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Tuesday, 30 January 2007 14:18 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"Reduce your wants and supply your needs. Our needs make us vulnerable enough. Why increase our vulnerability?"
ÇƒÏ M. K. Gandhi
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MARS HILL ÇƒÓ Just before the recent economic season some mislabel as "Christmas," this column spoke to the inner machinery of human avarice. Unchecked desires stalk us, weakening our moral immune system and enabling all kinds of embarrassing acts, such as unchecked acquisition.
My thesis for this essay is that we are the products of our desires, and often this means the unwitting slaves of our unexamined desires. Using colorful street language with my students, I say, "Weëre all prostitutes ÇƒÓ every last one of us; some of us command higher prices, and some of us walk the streets."
Desires
are good only when understood how they work on us, how they get
submerged into our inner souls, and then merge with thoughts and emerge
as behavior. Unexamined desires are always bad. "The unexamined life is
not worth living," according to Socrates.
Letës say that a
particular desire influences you. It could be anything, but the Big
Three are power, money and sex. However, in this case, you are
blissfully unaware of this desire. For example, one could be
unconsciously desirous of acceptance. Needy acceptance. And so, one
goes through life tripping up in relationships because oneës unexamined
neediness takes up all the oxygen. Nothing healthy can thrive. All the
resources go to feeding oneës unexamined neurosis. And one wonders why
one is so alone.
Buddhism is the
worldës foremost faith for directly confronting desire. Its first
teaching is that our No. 1 problem is unchastened desires. Until we
solve this we will be enslaved to our own self-ignorance, and such
ignorance is always ÇƒÓ at some level ÇƒÓ freely chosen. Oh, we can
rationalize it a hundred ways, but thereës always a moment when we
caved, and "settled" for enslavement over freedom.
I mention
Buddhism because it is perhaps our worldës most sophisticated way this
world has developed to uncover desire. Becoming desireless is so
important that the faith cites oneës destiny is staked upon it. Its
program for becoming desireless is relentless self-examination to see
how desire taints even what we think is our best. Even the desire to be
a self-actualized individual can be rendered suspect because of the
motives involved.
Hereës whatës at
stake for us all. Proceeding through life without adequate self
examination of desire renders us ÇƒÓ as individuals, as societies, and
even as nations ÇƒÓ vulnerable. The places of our unrebuked desire map
out our vulnerabilities, opening us up to exploitation. Repeat that
sentence until it makes sense; it cannot be emphasized enough.
Our president
says we have an "addiction to oil." Unresolved desires are our
addictions; thereës no difference. And so we go pell-mell into our
world, in denial, wreaking havoc in far-flung places we understand even
less than our desires, and we lose wars because we know not why we go
to war. We are rendered not just vulnerable but impoverished by our
desires. Plato warned: Poverty is not the absence of goods, but rather
the overabundance of desire.
The person or
nation driven by undisputed desires is a puppet, a non-living
human-like figure. The puppet knows not what wires or strings have been
inserted into its body, and so it hasnët an inkling of who controls the
business ends of those tethers. Ignorant puppets we are, denying what
makes us behave as we do.
The addicted are
sad because of their enslavement to desire. My desires are perhaps
obvious to all (save myself) and are never at the top of anyoneës (even
Godës) agenda save mine. Understood desires, however, are no longer
controlling addictions, but rather, tools. Desires reveal who we are,
and that often must be very sad news before it becomes good.
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Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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