On the Problem of Desire

Concerts are for the Deaf,
music demands solitude.
Freedom is for the nonviolent,
the violent man is ever free.
Success demands death,
success is the end of desires.
Life demands corpses,
one must remain fed.
To demand to distinguish the truth,
one must have already lived as a liar.

Where We Stand

Like our times, our methods of solving problems have become mechanical. Problems of politics and society are solved by philosophers. The first problem for a philosopher is to determine the morality of human desires and how much of it could still allow society to progress towards coexistence and harmony. The notion of “fancy” introduced by Hobbes’ sensory excitement concept has plagued our imagination by limiting desires as trivial thoughts. Even though trivial, they are capable of making or breaking a person’s life and views. Hobbes gave birth to the Leviathan which ate up all the visionary shamans of high fantasy within man. The Shaman takes fancy from a vision seen within, like in a dream, than from a vision of without. A free imagination is essential to finding solutions. Yet, we imagine our problems to be mechanical, we imagine our solutions to be mechanical, everything works like a machine with gears and shafts, even the human body. This disease has defiled even our art and political thought. Any piece of contemporary art has more artificial objects in it than natural ones. And even though Descartes also used the idea of the mechanical view, he never wanted it to become the only one available. Philosophy is enlightened opinion, and the Cartesian view is enlightened opinion coming from a mathematician. And Hobbes knew his philosophy was half-baked even when he began writing. We humans are always in need of learned and enlightened opinions. The machine-view is an opinion that allows for quick fixes for trivial problems. It is bound to cause more trouble if we stick to it for all our problems. And everything written here are just my enlightened opinions and I suggest we give philosophy a biological view rather than the mechanical one we currently use.

We are in a time where we need excellent philosophers. I believe that philosophy is the ultimate goal of life. It is attaining a deeper imagination of a person’s life, their own life. This imagination allows the production of synthetic or novel ideas. And for Humanity to evolve there must be tangible new ideas to progress towards. The vastness of the imaginary universe needs anchors and milestones to guide the psychonaut and subsequently the innovator to progress. And without novel ideas- political thought, engineering, architecture, literature and vision becomes stagnant and degenerates. The degenerated condition of post-post modern art, surreal art and political thought are a testament to my views. Surrealism is a reactionary movement where criticism is seen as the solution. Where nature is too mundane to be represented and needs the dominance of artificial objects to validify it. The problem with artificial objects is that they were made with a purpose and themselves are solutions to problems not represented within the art form. In effect, Surrealism has brought meaning to its knees and intends to stab it till it breathes no more. Yet, the death of meaning could have been fruitful if tangible ideas emerged from it. The death of ideas proposed by Zen and other no-thought cultures is not a permanent one. Zen masters know that there will be new situations where they are forced to think, rather it is the anxiety of having to think that should be gotten rid off. The practice of no-thought is to only conserve energy and shift priorities. And then rethink. This shifting of priorities is what we refer to as “transcendence”. Transcendence is not promotion of the superiority of the artificial but the allowance of new ideas to drive the mind. All forms of transcendental practice is to shift ones priorities. The removal of priorities is not the premise of Zen. Rather it becomes the premise if one views it through Cartesian lenses.

Our priorities protect us from possessions, autogenerated priorities are the immune system of the mind. Desires and the chain of thoughts resulting from them destroy this harmonious state of mind. And with the immune system gone, outside entities have forced their priorities onto our minds, in effect causing us to lose our souls. The simpler human inside whose priorities dictated their desires. For example, we have a group a of people who call themselves the libertarians and feel that human freedom to follow their desires is a basic human right. They have imposed the idea of freedom on us. But freedom essentially means that a person only prioritizes their own desires and see it to be the duty of other person to fulfill their desires. Meaning they wat to imply that abandoning ones group identity is important for one to be truly free. However, giving up the group identity is giving up a section of the Human Mind that deals with honor, justice, and conscience. And abandoning that large section is dangerous. Because once a place is abandoned, outsiders seem to make a comfy home out of it. The mind must be free from anxiety to bring out the best possible outcomes of thought. But completely giving up on any impulse that causes anxiety is to deny the existence of others altogether. This is not just separation of group identity, but thinking that it does not exist at all. It is to endorse that a sick person is essentially dead and therefore, the effort to save the person is allowed to be half-hearted. However, just as it is important to cure the person, it is also important to bury the dead. Of course a dead body isn’t sick, the idea is to remove the disease and let it progress without allowing newer diseases to take its place. But, the whole concept of healing exists because one is humble enough to regard the contributions the person made during their life, even if it was zero. Meaning, if we simply heal the sick, it is not the accomplishment we wanted. Also, if we amputate the part it will not accomplish our goals either. The accomplishment is the whole act of trying without the care for outcome. Meaning, blind pursuit of desires does not lead to any success for the collective. But the wish to improve the condition of the collective is important for us to avoid the immense drive for sensual pleasure. We do not risk being controlled by outside forces if we do not give up our group identities. The best example of this is Chernobyl, where the nuclear explosion stopped humans but not life. Life will propagate into abandoned spaces regardless of the conditions. The same could be said for a mind that has lost its priorities, hence, its identity. Some outside entity will take its place and use it for its own nefarious purposes. The fight against the ego is never won because winning this fight means losing everything, even the promised grail of peace it seemingly offers. Therefore, anyone fighting the ego usually finds a natural resistance to completely removing it. So, priorities must remain, along with the ego. Otherwise we risk destroying the mind’s immune system. And losing the mind means we lose all structures the human evolved along with their history. Just as the body evolved to protect itself from certain parasites, the mind also evolved to keep away self-destructive thoughts.

As more and more people lose their minds, we have a culture built by parasites. Parasites will always build a culture that eventually benefits them and not Humans. Just as humans raise fat, strong cattle only to harvest them. With the immune system gone, we have now what we can call a diseased culture. This extra-dimensional possession has forced us into materializing elements that are too bizzare to be useful to Humanity. A careful study of these elements, such as the Production Line, the Promissory Bank Note, Organ Harvesting, the Standing Army, Democracy, gives us a clear picture. We have become enslaved by some external force that is not working in benefit of Humans. And the root of this problem, this hidden enemy, comes from those misinterpretations that masked enlightenment or nirvana as having no priorities. The enemy of mankind has made it believe that by ending identity and priority, we could reach a peaceful end. This peaceful end they called the end of history. In the pursuit to end history, we have accelerated ourselves into a different timeline altogether where the concept of history never existed. In order for anything to end, it must be allowed to run its natural course. This is where I believe the ideas of relativity are real, that if a force tries to bend a particular dimension by excess, it will transfer the force to increase another dimension. Just as speed becomes matter in order to tame its own effect. In this case, time transferred into memory and slowed down to the point of non-existence. And our mental, philosophical, political, technological and biological evolution has halted because all of it has become future memory.

Any memory of the future is useless for Humans because the Human creature is bound to its current dimensions and cannot make use of it. Our imagination can only use ideas that it understands completely, whether the person can articulate that idea is dependent cultural, linguistic and artistic capabilities of the individual. And therefore, creatures who can make use of future memory made our minds into their weapons factories. They found us very easy to manipulate. This enemy uses two powerful tools, basic human desires and the urge to end these desires. They manipulate our willpower to create more future memory for them. Perhaps in the greater universe, humans are the only source of future memory. And we create it through anxiety of unfavorable events and overreacting to prevent them. Everything that manifests out of that state of anxiety is what these Archons or Old Gods want. Anxiety is the beginning of possession. Sounds Lovecraftian but this is the best way to view how we humans have fallen into some kind of a trap that will only increase our collective anxiety. And thus we come back to the basics of reclaiming our minds. Here philosophers are the brave knights who have soared into the depths and found the evil dragon and slain it. The Dragon of Anxiety and the Dragon of Mundanity guard the Archon stealing our future from us. And since the enemy is insidious, our present education and mastery are inadequate to fight them. More than a map of the stars, we need a map of the human soul.

A Step Forward

The way to fight these problems is knowledge and subsequent enlightened thought. However, the problem with thought and imagination is that it is also available to the uninitiated. Men who are consumed by their desires, with no realistic means of satisfying them will use their thoughts and knowledge to open interdimensional portals that allow the Demons through to our reality. Demons prey on our desires, especially those of the extreme kind. Man must learn to philosophize new and unique purposes to overcome its new challenges. And the first step is to imagine to comprehend the problem.

Desires are the first disturbances in the quiet mind. The beginning of inner chaos. All of the external world of man is a reflection of the internal world of man. Resolution to inner chaos eventually leads to resolution of the outer chaos. Yet, they are a reaction to sensual phenomenon. A hungry person does not see the solution in food, but in pizza. But had their hunger been driven to a point of extreme, the definition of “food” would broaden. So, we can see a spectrum of “preferences” and

And therefore, philosophy is learning to allow natural thought processes to run its course with the conscious mind and taking the results of those thoughts into belief and then using existing logic and science to backup that belief. To find out whether that belief is helpful or unrealistic, the person has to put it to test in their daily lives. Every belief is a perspective upon the understanding of real phenomenon. Let’s say a person believes that there is an invisible creator. The belief is a perspective upon the existence of world. The world here is a real phenomenon.

Sounds much like the scientific process, but here one observes the internal world rather than the external world. What we refer to as Jungian psychoanalysis is the act of philosophy. And since a lot of external chaos has gone unresolved, we must conclude that a lot of internal chaos has gone unresolved as well. This unresolved internal chaos urges the philosopher to end the process of thought inside. Yet, this is not resolution but passing-on of the problem to someone else.

A lot of art to be made, a lot of philosophizing to do. A whole lot of thinking.

Human thought has come a long way. And in fact, the whole purpose of initiation into secret societies is to teach the aspirant to think in particular way. All of the great brotherhoods of the world, simply guard a thought. A thought that could make or break the universe if a person were to entertain it long enough. Understanding the danger of such thoughts, they hide it behind intense symbolism and crude language. That a trained eye and trained mind will easily detect. Recently such thoughts have been picked up by highly materialistic people into driving people into self-destructive madness. But the best way to put it would be in Orientalist terms. That would be to say that thoughts are portals through which evil demons can enter our reality. And by coming here, they can possess individuals can make them do the bidding of Satan. There is no better way to describe the behaviors of the common capitalist. Because explaining their attitude with just greed would be to criminalize a child who stole his siblings candies all for himself. That is greed. Because candy is sweet and our brains reward survival attitudes like hoarding. However, that cannot be said for a high-end capitalist. He is not acting out of survival tendencies, he is not simply hoarding. What the capitalist does is that he changes his environment for profit. Profit is more like gambling, an exposition of the innate search for life. Profit makes the capitalist feel alive, just as a professional musician or a sportsman feels alive when doing their craft. And people often perform their craft to extremes. Where it affects their sanity. Once a person is willing to sacrifice their sanity for their craft, the only way to describe them is Possessed. It is the extremeness of their obsession that creates thoughts that other people simply never think about. Therefore, some thoughts can create intensely powerful portals. These portals can allow entrance to entities that can change the world. Thus, these thoughts need to be guarded behind symbols. Because the untrained man is a danger to all, that is because he has no clue on the cycle of his desires.

And this is one aspect that all philosophers must learn to deal with. To create philosophers, the first step is to guide them towards the problem of desires. This is, by my standards, the first problem of philosophy.

The problem of desires is that our desires are endless and there is not truly enough means to satisfy them all. Most political schools would argue that a certain system can fulfill all of the natural human desires in the most effective fashion. No school however, will claim that all desires can be fulfilled for each person. Another school tries to identify that our desires vary and change. This variation and changing implies that desires are usually baseless and unnecessary thoughts, so they should be gotten rid off completely. Whatever the base a student uses for their philosophical model, they must run the thought all throughout human history to the point of inception then towards the current era. Let’s say we were to run Buddhist philosophy to the current era, one school would say that in a highly developed country with sufficient food and resources it is ones duty to be as luxurious as possible or otherwise the effort of the people in those industries would go to waste and one would be responsible for this waste. And in a poor country the same person would decrease their consumptive attitude and save up for all of the needy people. However, a highly ascetic school would consider both as Maya and make asceticism a necessary phase of their goal to enlightenment. Again the psychiatric schools will emphasize how too much fulfilment of desires can impact society or the person negatively. Therefore, a person can pick many established paths or establish a few of their own towards synchronizing their philosophy. But the best approach with regards to desire is to begin by psychoanalysis and reviewing their own mind and keeping a mental history.

The mental history of a person is the memory of how they felt during a specified condition in their past experiences. A nicely kept record of feelings is the most accurate way of relating to other people. This is why we realize to send condolences when a person of interest dies even though we might not have known them. People with similar perspectives react similarly to stimuli. The obtaining of desired objects and the losing of desired objects is one method to begin with. Desired objects create the “fancy” within humans, and humans use their imagination to idolize this object. The imagination being a highly powerful force, seeks similar fancies and attaches the person with those people. Here we can find their mental histories match up as well. The feelings of a person have a trend and this trend is similar for people with similar interests. The mental history, determines a person’s in-group. People who have large in-groups have mundane desires, lack imagination and have little intelligence. This creates the masses. The mental history, feelings and art made by the masses contain too little information content to require elaborate design. Therefore, a phase of degeneration begins which slowly takes over intellectual fields and aid and support groups. Since the original elaborate vision is lost, such circles become regressive animal cults. Therefore, a person with a long history of idolatry- fancy of external objects- will not produce the philosophy that evolves and progresses.

Progress then requires feelings of self-sacrifice. Because either one has to reject their mental history or learn to perceive the world with total acceptance and zero will to alter the situation to ones benefits. Yet, few people understand the feelings after the self has been sacrificed. Most people will never reach that stage in their lives where they have killed their inner idolater. However, enlightened feelings can be recorded down in writing or by the means of symbolism. Therefore, the purpose of recording a person’s mental history is to end the endless stream of desires. Because they are a massive burden on the mind and a person can never focus on collective problems unless they have taken this burden off.

We will still have the problem of lack of understanding even if enlightened thought are written down. Because Humans have a habit of reading empty words. The inner idolater censors these words because of its extreme fondness of Unfulfilled Desires (or Fancy). The western world has also demonized the lack of desires as “depression”. And a whole branch of science has been dedicated to study such persons who are slowly becoming enlightened, called psychiatry. Their enlightened thoughts are seen as problematic to the structure of their mental histories because the person has sacrificed idolatry and become free. This is what “free-thinker” originally meant, a person free from the mental history of the masses. Here the power inherent in the abolishment of endless desires begin. Here the person is free to think those thoughts that might create or break universes. Yet, there is a school that would debate that just like enlightened thoughts, there could be enlightened desires.

When a philosopher opts for the minimalist and simple life, they will vouch to some extent for desires to run their course. Meaning a person must become disillusioned from desires by realizing that they will eventually lead to misery. UG Krishnamurti used to say that the only way to get rid of desire is to fulfill it. Implying that the path of fulfilling desires can also enlighten a man and show him the path to progress. Whereas the masses live with unfulfilled desires and their mental history is one of unfulfillment, therefore, desires are not to be blamed for their intellectual derangement. This derangement being an amnesia that allows them to forget the hangover after the night-out drinking. This where we can call a form of external possession forces them to censor out the miserable part and focus more on the pleasure portion. This censoring of mental history drives the inner chaos to increase. The triggering of chaos therefore, begins with a fancy or idolatry.

Now we can come back to what the nature of this inner chaos is, and go for an abrupt conclusion. Because the whole point of this piece is to portray how important desires are to any kind of philosophy and why a different perspective needs to be applied to it. The inner chaos roots from the string of emotions erupted by thinking about topics the mind usually overlooks. Once a large number of unanswered questions build up, a mind goes into chaos. Chaos could be interpreted as incompetence. Incompetence results when a person desires something they have no means of acquiring. A constant sense of incompetence drives the mind to experience the Archonic influence, the Possession. This is where they prioritize the attainment of their goal above their sense of morality-guilt-conscience. With their conscience gone, they are free to do whatever they like and do it to an extreme. This morbid tendency to dwell in extremes portrays that a person is no longer capable of self-critique and feels obligated to display their viciousness at every available opportunity.

A Conclusion

Different perspectives on the nature, history and consequences of desires is the easiest source material for a philosopher. Because they have their own mental history and they can learn from it through introspection. The whole question of desires and their effect on the individual and society could be judged by putting the perspectives on a spectrum. On one end you could put “desires are good” on the other “desires are bad”, then let the mind and your personal experiences do the philosophy. I would rectify my earlier statement a bit. The problem of Endless Desires should be the first problem of philosophy if the focus is upon collective evolution of humanity.