This is what makes desires manipulative, then: they instill a sense of dissatisfaction that a person did not previously have, and force the person to extend effort to relieve this dissatisfaction. — darthbarracuda
Pleasure, an apparent good, is something that must be earned - but why do we need to earn anything to begin with? Why do we need to be part of the rat-race, always chasing a cheese, like a mannequin controlled by otherworldly manipulators? — darthbarracuda
It is my argument, then, that sentient creatures have the N-property of being beings of desire. It is in the very nature of sentient beings that they desire, woven into their very being, in the same way living organisms are Beings-towards-Death, sentient organisms are also Beings-towards-Desire. — darthbarracuda
As such, a concept of freedom which denies desire is literally a super-human concept. It may in some sense be coherent and even make sense for super-human beings. But not human beings. (and, I'd hazard, that we posit it as we, as human beings, often have the desire to be more than what we are) — Moliere
Think of fear. Where would that fit in your schema? I imagine that we'd posit that it is a pain, and to relieve pain is a kind of pleasure. But I would say this is to misunderstand fear. Fear is neither a need nor a want, and it can vary in intensity so that it is more pressing than either needs or wants. Yet I would classify it as a desire, though it is unrelated to pleasure per se (though I do believe there is a pleasure in a continued state of non-pain -- that is a specific kind of pleasure, but I wouldn't define fear along the lines of this pleasure-pain) — Moliere
But this is somewhat grammatical. I tend to think of desire in fairly wide terms -- and I also tend to believe that the satisfaction of desire is somewhat illusory, that there is no lack which is being filled in the pursuit of desire. I would say that 'filling a lack' is more characteristic of our needs than desires, as a whole. (food, shelter, sex -- the craving returns, but they are satisfiable too, unlike many of our desires) — Moliere
As such, a concept of freedom which denies desire is literally a super-human concept. It may in some sense be coherent and even make sense for super-human beings. But not human beings. (and, I'd hazard, that we posit it as we, as human beings, often have the desire to be more than what we are) — Moliere
Indeed. Instrumentality. Why bring in more people in order to need in the first place? How do you think absurdity fits into the picture? Specifically, the idea that we must endure each day finding ways to fulfill desires, day in and day out. — schopenhauer1
This is what makes desires manipulative, then: they instill a sense of dissatisfaction that a person did not previously have, and force the person to extend effort to relieve this dissatisfaction. — darthbarracuda
I would say that fear is an negative emotion that motivates a desire-creation that further motivates action. Fear makes us uncomfortable. So basically all desires are spawned from the instantiation of a negative experience. The insidious part about all this is that positive experiences, although being positive, will always promote a negative experience. — darthbarracuda
The point I was getting at was that the requirement to fulfill desires, however illusory this satisfaction is, manipulates us into harming ourselves. — darthbarracuda
Yeah, it seems related to the paradox of desire. The point being, however, is that a happy slave is still a slave. — darthbarracuda
Does a desire have some sort of independent existence in my brain in such a way that a desire can manipulate me? It seems like desires are the wishes of the individual. The individual motivates, drives, tortures, whips himself by devising desires whose satisfaction is not in easy reach, or in reach at all. — Bitter Crank
Why are we discontented? Why do we desire more than we have, or different than we have? We can learn to cool off our discontents, lessen our desires. We can learn to be content. I'm not suggesting that we should, just that we can. — Bitter Crank
That we know we can do these things (lessen desire) ought to take the sting out of our auto-manufactured desires. I don't know precisely what the beginning of desire is. Perhaps it is rooted in hunger (not literal hunger for food). Perhaps it is rooted in fear -- a fear of insufficiency. Perhaps it is rooted in the capacity to imagine -- whether the imagined thing is worth having or not. There are other possibilities. — Bitter Crank
At any rate, desires aren't manipulating us. It's the self working on itself. Maybe it all comes from not enough love. And by the time we grasp that, we've gone a long way chasing our tails down the highway. — Bitter Crank
At any rate, desires aren't manipulating us. It's the self working on itself. Maybe it all comes from not enough love. And by the time we grasp that, we've gone a long way chasing our tails down the highway. — Bitter Crank
Pleasure, evolutionarily, seems strongly correlated with survival and procreation necessities. We achieve pleasure by eating, by exploring (and engaging in concomitant exercise), by sexual activities, in the wake (if not the midst) of significant adrenaline releases, etc. — Terrapin Station
It would be better, at least from my standpoint, to just use the terms "pleasure", "wants", and "needs" rather than "desire" -- especially as your account of desire seems to somehow exclude emotion. — Moliere
Further, "harm" is already a word bound up in the logic of desire, no? It's not like I have my desires over here which manipulate me in the middle to go to the harms over there. I want to avoid harms. And these are the things which I need to avoid. — Moliere
But your terminology of "slave" is only relative to some sort of demi-god-like character, because it is based on a freedom that is not only unattainable, but could reasonably be interpreted as some kind of super- or post-human freedom. You seem to believe that we could only be free and not a slave if we were to act out of something other from desire. — Moliere
However I would say that we always want to avoid harm, while we don't always want to obtain pleasure because the costs (pain) may be too high. — darthbarracuda
If he didn't have a desire to get x, would the man still consent to go through all the pains of the journey? That's manipulative, even if the pay-off is "worth it". — darthbarracuda
This is an interesting point. Pain and pleasure are somewhat close as feelings from a phenomenological standpoint. The distinction doesn't appear to me to be so clear cut. Many things, like for example warmth, are pleasurable. Increase the temperature too much and it becomes painful. The masochist enjoys harming himself as another example. We find that to be wrong and immoral simply because we understand that from an objective point of view, harming yourself has objective future ramifications, and it's not worth it for a mere subjective feeling.Have you met anyone that cuts themselves? Or has done so in the past? — Heister Eggcart
The distinction doesn't appear to me to be so clear cut. — Agustino
As Schopenhauer said, a man can do as he wills but he cannot will what he wills. — darthbarracuda
... I am using desire as synonymous to concern, with two sub-categories involved: needs (pressing desires) and wants (relaxed desires).
Pleasure is the experience we normally receive when we satisfy a desire....
But our brains were not meant to be stimulated like this — darthbarracuda
We will what we will, even if we don't consciously and rationally choose to do so--which is why Freud said "We are not masters of our own house". — Bitter Crank
You are bleary-eyed but you are FORCED with a familiar decision- get out of bed or lay there... I supposed you COULD lay there until you get bed sores, shit your bed, and die of starvation, dehydration, and infection, but most likely you CHOOSE the decision to get up. — schopenhauer1
Fortunately, life goes on because you don't need to make choices at all these junctures of various bodily functions. You are a body, and your body won't put up with your decision to lay there in a pile of shit, wet cold mattress, while your are chilled, stinking, a-hungering, a-thirsting, and a-rotting from infection--unless you in your body is afflicted with terminal dementia. — Bitter Crank
So, did Freddie choose to become a repulsive pariah, the village idiot, in a small down, or did he fail at being a human being, ending up as a miserable wretch not by his own doing? — Bitter Crank
However I would say that we always want to avoid harm, while we don't always want to obtain pleasure because the costs (pain) may be too high. — darthbarracuda
Well I suppose this is where cosmic metaphysics might start to come into play. If we can't actually conceive of someone as not being a slave to their will, then perhaps it is actually the case that the will is metaphysically superior than the do. — darthbarracuda
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