Ask Me Anything (Open Thread) + Reflections on Desire
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Welcome, new subscribers! Crazy to think that we have grown from 18 readers when I first sent this newsletter out 2 years ago to 4,087! We are a growing group of people who seek to live lives of thoughtfulness and awe, who believe that the worlds of intellect and spirit can and should overlap, and who seek to confront the challenges of modern life guided by the wisdom of great and ancient texts. I am grateful for your deep engagement.
As we head into year 3, I plan on introducing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) Function. Put your questions in the thread below and I’ll either respond directly or integrate into material for a more elaborate post. I’m hoping to do these about once every two weeks. I’m also going to make the threads open so you can respond to one another. And watch the space for more opportunities to interact with me and one another.
My ask: To support this work and gain access to the AMA threads going forward, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Finally, here is a thought to ponder: Mark Lilla says the point of humanistic study is to help us ask the question “What should we desire?” STEM and technical disciplines help us fulfill our desires, but philosophy and literature make us reflective: “Is this what we should desire? And how should we know? Where does this sense of ‘should’ come from? etc.
So here is the question: Let’s agree that a reflective life is something we should desire because we should desire to ask “What should we desire?” But that still doesn’t answer the question “What should we desire?” What is your answer, and what are the resources, be they textual or experiential, that inform it? Can self-help and wellness gurus answer this question, or do they already presume what we desire, namely wellness, which only begs the question: what is wellness?
1. The first source is innate either biologically hardwired into our bodies (e.g. an infant's desire for milk) or spiritually embedded (e.g. Pascal's God-shaped hole).
2. The second is psychosocially determined (e.g. Girard's mimetic theory, marketing, peer group, etc).
3. The third is religious in that we are "bound" by a tradition, a text, a community, rituals, a metanarrative, revelation, etc. to train us in what to desire.
Self-help gurus presume and even shape all three sources. As a psychotherapist, I am often concerned that my field is not explicit about its definition of mental health and all of the value-laden assumptions that go into it. This is true of wellness as well. Secularism's subtraction story leads us to believe we live in a values-vacuum, now that we've done away with God. We do not. These four questions come to bear: 1. What is (ultimately) real? 2. Who is well off? 3. Who is a really good person? 4. How do I become a genuinely good person?
Let me clarify: my first question about desire is me modeling AMA to myself. It's also a way to offer a prompt for those who seek not to offer a question in the thread or else to meditate on something that might motivate a question. All questions welcome in the thread! No you don't need to answer my question about desire but you are welcome to if you want.
Living a human life teaches us that desire is insatiable and infinite.
What does desire seek? Desire seeks to be satisfied by what it perceives to be good. The perception of what's good can be imperfect or erroneous, but desire nevertheless always seeks to be fulfilled by something it perceives as good.
What good can satisfy an otherwise insatiable and infinite desire for goodness? Only an infinite goodness.
So, ultimately, the question is, "What is goodness? What infinite goodness can satisfy an infinite desire?" Determining what is the greater (or greatest) good is the exercise of philosophy and the pursuit of religion.
(I think we're all still working that one out. Probably not as earnestly as we should, but there it is.)
Often times when I ask what should we desire, I wind up thinking there are things that we shouldn’t be desiring, and yet can I ever expect us to truly alter what we desire? As in can we reasonably desire what we should? Especially if this means altering desires that have been socially contested and deemed popularly acceptable over time? Is it better to know what we truly desire and to limit them if need be? Or is better to try to alter them to the point where we no longer experience desire for the things we maybe shouldn’t desire?
Do you believe in any “stuff” that is not encompassed by current models of the physical universe? I am not using terms such as “spirit” or “chi” since any “stuff” that is outside of our current physical models is likely not subject to analysis using language.
A person’s answer to this question may have relevance to the question of “what and why should I desire?”
Agnes Callard said something on your podcast that I can't figure out. She said that Socrates was a desymbolizer that desymbolized "up" compared to everyone else (Girard, Foucault, Robin Hanson, etc) who desymbolize "down". She described how Socrates would explain to people that what they wanted was more elevated than what they thought they wanted. That sounds like someone who people would like. But obviously Socrates made a lot of enemies. So I don't understand what she was trying to explain.
Any rational analysis of desire is, by definition, anthropocentric. Humans cannot expect to view through the finite lens of their physical senses an infinite reality. While satisfaction of desire fulfills quotidian, anthropocentric needs and values humanity cannot expect to exist in harmony with a universe that is infinite and incomprehensible without making serious attempts at comprehending the incomprehensible. Our approach to such comprehension is only asymptotic to the Reality we seek to understand; we can get closer and closer, but we can never fully comprehend. Still we must, and do, try. Science, religion, philosophy, meditation, Zen koans, all are paths trying for the same destination.
Is there any merit to perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley and William James who argue that all the world's religious and spiritual traditions share a single metaphysical core of (something like) a non-dual religious experience or divine knowledge?
It seems to me that a great paradox lies at the heart of desire, which we see most clearly in the experience of interpersonal love: we all desire to experience the full, sincere love of another, but the only way to achieve that is by abandoning one's focus on one's own desire and placing the other's (the lover's) wellbeing and desire at the center of our concern and actions. Only then might you merit the full and sincere love of one who can satisfy your desire. The goal will always elude us if we focus merely on it itself.
How does this dynamic map onto philosophy and today's numerous wellness theories?
Is enlightenment (as understood within the context of Eastern traditions and religion) a "real" thing? Is it permanent? Is there any analog to such a thing within Judaism?
"Should" is tricky, it presumes a right answer of a sort. If we claim perhaps there are some moral boundaries (you shouldn't choose to hurt others), the rest is about maximising your own potential. To the extent that it gives you a sense of ongoing happiness and satisfaction.
do you believe that civil discourse or hermeneutics or philosophy can and should take on the task of turning around a crumbling civil accord and plagues of dangerous misinformation? If so, might it be helpful to adopt the "prophetic conceit"? What can we learn from the intellectual response to previous eras and examples of extremism and misinformation in the West?
I believe desire comes from three sources:
1. The first source is innate either biologically hardwired into our bodies (e.g. an infant's desire for milk) or spiritually embedded (e.g. Pascal's God-shaped hole).
2. The second is psychosocially determined (e.g. Girard's mimetic theory, marketing, peer group, etc).
3. The third is religious in that we are "bound" by a tradition, a text, a community, rituals, a metanarrative, revelation, etc. to train us in what to desire.
Self-help gurus presume and even shape all three sources. As a psychotherapist, I am often concerned that my field is not explicit about its definition of mental health and all of the value-laden assumptions that go into it. This is true of wellness as well. Secularism's subtraction story leads us to believe we live in a values-vacuum, now that we've done away with God. We do not. These four questions come to bear: 1. What is (ultimately) real? 2. Who is well off? 3. Who is a really good person? 4. How do I become a genuinely good person?
Let me clarify: my first question about desire is me modeling AMA to myself. It's also a way to offer a prompt for those who seek not to offer a question in the thread or else to meditate on something that might motivate a question. All questions welcome in the thread! No you don't need to answer my question about desire but you are welcome to if you want.
On another note, do you have any specific books you’d recommend reading currently?!
Living a human life teaches us that desire is insatiable and infinite.
What does desire seek? Desire seeks to be satisfied by what it perceives to be good. The perception of what's good can be imperfect or erroneous, but desire nevertheless always seeks to be fulfilled by something it perceives as good.
What good can satisfy an otherwise insatiable and infinite desire for goodness? Only an infinite goodness.
So, ultimately, the question is, "What is goodness? What infinite goodness can satisfy an infinite desire?" Determining what is the greater (or greatest) good is the exercise of philosophy and the pursuit of religion.
(I think we're all still working that one out. Probably not as earnestly as we should, but there it is.)
If you were to pen a third substack, what would it be on, and why?
Often times when I ask what should we desire, I wind up thinking there are things that we shouldn’t be desiring, and yet can I ever expect us to truly alter what we desire? As in can we reasonably desire what we should? Especially if this means altering desires that have been socially contested and deemed popularly acceptable over time? Is it better to know what we truly desire and to limit them if need be? Or is better to try to alter them to the point where we no longer experience desire for the things we maybe shouldn’t desire?
How can technology serve ethics instead of vice versa?
Do you believe in any “stuff” that is not encompassed by current models of the physical universe? I am not using terms such as “spirit” or “chi” since any “stuff” that is outside of our current physical models is likely not subject to analysis using language.
A person’s answer to this question may have relevance to the question of “what and why should I desire?”
Agnes Callard said something on your podcast that I can't figure out. She said that Socrates was a desymbolizer that desymbolized "up" compared to everyone else (Girard, Foucault, Robin Hanson, etc) who desymbolize "down". She described how Socrates would explain to people that what they wanted was more elevated than what they thought they wanted. That sounds like someone who people would like. But obviously Socrates made a lot of enemies. So I don't understand what she was trying to explain.
Do you understand what she meant?
Any rational analysis of desire is, by definition, anthropocentric. Humans cannot expect to view through the finite lens of their physical senses an infinite reality. While satisfaction of desire fulfills quotidian, anthropocentric needs and values humanity cannot expect to exist in harmony with a universe that is infinite and incomprehensible without making serious attempts at comprehending the incomprehensible. Our approach to such comprehension is only asymptotic to the Reality we seek to understand; we can get closer and closer, but we can never fully comprehend. Still we must, and do, try. Science, religion, philosophy, meditation, Zen koans, all are paths trying for the same destination.
Is there any merit to perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley and William James who argue that all the world's religious and spiritual traditions share a single metaphysical core of (something like) a non-dual religious experience or divine knowledge?
It seems to me that a great paradox lies at the heart of desire, which we see most clearly in the experience of interpersonal love: we all desire to experience the full, sincere love of another, but the only way to achieve that is by abandoning one's focus on one's own desire and placing the other's (the lover's) wellbeing and desire at the center of our concern and actions. Only then might you merit the full and sincere love of one who can satisfy your desire. The goal will always elude us if we focus merely on it itself.
How does this dynamic map onto philosophy and today's numerous wellness theories?
Is enlightenment (as understood within the context of Eastern traditions and religion) a "real" thing? Is it permanent? Is there any analog to such a thing within Judaism?
"Should" is tricky, it presumes a right answer of a sort. If we claim perhaps there are some moral boundaries (you shouldn't choose to hurt others), the rest is about maximising your own potential. To the extent that it gives you a sense of ongoing happiness and satisfaction.
do you believe that civil discourse or hermeneutics or philosophy can and should take on the task of turning around a crumbling civil accord and plagues of dangerous misinformation? If so, might it be helpful to adopt the "prophetic conceit"? What can we learn from the intellectual response to previous eras and examples of extremism and misinformation in the West?