentricity, only to discover that scientific knowledge about eccentrics was virtually nonexistent. He began working to fill in this gap in our understanding of nonconformity by studying eccentrics of yesterday and today. His conclusions are presented in his and Jamie James's Eccentrics: A study of Sanity and Strangeness."
"Although eccentrics are typically failures in the common sense of the word, Weeks found that as a group they are strikingly happy, and their happiness seems to be a result of their non conformity. Weeks describes them as exhibiting buoyant self-confidence and as being comfortable in their own skins. they also appear far more able than most adults to experience joy. This is in part what makes eccentrics seem childlike: they take obvious and intense delight in things that the rest of us find commonplace or boring. In this respect, they resemble Zen Buddhists who have found enlightenment."
"We can also learn from the way eccentrics respond to their critics. In particular, we can develop a talent for self-deprecation. If someone mocks the way we dress, for example, we might neutralize the criticism by commenting, "If you think this outfit is band, wait until you see what I wear tomorrow!" If someone points out a failing of ours, we might reply, "Thanks for mentioning it, but to be honest with you, I don't think that particular failing would even make it into my top-give list of character flaws." And to prevent ourselves from taking such criticisms to heart, we can, while giving these self-deprecating replies, add silently to ourselves: "If this person's own life were worth living, he would be so involved in living it that he wouldn't have time to criticize me. If I take his criticisms seriously, my life will become like his, and my life, too, will not be worth living."
More generally, we should work to develop a sense of humor about the world and our place in it. As soon as we start taking ourselves too seriously, we will be at the mercy of those around us. To keep them happy, we will have to form and act on a number of undesirable desires. We will no longer be living the life of our choosing, but the life they want us to lie. If we can learn to laugh at ourselves, though, we reduce our chances of falling victim to this kind of social tyranny."
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Conclusion
"Many people spend their days unreflectively earning the rewards offered by their BIS: it is, after all, the obvious thing to do. They seek the admiration of others because it feels good to be admired, and to win this admiration they might buy an expensive car and a big house filled with the latest consumer gadgets. If they can't fulfill the desires they form, they feel dissatisfied, and if they are able to fulfill them, they go on to form new desires, and so remain dissatisfied.
Sometimes it dawns on these individuals that they are on a satisfaction treadmill. They realize that the desires they satisfied in the past did not give rise to lasting happiness and that in satisfying these desires they were dealing with the symptoms of the problem of desire, not getting to its roots. They come to realize that there simply has to be more to life than spending one's days earning the rewards offered by one's BIS. They start worrying that the life they are living has no meaning and that they will someday experience Thoreau's nightmare scenario: it will come time to die, and they will realize that they never lived."
Main insights of the book:
"Scottish neuropsychologist David Weeks has probably encountered more eccentrics than any other person. Week set out to do a study of eccentricity, only to discover that scientific knowledge about eccentrics was virtually nonexistent. He began working to fill in this gap in our understanding of nonconformity by studying eccentrics of yesterday and today. His conclusions are presented in his and Jamie James's Eccentrics: A study of Sanity and Strangeness."
"Although eccentrics are typically failures in the common sense of the word, Weeks found that as a group they are strikingly happy, and their happiness seems to be a result of their non conformity. Weeks describes them as exhibiting buoyant self-confidence and as being comfortable in their own skins. they also appear far more able than most adults to experience joy. This is in part what makes eccentrics seem childlike: they take obvious and intense delight in things that the rest of us find commonplace or boring. In this respect, they resemble Zen Buddhists who have found enlightenment."
"We can also learn from the way eccentrics respond to their critics. In particular, we can develop a talent for self-deprecation. If someone mocks the way we dress, for example, we might neutralize the criticism by commenting, "If you think this outfit is band, wait until you see what I wear tomorrow!" If someone points out a failing of ours, we might reply, "Thanks for mentioning it, but to be honest with you, I don't think that particular failing would even make it into my top-give list of character flaws." And to prevent ourselves from taking such criticisms to heart, we can, while giving these self-deprecating replies, add silently to ourselves: "If this person's own life were worth living, he would be so involved in living it that he wouldn't have time to criticize me. If I take his criticisms seriously, my life will become like his, and my life, too, will not be worth living."
More generally, we should work to develop a sense of humor about the world and our place in it. As soon as we start taking ourselves too seriously, we will be at the mercy of those around us. To keep them happy, we will have to form and act on a number of undesirable desires. We will no longer be living the life of our choosing, but the life they want us to lie. If we can learn to laugh at ourselves, though, we reduce our chances of falling victim to this kind of social tyranny."
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Conclusion
"Many people spend their days unreflectively earning the rewards offered by their BIS: it is, after all, the obvious thing to do. They seek the admiration of others because it feels good to be admired, and to win this admiration they might buy an expensive car and a big house filled with the latest consumer gadgets. If they can't fulfill the desires they form, they feel dissatisfied, and if they are able to fulfill them, they go on to form new desires, and so remain dissatisfied.
Sometimes it dawns on these individuals that they are on a satisfaction treadmill. They realize that the desires they satisfied in the past did not give rise to lasting happiness and that in satisfying these desires they were dealing with the symptoms of the problem of desire, not getting to its roots. They come to realize that there simply has to be more to life than spending one's days earning the rewards offered by one's BIS. They start worrying that the life they are living has no meaning and that they will someday experience Thoreau's nightmare scenario: it will come time to die, and they will realize that they never lived."
Main insights of the book:
- We shouldn't trust our desires - sometimes the desires produced by our emotions are not in our best interest.
- We need to be careful about turning to other people for advice on dealing with desires - You ought not ask a person for medical advice if they've never been to medical school. You ought not ask a person for advice on desire if they themselves don't have at least a decent control over their own mind.
- Mastering desire will involve a two-stage strategy:
- Prevent unwanted desires
- Extinguish unwanted desires
- We should work to develop an understanding of desire
- Desires don't generally exist in isolation - In a grand majority of cases, a desire comes because of something else you want, etc.
- We have multiple sources of desire within us, and they can give rise to conflicting desires - i.e. The intellect and our emotions
- When it comes to desire formation, our intellect typically plays secondary compared to our emotions
- We have the greatest control over the desires that have the least impact on our lives
- We have a BIS and it determines, to a considerable extent, what desires we form
- The "incentive schedule" of our BIS was not devised to encouraged us to have a happy meaningful life. In fact, our BIS is a consequence of our evolutionary past.
- We can choose to forgo the rewards offered by our BIS and to accept its punishments
- We are insatiable
- The best way to gain satisfaction—lasting satisfaction—is to change not the world and our position in it but ourselves
- Complete absolute mastery of desire is virtually impossible - But it is controllable to some extent.
- Mastering desire won't be easy
"I think it is possible for a person to gain both satisfaction and worldly success, but usually when this happens, it isn't because his success brought him satisfaction. Instead it might be that the thing that brought him satisfaction also brought him success. This is what happened to Diogenes: his indifference to success, besides enabling him to feel satisfied with his life, made him famous. It is also what happened to Merton, who became famous despite living the life of a Trappist monk. For most of us, though, the choice between worldly success and satisfaction is mutually exclusive. Generally, to gain fame or fortune a person must be drive by ambition, and a driven person is unlikely to feel satisfied with his circumstances."
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