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Modern life’s sprawling, de-sited communities dissolve rooted belonging.
Without a place—or people—to hold our woes, offer forgiveness, and restore us through communion, we lose spiritual closure and contentment.
Bereft of that human anchor, we turn to objects: things imbued with aura, narrative, and promise.
Consumption becomes self-medication, a frantic substitute for the balance once found in shared spirit. We buy to fill the void that only belonging can heal.
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Removing shame to liberate individuals risks unintended consequences. By stripping away societal guilt, we may foster freedom but also unleash unchecked desires.
This can lead to explosive, infantile reactions—an impulsive population driven by wants rather than reason. Shame, while oppressive, often tempers behavior, and without it, society will face chaos from a panoply of individual yearnings.
The perspective to adopt is balance and moderation: encourage individual freedom while cultivating self-control. Otherwise, the pursuit of unchecked desire could unravel the social fabric, leaving us with neither liberty nor stability. This would reintroduce a collapsed brutality of survival, which no one desires.
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When your desires are denied, you are no longer yourself, which causes anxiety (to lose yourself.)
We identify with our desires. To be without desire is to be no one or nothing: unrecognizable, unrelatable, “lost.”
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Todd McGowan observes that unconscious desire often underlies, and contradicts, conscious wish. We may want our team to win, yet switch off the game when loss looms—choosing the pain of lost hope (injury) over the risk of joy (elation).
This reveals deeper drives: to suffer is to reaffirm loyalty to our identity, to take on pain is to reenact inherited roles (from parents or siblngs).
Our conscious goals are often elaborate rituals masking deeper identifications—with victimhood, struggle, or ancestral behaviors. Whether we flee or endure, we are not just chasing outcomes, but fortifying our identity through therepetition of familiar emotional terrain… despite what we say we want.
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Is there a universal thread that unites revolutionary warring factions?
Viewing revolutionary potential as a shared impulse could reveal an unseen ideology, showing people they are more alike—driven by a craving for change—than opposed. Alternatively, their differences might shrink to mere juvenile angst, maturing into the sublation of antagonism.
Optimistic, yes, but not without hope.
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People "vote against their interests" is a notion that smacks of elitist snobbery and patriarchal disappointment, proclaiming a failure (blindness or idiocy) to perceive future benefits and overcome emotional/social pressures.
Yet our government permits gambling, lotteries, and alcohol—hardly beneficial to anyone, instead encouraging self-destructive tendencies. So, this reversal of occasionally demanding sober decisions is scarcely consistent.
Moreover, defining ‘best interest’ is tricky: Is it economic or familial values or pride in honest, hard work despite low pay?
America’s founding was based on rejecting taxes and religion. I’m sure the crown assumed the ‘best interests’ of English citizens were aligned with the monarch’s desires (such as a new wife, Henry VIII, or empire expansion and war, George II & III). After numerous cases of abuse, the wisdom of leaders and their promises to "care-take" are thinly veiled acquiescence to future abuses.
And yet, we must outsource our ‘best interests’ to representatives, who should moderate their ambitions/desires to interpret and act on behalf of a populace, some who struggle to envision a better life, but can still allot a portion of hope through a vote. To declare their vote foolish is to become foolish ourselves: to stop listening and play wise for our desires.
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If you want to argue, the desire -the want- is key: a void needs to be filled or an itch scratched.
Arguments work well to avoid the “inner lack” because winning never means it is over. Rather, arguing is primarily about ego or emotional positioning, which is continual: a never-ending battle with others driven by avoidance of self.
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“No one wants to work anymore.”
Most people don’t mind work if it gets you somewhere: in physics, “work” is force multiplied by distance. That is to say, it is no longer “work” when apply effort and can’t move.
More accurately, “no one wants to be stuck anymore.”
This illuminates a core cynicism beyond hard luck: people no longer trust meritocratic truisms and consider the game rigged. Work will not save you, it is a suckers game.
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Animism lies at the heart of capitalism – not rational calculation, but an untamed force of ‘animal spirits’: raw desire unbounded by erudition—natural desiring drives.
Look to children as harbingers of the future. Their natural animistic worldview reveals the direction capitalism must follow. Play, pettiness, or perturbations of youth trace burgeoning desires. Capital merely follows, tracing the contours of desires and converting them into the vital energy it demands. Paradoxically, the mapping of desire simultaneously manufactures our wants, further enflaming our animal spirits.
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We tend to consider freedom as the positive ability to fulfill our desires. This means we can identify more fully with the object of our desire, and over time, we consider ourselves (our identity) to be those desiring actions, those drives.
According to Lacan or Slavoj Zizek, we are "desiring subjects" captured before inception with ideology. So, our desires are programmatic and not unique. They may be "individual" or "subjectively felt." Still, they are not authentic, meaning we are manufactured to feel individually free in our pursuits, but that very pursuit is your training in action.
So, what if freedom is not the fulfillment of your desire but a negation of desire? By dissolving desire, like a Buddhist, you create the potential to encounter your authentic self (if that exists), not tarnished with pre-programmed base desires or complex transference.
