Satisfying desire is conditional – it depends upon both the desire being present and its object being present. Human life in its most basic form is the manipulation of the environment to try and create the objects of desire.
This is in contrast to more basic “automata” that simply live and die depending upon the success of their strategy. Their strategy evolving thereby.
“Intelligent” life undergoes a similar process but it is the process of manipulating the environment to create the object of desire that undergoes mortality and so evolves.
In both cases as evolution occurs so to does the object of desire change – so it is a iterative process and as I’m exploring at the moment will have all the self-similar architecture of a fractal. I’m not sure yet whether I agree with Hofstadter that this architecture is sufficient to explain all forms but it is an alluring idea.
For a desire there are two options. It can either achieve its desire or it can not.
Where organisms desire the same finite thing this means that the sum of attainment of each desire remains the same in all outcomes. Thus two bacteria will share in the resource. If it is insufficient one may attain the “desire” and the other not.
In “intelligent” life where the object can be created there are 4 outcomes.
1 & 2) The object solution can be designed at the expense of the other – so that a “private” house may be constructed from raw materials. In a finite scenario one desire is met and the other is homeless.
3) The object solution can be designed to satisfy both desires – for example a couple of flats in this scenario. The logic of economy of scale and specialisation means that having both “intelligent” organisms co-operate on the project results in a better matched object and greater satisfaction for both organisms.
4) The object solution can be badly designed and fail to satisfy either organism.
This “intelligent” situation becomes particular important in human relationships where an object is created that involves both organisms. Both organisms are resources in the solution but the solution is also created for their satisfaction. This is clearly the most complex object of desire because it borders on self-reference.
When one says that they are in a “happy relationship” what they are effectively saying is that they are supplying a good object solution to their partner’s desires and vice-versa. This is iterative and as above becomes fractal. Human relationships are of many types but each involves the attempt to achieve a stable equilibrium in what is a dynamic system which responds to both “our own” and our partners moves.
In the The Seventh Story there is a good deal of self-reference. What I sort most in that relationship was an understanding of self – I’m beginning to see how this happens. My model at the time was that self would be united with that of the partner – this blog entry is teaching me something else. I’ve also seen that the relationship with “my muse” was never going to work. I’ve also in the last few weeks escaped the attraction of passionate relationships. I will never be able to have such a relationship again, even if my one shot at it was a failure; that one experience shattered the illusions and repelled me from that path. This week I’ve been working in the Reading University Union and watching the students going through the processes that, I so long ago now, sort entry into has taught me that this carries no weight with me anymore. It is a path I could have taken, but it is also a path that I was very unlikely to take in all honesty. Like Elrus in the The Seventh Story my battle takes me over a different landscape from the “norm” but with the same destination – I fear it’s a harder route; that I will never know!
What Buddhism teaches at the ultimate solution is the strengthening of “positive” thinking. This way whatever the “other” does in a relationship we behave in a positive way so that whatever we are experiencing is entirely from outside. If we ever behave in a “negative” way then we will begin the experience the feedback of that negatively. For example if a relationship goes bad and we make an enemy then that is one more person in the world who wishes to hurt us – that can only make things harder – it cannot make things better. Thus we treat our enemies positively! This is Jesus teaching also. If we fight back at an enemy (in the sense of wishing to hurt them) then they will only hate us more and so we get that hate back. It is an iterative process and we experience what we put out.
However this is not the only stable relationship. Consider two people who are
I realise here that my resistance to relationships more than anything is the sense that we will become bound into an iterative process that involves ourselves. It is fine to make other people happy. But when that involves a self-feeding process that becomes iterative and we start to live in a world that is created more and more by what has happened before. Meeting people we know is meeting ourselves in a way because the relationship involves the things that have happened before. Our relationship in each case becomes a realisation of history with ourself. Everyone must be aware of those relationships that we know could be so easily otherwise, but everytime we enter the reality of the relationship a “force” drags us in another way. “My Muse” actually was like that – I knew it would take nothing to get her into bed, to satisfy at least those desires and I’m sure that is all she was lacking, but there was a strong force of history that led the relationship from that day I found she had a boyfriend to the day we shook hands on our first date rather than hugged or kissed onwards. My mother is like that at the moment. Despite us both wanting the best we “kick off” very easily into old behaviour patterns that are generated not within us but within the history of the relationship. My old work was the same. It is the existence of these historical chains in relationships which create their architecture – this I imagine is straight from Godel, Esher, Bach (tho I’ve not read it yet). The desire to escape such controlling factors as history, is my resistance to such closed relationships.
Looking at the world stage we see the same thing. Israel and Palestine is a historical chain process. It would be easy to find peace you would think – but it must be done within an iterative process where the present simply gets fed back into the memory of the past. Tony Blair achieved the impossible in Northern Ireland. An ex-girlfriend had done a Masters dissertation on the situation and decided that the divisions first set up the invading William of Orange had become so engrained in the institutions and schools that it would be virtually impossible to change the direction. Yet it seems to have happened. The Americans think that the Middle East will take to Democracy over night. They had NeoCon think tanks churning out stuff which basically said that there was no reason why everyone in the Middle East shouldn’t just wake up the next day with a new mindset – as easily as one imagines the Americans waking up Islamic I thought ;-) Which is what the opposition think. So they both tried “shock and awe” (911 and Iraq) and it has really worked – tho with continued pressure Iraq has headed off in some new direction (not sure which yet) – and the West has also headed off in a new direction post 911 but I’m not sure what that is yet either. New events in a relationship feed into an iterative process and create a fractal architecture which is very hard to escape.
Meditation in Buddhism, a firm faith in Karma, and strong compassion and kindness are the only ways to break negative chains of history and turn them positive. Returning to the start a positive relationship is one where both organisms create object solutions which satisfy the other organisms in the system (relationship). Interestingly these simple things are called Good and have a whole history-chain of meaning in Christianity (and Buddhism) which is everything but Good. We believe for example in killing people in the name of goodness. The history of Goodness is littered with battles, torture and murder. We believe in Evil (and Good) as a distinct thing – as though a relationship were actually a “thing”. People feel drawn to Evil and Good without realising that what is “drawing” them is simply an architecture created my iterating past behaviours.
I argued against the concept of “habit” in Buddhism. But I realise here that what that simple word means is not the becoming an automatic being but rather the security of living in relationships with a “good” history which feeds back and creates an architecture that is conducive to our desires.
It was said that evolution occurs. One imagines that these history-chains also involve changes to our desires. So stable systems do not generate new desires that lie “outside” the architecture of the system. In a sexual relationship a degree of mastery of sexual desire must be cultivated otherwise sexual desire could feed back into the relationship and create desires that lie outside the finite resources offered by one’s partner. I’ve always thought this a problem in hypersexual relationships. You hear of all the bizarre relationships that are generated by sexual desire reaching beyond the boundaries of the relationship.
I’ve forgotten to add the other types of relationship. A win-win is the obvious goal of a relationship. This requires a firm understanding by both partners of the impact of themselves on the relationship. This is why my relationship with “my muse” failed. I did not have the strength of self-knowledge to overcome the history-chain that was triggered by the knowledge that she had a boyfriend. I was (and am) still learning about myself and what I want and who I am. Thus I fed very weak signals about myself into the system and so it failed. Other guys with a fraction of my desire fed very simple signals in which created a simple relationship very easily. She herself was unsure of herself and so she fed in even weaker signals. The result was that the chance events created an architecture that neither of us could escape. Call it Karma.
Many relationships involve a destructive element. A partner may get what they want, but at the expense of the partner (in sadistic relationships) or simply without fulfilling the partner’s desires. These can create history-chains as easily as good relationships and architectures that weak people cannot navigate around. I’ve forgotten the point now about the dynamics of non-mutual relationships.
Lunch :-)
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