‘you’ve become more miserable since you’ve got your dream job’
All too often we associate desires with five star hotels, big houses, powerful cars, and gourmet restaurants. Yet, desires transcend the material and encompass a wider range of needs such as spiritual and ideological as well as the material. The maximalist impulse for more is seen in diverse movements which on the face of it have nothing to do with each other. Indeed, both Islamic State and eco warriors demand a maximalist approach to save the world from their very different ideas of an oncoming storm.
It is something that resides in all of us even if we try to tame and suppress them. Ted Kaczynski, the loner who lived in spent his days decrying the industrial revolution and its material gains, had desires. His was the desire was reverting to a simpler way of living and to gain notoriety to spread his views. Our want for ‘more’ therefore is not constrained or restricted to a mere sub-section of society.
But many of us have precisely the opposite desire. Rather than less we want more- we want more love, more money, more time, just more of everything. Some of this could be seen as a natural desire. As something from stemming from deep within us even if it is not altogether healthy. After-all, the accumulation of possessions, partners and friends is hardly a new phenomenon explicitly tied to capitalism and liberalism.
However, it would be somewhat facetious to ignore our present conditions. One cannot argue from human nature alone. Rather we must consider how the present social and economic conditions help drive our desires for more. Jonathan Haidt has repeatedly discussed the dangers of social media for our mental well-being but we cannot exclude its influence on our desires. We see what others have on social media, the picture of perfection and desire it for ourselves. The pictures we see from curated profiles and so called ‘influencers’ help lead us to the notion that if we do the ‘right’ things then the rewards will come. We tell ourselves that our desire for more is part of a plan of our socio-economic system.
Our desires to some extent transcend such conditions, yet I believe our current social, economic, and political systems exacerbate our inner desires for greater success. Rousseau himself explores this theme through amour-prope. For Rousseau the notion of self-love, initially tied to sexual competition but only fully explored through the creation of material wealth and inequality, drove a fight with the ego. In modernity we desire to be seen as excellent and recognised as such. With this quality respect from our peers comes making us feel valued and good. It is a feeling that few can match and something that is normal if not entirely natural- it is something that comes to us but driven to excess by our present material and cultural conditions.
Simultaneously natural and manufactured, self-love is both inherent to our condition but can also be leveraged by specific cultural conditions of inequality, value, and worth. The grotesque yet fascinating rise of the incel movement highlights the need to be desired as well as desiring things ourselves. Little is more painful than unrequited love; otherwise how could it attain its place in so many songs for teens, yet if someone bathes in unrequited love we see them not as merely lonely listless people but a pitiful example of what not to do.
Indeed, our cultural loathing and fear of the incels is a good example of this phenomenon. Rarely is any pity offered for these lost and lonely people who have decided our culture and economic system work against them finding a mate. Instead, we mock and fear them, perhaps praying inside that we don’t become one of them. For what makes the incels ugly is not their misogyny or their conspiratorial view of the world, but their reflection of what we could be.
That fear of what we could become is reflected in our desire to attain more and our fears when we get it. By accumulating more it fails to grant us inner peace and security. Instead, it helps drive our anxiety that we are going to fall. The higher we climb the greater the fall. I feel this all too keenly in my own life.
I walk into work seeing my nameplate on the door ‘Dr Samuel Mace’ and I know I should feel a sense of pride, belonging and acceptance. Yet, rarely if ever do I feel connected to those feelings. Instead, a feeling of dread often overhangs as it does for when I deliver lectures and seminars. The feeling that I don’t quite belong, that this could all be taken away from me in a second and I’ll be left with nought. The fear of loss overhangs all things sticking sharply in the mind.
I received the ‘initial buzz’ of happiness once I got the job and moved in with my partner. How can you not? Not unlike graduation those are days filled with pure celebration and recognition of the hard work and journey you have been on. But also like graduation that is simply one day. Instead, feeling a sense of ennui, at the accomplishment and ‘success’ which is supposed to define a happy life becomes all consuming. Perhaps the constant talk of being our ‘best selves’ comes with its own consequences. Our achievements today are wired in to us not unlike levels on a video game. We beat one boss and go onto the next. The ‘bigger’ the boss the better we are supposed to feel.
Unlike with a video game where you can continually triumph with enough effort and determination life is not like that. Even when we beat certain ‘life bosses’ many of us can still not find satisfaction. Living in a nice flat in York, a few minutes away from the Minster which hangs over the city as I occupy my dream job, many of my friends and even acquaintances say that I have ‘made it’. Yet, as I sit writing this piece, it does not feel as if I have made it at all. Instead, I feel a longing for something, searching for the next rung on the ladder to climb as my hands feel sweaty and ever weakening.
So even when we get our hearts desires that does not alleviate our fears of losing it all or wanting even more. We become stuck inside an ever turning wheel as we try to find ways to accomplish what we desire. Ultimately the desire for more may be seen as a driver for greatness and a motivator. Yet, it simultaneously leads us not only to acquire disappointment but also the fear of losing what we already have. Desire is a dead end for happiness. It fails to provide us with security, love, or inner peace. Instead, it provides a nagging in our ears, it is philosophical tinnitus forever ringing in the background.
This may be a first paragraph. So how do we get to "happiness". Is this where meditation comes in? how many of us remain stuck at this point for the rest of or lives. How does this impact on our relationships? with friends/dependents?What do I teach my children/students?