a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Mothers Day, Sunday May 14th, 2006
“Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content;
The quiet mind Is richer than a crown.”
--Lines from a Sampler on the wall of an old farmhouse
Some years ago now I had the opportunity to attend a public lecture at Oregon State University by the well-known science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin. LeGuin is one of my favorite authors, and I’d actually already met her several times before (since we both were living in Portland, Oregon at the time) -- first at a Science Fiction convention book-signing, and then later at the “Fishtrap” summer writing conference in Enterprise Oregon (where we spent a lovely afternoon sitting at a picnic table talking about her Earthsea series while all of the other aspiring writers were over at the “big tent” trying to network with agents and publishers), and then finally by chance standing in line in the Anne Hughes coffee room at Powell’s “City of Books” bookstore on Burnside Street in Portland, where we greeted one another like old friends. But I’ll never forget this particular lecture, because afterwards during the Q & A one of the students asked her which of her works she considered to be her greatest accomplishment, and without batting an eye or skipping a beat she responded “my children.” And I thought I’d share this story with you this morning both in honor of Mother’s Day, and also because it makes such a nice introduction to this morning’s topic.
For those of you who weren’t here last week, this morning’s sermon is actually the second in a two-sermon series inspired by the book I read from earlier: philosopher William B. Irvine’s On Desire: Why We Want What We Want. You can find the entire text of last week’s sermon on our FRS website, but to summarize briefly, in his book Irvine argues that our desires are more complicated than we think, and can’t really be trusted either. They arise from multiples sources, often forming long chains of “instrumental” and “terminal” desires, and are conditioned by something he calls the “biological incentive system” which has evolved through natural selection over the millennia to give us pleasure or cause us pain in order to reward activities that make us more likely to survive to reproduce, and to discourage us from behaviors that don’t. We aren’t really in control of our BIS, and it really cares very little for our happiness either, once we have served “nature’s purpose.” Furthermore, our desires themselves are typically more emotional than rational, and left to their own devices are also essentially insatiable... which can easily put us on to something Irvine calls “the satisfaction treadmill” -- always wanting and seeking more and more, but never finding it to be enough.
Faced with a dilemma such as this, human beings essentially have three choices. The first is hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure for it’s own sake. We can basically just give into our desires entirely, and pursue them with a single-minded abandon until they either wear us out or kill us. This option actually sounds a lot better in theory than it is in practice. For one thing, our desires often conflict with one another. We want to have things our own way, but we also want to be liked and admired by other people, some of whom we may actually need in order to get what we want. And then there is Irvine’s “satisfaction treadmill” I spoke of earlier: the strange psychological quirk of our biological incentive system that always seems to leave us hungry for more no matter how much we have consumed already.
Which brings us to the second option, which is Asceticism: the attempt to suppress our desires through rigorous physical, mental, and spiritual discipline. The problem with Asceticism is that it is both very difficult and not much fun, since it basically calls for us to control our desires by denying them (and ourselves) any comfort or pleasure at all.
Which leaves us with the third option, the “middle way” which involves first learning to Understand the nature of our desires, and then Mastering them by consciously transforming nature’s purpose into something of our own choosing.
Perhaps one of the earliest and most influential proponents of a “middle way” was Siddhartha Guatama, better known as the Buddha or “enlightened one,” who lived approximately 2500 years ago on the Indian subcontinent. I’m guessing most of you know a lot of this story already, but here it is again anyway. Siddhartha spent the first 30 years of his life as a prince in a castle, never wanting for any human comfort, and completely sheltered from the slightest hint of pain or suffering.
But after a series of accidental encounters which made him aware of poverty and illness and death, he renounced that lifestyle and went to live as an ascetic in the forest. Eventually these extreme physical and spiritual mortification failed to satisfy him as well; he took some nourishment and became enlightened to the Four Noble Truths of the Dharma. The first is that all life is suffering (which includes not only physical pain, but also disappointment and discouragement). The reason for this suffering is our “thirst” -- our insatiable desire for things that come into being and pass away. But there is a way out of this cycle, through the Noble Eight-fold path: Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
Let’s take a little closer look at these. Right Understanding and Right Intention basically add up to a correct comprehension of the Nature of Reality as described by the Four Noble Truths, together with the expressed desire to renunciate one’s desires. Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood are essentially moral prescriptions: Thou shalt not Lie, Thou shalt not Steal, Thou shalt not Kill pretty much cover the same territory. Right Effort is a little more sophisticated. Right Effort consists of mastering the five basic “distractors” which afflict us all: Sexual Desire (or “Lust”); Ill-Will (think Envy and Anger); Lethargy (or Sloth); Worry; and Doubt. Finally, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration are the disciplines which lead most directly to our eventual enlightenment and liberation: a sensitive awareness to everything that is happening around us, together with the practice of a contemplative meditation which helps us to live fully and contentedly in the here and now, without being consumed by our restless desire for something more, or even the desire to be free from the grip of desire itself.
“For most people,” Irvine writes, “now represents an infinitesimal slice in the infinity of time. To an enlightened person, now -- the current moment -- is all we can know or experience. We are stuck in the present moment, in an eternal now. The past and future are known only by inference. Because the enlightened person has the ability to stay in the moment, he can experience beauty and wonder during even the most commonplace moments. The unenlightened person cannot.”
Irvine goes on to illustrate this point by asking his readers to imagine two people stuck in traffic. The unenlightened person “will likely sit there in a distracted state of mind. He might experience anxiety about being stuck -- and of course it is pointless anxiety since there is nothing he can do to get unstuck. He might think about the things he must do when he gets to his office and about how good it will feel to get home that evening. The enlightened person, in the same situation, might instead contemplate the sky. It is not only blue but a beautiful blue that changes from hour to hour, and it is typically populated with clouds of varying shape, color, and texture. And if the sky is overcast with leaden clouds, he might instead contemplate the smoke drifting up from the tailpipes of the cars in front of him -- the way it swirls and then dissolves into nothingness. If it is raining, he might study the way the raindrops on his windshield merge and the irregular paths they take as they trickle down. Indeed, he might even contemplate the glass of his windshield: how miraculous that a substance can block the wind but transmit light! The enlightened person will become a master of inconspicuous consumption, as compared to the conspicuous consumption in which most of us revel. While the drivers around him are experiencing boredom and anxiety, the enlightened driver might experience bliss.”
Of course, Irvine is also well aware that some people, “on hearing this description of enlightenment, will ridicule the person who can find pleasure gazing at the smoke drifting up from the tailpipes of the cars blocking his way. Such a person is at best childlike and at worst a fool. They will pity him. But who is more to be pitied, the person who is almost incapable of satisfaction and must therefore spend unsatisfying days in pursuit of a moment or two of satisfaction, or the person who can find satisfaction in the most ordinary moments and whose days are therefore filled with satisfying moments? If what we are interested in is satisfaction, it is the former person who is to be pitied; but...most of us aren’t interested in satisfaction. We are instead interested in ‘success,” which not only is different from satisfaction but is to a considerable extent incompatible with it.”
The paradoxical relationship between “satisfaction” and “success” poses a very important philosophical question for us to consider: is it every truly possible for human beings to “achieve” our “Heart’s Content?” The Desire for Success is based on Ambition, but a Sense of Satisfaction is rooted in Appreciation. Success is the product of an experience of discontent and the desire to better ourselves and our condition, while Satisfaction is an expression of our gratitude for what we have and who we are. Success is also often a manifestation of Greed: a desire to acquire and consume more and more; while Satisfaction often expresses itself though generosity, and the pleasures gained by sharing what we already have with others. Finally, the desire for Success is often linked to human pride, and the desire to be respected and admired (and perhaps even envied) by everyone who sees us; while Satisfaction is more often associated with humility, and the realization that we are what we are, and that that’s OK.
To put this in a slightly different way, those who seek success simply for the sake of achieving success rarely feel satisfied, while those who learn to seek satisfaction for its own sake quite often become quite successful as well, although = almost as an afterthought. A restless feeling of dissatisfaction is part of our biological inheritance, and mastering it completely is almost impossible. But according to Irvine, “the worst way to deal with our feelings of dissatisfaction is by working to satisfy the desires we find within us. If we do this, we practically guarantee that we will never experience lasting satisfaction, since the desire we satisfy will quickly be replaced by another desire.” Rather, “the best way to gain satisfaction -- lasting satisfaction -- is to change not the world and our position in it but ourselves. In particular, we should work at wanting what we already have.... We should remember that in most cases what we have... is something that we once dreamed of having, or something that someone less fortunate than us presently dreams of having.... We should endeavor to enjoy this dream, rather than ignoring it to pursue some other dream....”
In many ways, as Human Beings we ARE slaves to our desires, but in Irvine’s view we do not have to submit to that slavery voluntarily or completely. Rather, like any slave, we can recognize that while we may be powerless to escape our enslavement, we can still subvert it; we can still “form a personal plan for living and superimpose it over the plan imposed on us by our evolutionary master. If we do this, we will no longer simply being doing [nature’s] bidding; we will instead be taking our life and doing something with it, something we find meaningful. We will thereby be conferring meaning on our life, to the extent that it is possible to do so.”
When we look at life from this perspective, our quandary becomes much more clear. We can either chose to continue to play in a game which we can never win, constantly experiencing the frustration and the disappointment of constant anxiety, envy, bitterness and discontent; or we can choose to change the game by changing ourselves, by giving up the vain attempt to control things that are not really ours to control, and instead realizing that it is indeed possible to find satisfaction and contentment by looking within ourselves, by looking to the HEART of things. Rather than seeking fame and fortune, or the attainment of worldly success, we should teach ourselves to feel fortunate for the gift of life itself, and the things of the world which are close at hand that give us satisfaction.
When we learn to control our expectations, we make them easier to satisfy as well. When we learn to take pleasure in the simple things that are all around us, we discover that joy is our constant companion, and never far away. Irvine observes that “seen from the cosmic point of view, our existence is an astounding accident. The universe not only could get along without us but for billions of years it did get along. What we must settle for is meaning in some lesser sense -- call it personal meaning. In ‘choosing’ a plan of living, I am doing what I want to in life.... Will this make my life ‘genuinely’ meaningful? Probably not, but I think it will make it more personally meaningful....”
The key to personal happiness and genuine satisfaction, and the ultimate discovery of our Heart’s Content, is hardly a secret: it can be found simply in learning to embrace the lives we have: by becoming aware of the emotional sources of our insatiable desires, and teaching ourselves to redirect those desires toward aspirations that we find personally meaningful, whatever those may be: better relationships, creative achievements (or perhaps merely the mastery of one’s chosen craft), a deep appreciation for the many gifts we have gratuitously received from the Universe.
Evolution has programmed us to feel restless and discontented. But by confronting those feelings for what they are, and asserting our own freedom to choose, we can replace the mindless pursuit of worldly success with the mindful appreciation of who we are and all the blessings of life itself.
And in that moment, we shall be truly satisfied....
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Sunday, May 7, 2006
Thy Heart's Desire
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Sunday May 7th, 2006
OPENING WORDS: “This is the mission of our faith: to teach the fragile art of hospitality; to revere both the critical mind and the generous heart; to prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness; and to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands”
-- William F. Schulz
A stingy old miser who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness was determined to prove wrong the saying, "You can't take it with you." After much thought and consideration, he finally figured out a scheme to take at least some of his assets with him when he died.
He instructed his wife to go to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two large pillowcases. He then directed her to take the bags of money up to the attic and leave them directly above his bed. His plan was that when he passed away, he would reach out and grab the bags as he ascended into heaven.
Several weeks after the funeral, the deceased man’s wife went up into the attic to clean. Coming upon the two forgotten pillowcases stuffed with cash she sadly shook her head and exclaimed, "Oh, that darned old fool. I knew he should have had me put the money in the basement."
I thought I’d start out this morning by asking you all a question, which you don’t really need to try to answer right away. But how do you suppose you would live your lives differently, if money were no object? It’s a trick question, I know. On some level money is always an object; in fact, often it seems like it’s the only object of just about everything we do, and that the more of it one gets, the trickier it becomes simply dealing with the hassles of trying to keep track of it all.
But the question is tricky in another way as well. The underlying assumption of questions like this always seems to be the fantasy of unlimited material wealth: that you would somehow miraculously have all the money you could ever want or need, and never need to worry about it again. But suppose you asked the question literally instead? Suppose there simply was no object in the world that could be thought of as “money” -- that it simply didn’t exist, because there simply wasn’t any need for it.
Is this really any more far fetched than the dream of having so much money that you never have to worry about it again? Nothing to sell or buy, because anything you could possibly ever want or need was freely available, kind of like in Star Trek, or perhaps the Garden of Eden. If you were hungry, you would just go to the replicator unit and order whatever it was you wanted to eat (or in the alternative, perhaps just pluck a piece of fruit from the nearest tree. No, no, not THAT tree. The other tree...). And the same with your clothing, your transportation, your shelter from the elements, and whatever else you might dream of wanting or needing or having. Because the real question that interests me is this: If you didn’t have to worry about earning a living, how would you choose to spend your life?
Of course, this exercise may all just seem like a lot of idle daydreaming to many of you. But personally I think it’s important to ask ourselves these kinds of questions every once in awhile, for a couple of reasons. The first is that, as we sort through the long list of things we can imagine ourselves doing if money were no object, we begin to realize that there are lots of other limitations in life that prevent us from simply having or doing whatever it is that pops into our heads at any given moment. Think about it. Even if you could in theory “have it all,” you probably wouldn’t want to have it all at once.
So if we ask ourselves the question properly, it can help us to focus in more clearly on the things we truly value, whatever those may be. And at the same time, questions like these can also help to prevent us from squandering our time, our money, and our precious lives on things that don’t really matter to us at all -- the “shiny objects” that are more diversion than they are worth, and distract us from our heart’s desire.
I chose this topic, and its companion for next Sunday, because I had the desire to read a book. It’s a desire I get quite often, actually -- I see a review, or hear an interview with an author on the radio, about a topic of profound interest (or perhaps passing curiosity) to me; and the next thing I know I’m on-line at Amazon ordering a copy, which arrives in the mail in a week or so (which is the closest thing to a Star Trek replicator in MY limited experience). Obviously I can’t afford to buy every book I desire to read, and I don’t really even have the time to read everybook I buy...so they tend to pile up in rather tall stacks around the parsonage until I find (or make) the time to open them, or at least find a place for them on my already crowded bookshelves. “We do not choose our obsessions; our obsessions choose us.” I think I read that somewhere once....
This particular book [William B. Irvine’s On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)] had been sitting on my nightstand for about four months, and I wanted to read it because I thought it might help me better understand the process which had brought it (and so many others like it) into my life in the first place. My desire to own every book I find interesting (and my fantasy of someday reading every book I own) is grounded in a more fundamental desire to be smarter than I really am, which in turn is based on my desire to become a better minister, which I suppose in turn is based on a desire to be liked and respected and admired by all of you to whom I minister, and who contribute the money that pays my salary and allows me to buy all these books in the first place. And at the center of this long, circular chain of desires is the hope that somehow it will all make a difference, in my life in in yours; and the desire to make that difference happen -- to be a source of comfort, and inspiration, and wisdom for the members of this congregation, and then (together with your help), to help make the world a more comfortable, inspired, and wiser place to live.
Of course, even though life itself is a gift from the Universe, we all do still have to make a living...and (so far as we can know) we only get “one wild and precious life” to live. As far as nature is concerned, the purpose of life is to survive long enough to reproduce and create another generation...and everything else is pretty much extraneous. According to philosopher William Irvine, the process of evolution has shaped our desires in such a way that activities which contribute to nature’s purpose naturally give us pleasure (which thus makes them desirable); while things which are dangerous or detract from that purpose often cause us pain (thus warning us to avoid them).
This “biological incentive system” helps explain why food tastes good and loud, unexpected noises make our hearts race, yet it is hardly foolproof -- processed foods saturated with high fructose corn syrup may taste delicious to our evolutionary palate, causing us to crave them with an intensity beyond all reason, but this hardly means they are good for us, or conducive to our long-term evolutionary survival. Yet even when we know this intellectually, it takes an awful lot of will power to trump our emotional desire to eat the whole package of Oreos when we are feeling lonely and alone and afraid that no one loves us.
According to Irvine, “The relationship between the intellect and the emotions can best be viewed as an uneasy alliance.” The intellect is good at calculating what Irvine calls “instrumental desires” -- the things we decide we want to do in order to be able to do what we really want to do -- that is to say, the things that make us feel good. For example, “the intellect might point out...that what the emotions want would in fact feel bad, that what they want may feel good now but will feel bad later, or that although what they want would feel good, there is something else that would feel even better.”
Furthermore, Irvine continues, “The intellect can also help sort through conflicting emotions and determine which will be acted on and which won’t. The emotions are perfectly willing to listen to the intellect as long as the intellect isn’t trying to impose its views but is merely trying to help the emotions get what they want.” On the other hand, without some level of emotional buy-in, it is very difficult for the intellect alone to get us to do what we know is right, no matter how badly we may think we want it.
Because of this phenomenon, Irvine goes on to observe, “The relationship between the intellect and the emotions is therefore asymmetrical. Although the emotions have veto power over the intellect, in most cases the intellect only has the power of persuasion in its dealings with the emotions, and it can persuade them only if it can invoke a stronger emotion than the one it wants to suppress. Conversely, the intellect can form a desire, but if the emotions don’t commit, the resulting desire will be feeble. And if the emotions object, the resulting desire will be stillborn....”
“Why does the intellect play second fiddle to the emotions?” Irvine asks. “Why, in battles between the emotions and the intellect, do the emotions generally win? For the simple reason that they refuse to fight fairly. The emotions, in their dealings with the intellect, don’t use reason to gain its cooperation. Instead, they wear it down with -- what else? -- emotional entreaties. They beg, whine, and bully. They won’t take no for an answer. They won’t give the intellect a moment’s peace. In most cases, the best the intellect can hope for is to withstand these entreaties for a spell. Then it succumbs....”
The heart wants what it will, and no amount of willpower alone can dissuade it from its appetites. Neither is it especially reasonable in those appetites; rather, as we mature we often simply learn how better to use our Reason to rationalize our emotional desires, so that at least they might appear reasonable for the moment. No matter how intelligent or sophisticated we may think we are, our heads still generally serve our hearts, rather than the other way around. Advertisers understand this, of course; in fact it’s how they make their living, marketing to our feelings of dissatisfaction, and our appetite for more. And for some reason that would appear to defy all logic, no matter how much we may consume we never seem to feel satisfied.
Yet understanding this one simple thing about ourselves is the first step towards mastering our desires, and directing them toward a greater good. “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” wrote the philosopher David Hume. Our intelligence can tell us how to get from “A” to “B,” but it can not tell us whether or not “B” is really worth doing. For that we need our hearts.
We can not deduce “ought” from “is.” The facts alone will not tell us whether something is right or wrong; only our feelings can do that. But not feelings that are obsessed with the thirst to satisfy their own insatiable appetites. Rather, feelings which have discovered their own capacity for compassion, for experiencing the pain of others as if it was their own. Feelings which are hungry for both justice and mercy, and which understand both accountability and forgiveness. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” the Scripture tells us. When we learn how to direct our desires toward an internalized sense of what is right and what is good, toward a profound and passionate understanding of the spiritual laws that are written upon the heart, we become better and more sophisticated spiritual beings in our own right: no longer slaves to our desires, but rather partners with them.
Nature wants us to “be fruitful and multiply,” to procreate in order to give birth to a new generation of life itself. And so we have evolved to feel great pleasure in the act of love: to love our mates, to love our offspring, to love life itself and all the things about being alive that give us pleasure and a sense of satisfaction. Yet intellectually we also know that we share the fate of all living creatures, and that someday we must die. Mostly we try not to think about this too much, at least not consciously; but even so, the inescapable awareness of our own mortality which lingers just beneath the surface of our rational thoughts can generate within us a sort of restless fear, as well as the passionate desire to cling to life regardless of the cost -- to seek out wealth, and fame, and power beyond all proportion to our ordinary needs, as though if we could just become rich and famous and powerful enough we might somehow cheat death and live forever. Our heads know this isn’t true, but our hearts don’t care -- the heart wants what it wants, and rarely listens to reason unless (as the philosophers tell us) it finds it in its own best interest to do so.
And still, much of the wisdom of growing older grows out of the realization that there are many ways to be creative, there are many ways of becoming truly generous, which give the heart great pleasure and satisfaction even in the face of limited time and resources. The things we CHOOSE to give our hearts to: not just family and career (as important at these things are), but art, music, science and literature, our larger communities, works of compassion and justice-making, the health and well-being of the world itself...these are things which can not only give us great pleasure and satisfaction, they are also the things that potentially give our lives a larger meaning as well. But these are the topics I will address next week, when I speak about “Thy Heart’s Content.”
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Sunday May 7th, 2006
OPENING WORDS: “This is the mission of our faith: to teach the fragile art of hospitality; to revere both the critical mind and the generous heart; to prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness; and to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands”
-- William F. Schulz
A stingy old miser who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness was determined to prove wrong the saying, "You can't take it with you." After much thought and consideration, he finally figured out a scheme to take at least some of his assets with him when he died.
He instructed his wife to go to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two large pillowcases. He then directed her to take the bags of money up to the attic and leave them directly above his bed. His plan was that when he passed away, he would reach out and grab the bags as he ascended into heaven.
Several weeks after the funeral, the deceased man’s wife went up into the attic to clean. Coming upon the two forgotten pillowcases stuffed with cash she sadly shook her head and exclaimed, "Oh, that darned old fool. I knew he should have had me put the money in the basement."
I thought I’d start out this morning by asking you all a question, which you don’t really need to try to answer right away. But how do you suppose you would live your lives differently, if money were no object? It’s a trick question, I know. On some level money is always an object; in fact, often it seems like it’s the only object of just about everything we do, and that the more of it one gets, the trickier it becomes simply dealing with the hassles of trying to keep track of it all.
But the question is tricky in another way as well. The underlying assumption of questions like this always seems to be the fantasy of unlimited material wealth: that you would somehow miraculously have all the money you could ever want or need, and never need to worry about it again. But suppose you asked the question literally instead? Suppose there simply was no object in the world that could be thought of as “money” -- that it simply didn’t exist, because there simply wasn’t any need for it.
Is this really any more far fetched than the dream of having so much money that you never have to worry about it again? Nothing to sell or buy, because anything you could possibly ever want or need was freely available, kind of like in Star Trek, or perhaps the Garden of Eden. If you were hungry, you would just go to the replicator unit and order whatever it was you wanted to eat (or in the alternative, perhaps just pluck a piece of fruit from the nearest tree. No, no, not THAT tree. The other tree...). And the same with your clothing, your transportation, your shelter from the elements, and whatever else you might dream of wanting or needing or having. Because the real question that interests me is this: If you didn’t have to worry about earning a living, how would you choose to spend your life?
Of course, this exercise may all just seem like a lot of idle daydreaming to many of you. But personally I think it’s important to ask ourselves these kinds of questions every once in awhile, for a couple of reasons. The first is that, as we sort through the long list of things we can imagine ourselves doing if money were no object, we begin to realize that there are lots of other limitations in life that prevent us from simply having or doing whatever it is that pops into our heads at any given moment. Think about it. Even if you could in theory “have it all,” you probably wouldn’t want to have it all at once.
So if we ask ourselves the question properly, it can help us to focus in more clearly on the things we truly value, whatever those may be. And at the same time, questions like these can also help to prevent us from squandering our time, our money, and our precious lives on things that don’t really matter to us at all -- the “shiny objects” that are more diversion than they are worth, and distract us from our heart’s desire.
I chose this topic, and its companion for next Sunday, because I had the desire to read a book. It’s a desire I get quite often, actually -- I see a review, or hear an interview with an author on the radio, about a topic of profound interest (or perhaps passing curiosity) to me; and the next thing I know I’m on-line at Amazon ordering a copy, which arrives in the mail in a week or so (which is the closest thing to a Star Trek replicator in MY limited experience). Obviously I can’t afford to buy every book I desire to read, and I don’t really even have the time to read everybook I buy...so they tend to pile up in rather tall stacks around the parsonage until I find (or make) the time to open them, or at least find a place for them on my already crowded bookshelves. “We do not choose our obsessions; our obsessions choose us.” I think I read that somewhere once....
This particular book [William B. Irvine’s On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)] had been sitting on my nightstand for about four months, and I wanted to read it because I thought it might help me better understand the process which had brought it (and so many others like it) into my life in the first place. My desire to own every book I find interesting (and my fantasy of someday reading every book I own) is grounded in a more fundamental desire to be smarter than I really am, which in turn is based on my desire to become a better minister, which I suppose in turn is based on a desire to be liked and respected and admired by all of you to whom I minister, and who contribute the money that pays my salary and allows me to buy all these books in the first place. And at the center of this long, circular chain of desires is the hope that somehow it will all make a difference, in my life in in yours; and the desire to make that difference happen -- to be a source of comfort, and inspiration, and wisdom for the members of this congregation, and then (together with your help), to help make the world a more comfortable, inspired, and wiser place to live.
Of course, even though life itself is a gift from the Universe, we all do still have to make a living...and (so far as we can know) we only get “one wild and precious life” to live. As far as nature is concerned, the purpose of life is to survive long enough to reproduce and create another generation...and everything else is pretty much extraneous. According to philosopher William Irvine, the process of evolution has shaped our desires in such a way that activities which contribute to nature’s purpose naturally give us pleasure (which thus makes them desirable); while things which are dangerous or detract from that purpose often cause us pain (thus warning us to avoid them).
This “biological incentive system” helps explain why food tastes good and loud, unexpected noises make our hearts race, yet it is hardly foolproof -- processed foods saturated with high fructose corn syrup may taste delicious to our evolutionary palate, causing us to crave them with an intensity beyond all reason, but this hardly means they are good for us, or conducive to our long-term evolutionary survival. Yet even when we know this intellectually, it takes an awful lot of will power to trump our emotional desire to eat the whole package of Oreos when we are feeling lonely and alone and afraid that no one loves us.
According to Irvine, “The relationship between the intellect and the emotions can best be viewed as an uneasy alliance.” The intellect is good at calculating what Irvine calls “instrumental desires” -- the things we decide we want to do in order to be able to do what we really want to do -- that is to say, the things that make us feel good. For example, “the intellect might point out...that what the emotions want would in fact feel bad, that what they want may feel good now but will feel bad later, or that although what they want would feel good, there is something else that would feel even better.”
Furthermore, Irvine continues, “The intellect can also help sort through conflicting emotions and determine which will be acted on and which won’t. The emotions are perfectly willing to listen to the intellect as long as the intellect isn’t trying to impose its views but is merely trying to help the emotions get what they want.” On the other hand, without some level of emotional buy-in, it is very difficult for the intellect alone to get us to do what we know is right, no matter how badly we may think we want it.
Because of this phenomenon, Irvine goes on to observe, “The relationship between the intellect and the emotions is therefore asymmetrical. Although the emotions have veto power over the intellect, in most cases the intellect only has the power of persuasion in its dealings with the emotions, and it can persuade them only if it can invoke a stronger emotion than the one it wants to suppress. Conversely, the intellect can form a desire, but if the emotions don’t commit, the resulting desire will be feeble. And if the emotions object, the resulting desire will be stillborn....”
“Why does the intellect play second fiddle to the emotions?” Irvine asks. “Why, in battles between the emotions and the intellect, do the emotions generally win? For the simple reason that they refuse to fight fairly. The emotions, in their dealings with the intellect, don’t use reason to gain its cooperation. Instead, they wear it down with -- what else? -- emotional entreaties. They beg, whine, and bully. They won’t take no for an answer. They won’t give the intellect a moment’s peace. In most cases, the best the intellect can hope for is to withstand these entreaties for a spell. Then it succumbs....”
The heart wants what it will, and no amount of willpower alone can dissuade it from its appetites. Neither is it especially reasonable in those appetites; rather, as we mature we often simply learn how better to use our Reason to rationalize our emotional desires, so that at least they might appear reasonable for the moment. No matter how intelligent or sophisticated we may think we are, our heads still generally serve our hearts, rather than the other way around. Advertisers understand this, of course; in fact it’s how they make their living, marketing to our feelings of dissatisfaction, and our appetite for more. And for some reason that would appear to defy all logic, no matter how much we may consume we never seem to feel satisfied.
Yet understanding this one simple thing about ourselves is the first step towards mastering our desires, and directing them toward a greater good. “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” wrote the philosopher David Hume. Our intelligence can tell us how to get from “A” to “B,” but it can not tell us whether or not “B” is really worth doing. For that we need our hearts.
We can not deduce “ought” from “is.” The facts alone will not tell us whether something is right or wrong; only our feelings can do that. But not feelings that are obsessed with the thirst to satisfy their own insatiable appetites. Rather, feelings which have discovered their own capacity for compassion, for experiencing the pain of others as if it was their own. Feelings which are hungry for both justice and mercy, and which understand both accountability and forgiveness. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” the Scripture tells us. When we learn how to direct our desires toward an internalized sense of what is right and what is good, toward a profound and passionate understanding of the spiritual laws that are written upon the heart, we become better and more sophisticated spiritual beings in our own right: no longer slaves to our desires, but rather partners with them.
Nature wants us to “be fruitful and multiply,” to procreate in order to give birth to a new generation of life itself. And so we have evolved to feel great pleasure in the act of love: to love our mates, to love our offspring, to love life itself and all the things about being alive that give us pleasure and a sense of satisfaction. Yet intellectually we also know that we share the fate of all living creatures, and that someday we must die. Mostly we try not to think about this too much, at least not consciously; but even so, the inescapable awareness of our own mortality which lingers just beneath the surface of our rational thoughts can generate within us a sort of restless fear, as well as the passionate desire to cling to life regardless of the cost -- to seek out wealth, and fame, and power beyond all proportion to our ordinary needs, as though if we could just become rich and famous and powerful enough we might somehow cheat death and live forever. Our heads know this isn’t true, but our hearts don’t care -- the heart wants what it wants, and rarely listens to reason unless (as the philosophers tell us) it finds it in its own best interest to do so.
And still, much of the wisdom of growing older grows out of the realization that there are many ways to be creative, there are many ways of becoming truly generous, which give the heart great pleasure and satisfaction even in the face of limited time and resources. The things we CHOOSE to give our hearts to: not just family and career (as important at these things are), but art, music, science and literature, our larger communities, works of compassion and justice-making, the health and well-being of the world itself...these are things which can not only give us great pleasure and satisfaction, they are also the things that potentially give our lives a larger meaning as well. But these are the topics I will address next week, when I speak about “Thy Heart’s Content.”
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