Desire is not primary!

Very simple thought. We have sexual desire for bodies of opposite sex. Unlike other desires however the object of desire has its own desires. This level is much simpler than Hegel (I that is We and the We that is I) because we need never recognise the subjectivity of our desired other… tho that can lead us before the law courts!

What has brought me to a stop with “my muse” is the realisation that there was no way I could satisfy that desire for her. If she didn’t desire me then unlike other desires there is no way.

We therefore have to accept that our sexual desire, in particular, is impotent by itself and depends upon the arbitrary desire of another for its own satisfaction.

Usually we think that with right effort, of the right clothes, or money or something we can get what we want – i.e. the power of seduction. Males and females live in the belief, exercise on a minute by minute basis the belief, that we can manipulate other people to achieve our own ends.

Now if our desire ever understands or accepts that sometimes in the words of the Rolling Stones “you can’t always get what you want” and so you “can’t get no satisfaction” then it seems to me now that desire is tranquilised.

It seems that desire only works when we believe that we can obtain the object of desire…. the power of desire is therefore only a thought! We believe that we “ought” to be able to have her, or we believe that if only we had done this or that - “many things I should have said and done… you were always on my mind” – then we would have had her; which ever way the songs go they revolve around the view that I needed you and either I messed up or you let me down. This ain’t the truth. My desire by itself is incomplete and depends – especially in matter of sexual desire – entirely on the desire of another, and vice versa. The realisation that the outcome of our desire lies entirely in the heart of another is the typical experience of unrequited love, but even if it is requited there are many other conditions that must be met hence the plot of romantic tragedy (Rom Traj doesn’t quite work as a genre).

I’ve always shied away from “seduction”, It seems to me that to create a desire in someone is always wrong. For starters it means that where it was once created it can also be destroyed. This is hardly a worthwhile entity. It also means that one’s view of the “other” is simply as an object of desire and satisfaction. The subject of seduction is simply meat. Any individual then who gives in to seduction, who has no self control or awareness, actually becomes only meat then. This is the image of the “dumb blonde” who is naive and easily manipulated by male desire for sex. In my mind this is just masturbation with a body rather than just a hand. It is certainly autoerotic because the object of desire is expressing only the wishes of the male. It is actually rather homosexual (in my analysis of homosexuality) and ultimately a male who is fooled by this process reduces their own status to that of meat as well. It is not a satisfying process at all. If love is to be satisfying we must believe that the attraction our partner has is for something more substantial than our own veil of illusion. “I still have it” is the celebratory cry of those who growing old discover they can still pull off the illusion… “it” being the chemistry and formula to seduce the other sex. Maybe I am being unfair since all animals have some kind of mating performance that ensures their fitness to mate. In that view “seduction” isn’t seduction at all, but a necessary part of the mating process. However as soon as we enter the realm of sexual protocols it is becoming mechanical. Either way “seduction” is hardly the material of the Romantic’s dream.

So it seems the dream is dead. Being in love we hold onto the thought that this experience is something we share with the object of desire. Desire seeks completeness and an end to its craving – when desire is completed we believe comes bliss. The unlucky ones find a partner who mirrors their desire so they can continue to believe. Yet in reality it is only coincidence. The more I see relationships the more I understand that we are fooled by synchrony and companionship into believing that we have found something. In the heart of the most transfixing love is simply the phenomenon of coincidence. It is always two desires who by chance have found some co-existence – it is like a lock and key, or even more allegorically the fitting together of genitals. They can only be together because they are different. A relationship proves by its unity the very separateness of its members. Individuals who are alone prove exactly by its separatedness their unity. There is no difference. What we feel is what we feel and we must look to random chance that our partner feels the same.

You and me,
When we touch:
Where?

Or so that bad piece of pseudo-haiku went. The dream present here is dead. Watching the pigeons and doves mating this year I was faced again with the ordinary and biological foundations of all this. These are the most romantic of the common birds owing to their life long monogamy. I have never noticed before the lengths they go to to reinforce the bond – lots of sex, grooming, beak touching and spending a lot of time together side by side. It is exactly what we experience as humans… uncannily so. I believe the theory for monogamy is based upon reducing sexual diseases – but monogamy is not trivial and I wonder if there is more to it. It is especially sad once this is appreciated to see a dead wood-pigeon as I did on the road today – somewhere there is a grieving partner and possibly in some species they won’t rebond. But the point is that there is nothing spiritual in it – it is all mechanisms and self-fulfilling logic. All that intellectual spiritual searching within this realm has been a waste, those truths lie outside sexual pair bonds.

What emerges from all this however is much better. The Haiku points to something else. If we abandon the ego, and with that the seeking by the ego to complete “its” own desire, then we see that “our” desire is a very lowly creature. It depends entirely on the desire of others, and the fortunes of the world around us. Hold up our craving and we see in it the craving of others. This is not “my” desire it is the desire of the world and taking part in that I suffer along with all others. The manoeuvre, which for some reason the quest to achieve union with “my muse” seems to have obscured, is to let desire go back into the world from where it came and not to lay claim upon it. The union of body and mind I sort with her so that my desire might react with its opposite and become obliterated in a flash of bliss and liberation, is much easier achieved by letting that desire go. If she had never flashed her eyes at me and I had never made up my mind to pursue her then none of that would have happened – it was all founded on selfish desires and each seeking their own feelings and satisfactions – how were we ever going to be free that way? That is why it was a mess – I was believing in destiny and unity when all she needed was me to complete the execute the protocols. There was an autocue written in genes and cultures that I simply needed to recite from, that is how trivial this all is.

So the lesson is not to invest too much in sexual union. The real value lies in proper Love which we need to strengthen with everyone: parents, partner, friends, strangers, enemies and that is much, much easier when we aren’t using them as keys to the locks of our incorrigible desires.

A corollary I realise is that by trying to let go our own desires we switch off the possibly of satisfying others. Monks and nuns offer no satisfaction to the sexual desires of others. It is like mercantile economics where putting in place protectionist policies to restrict imports hurts the exports and economies of surrounding countries which in turn hurts the economy of the first nation. Capitalist economics only works with continual growth and economic expansion and this depends upon increasing the flow of goods – this works in turn because desires can be expanded; we can develop tastes we never had before and buy (and work) more. This is the contemporary model but if nothing else it will run into problems when resources (especially oil become scarce). It seems that rather than contradict the monastic model it supports the model where we actually restrict satisfaction to one another in favour of understanding and mastering our own desires. I guess this obvious jarring between central cultural dogmas is the source of much of the quest into life here.