What I'm Asking For

I'm not saying that we can turn every human being into an altruistic angel, what I'm saying we must do is 1) a much better job of exposing human beings to deep questions, and 2) make organizations much more human centered. I see these two goals as closely related. If one is existing within hypocritical, fear inducing organizations, one is likely to develop a cynical, self-centered attitude: "At least I'll get mine." One then develops the attitude that shuns difficult, mind-draining, social and moral issues and focuses on narrow, immediately relevant personal issues. But we can change this paradigm! It sure as hell is no easy task, but we can do it!

The Intellectual Environment I Seek

Much of the time I'm frustrated because I'm not doing what I want to be doing and can't figure out how to get into that situation I desire. Much of the time I'm torn because I want to do integrative social science work, but also want to produce something concrete of value. The problem with the type of integrative work I want to do is that I will have to study a daunting assortment of studies from a multitude of disciplines in order to achieve the feeling of readiness to produce, which I seek. So this drive to produce now, and this feeling of non-readiness until the far off future, creates a deep frustration within me.

But I think I might have an answer. If I were part of an interdisciplinary group of scholars I would feel much more confident working toward concrete productions now, knowing that they are there to check my work and lead me to the essential related insights from their disciplines. Moreover, this way of doing things would be one of both synthesizing and learning, so I would not feel as if I've ended my learning process in order to write. So this I see as the answer. The problem now is to figure out how to make it a reality. How will I find the scholars needed for this to occur? What will make them want to be part of this? I think I'll be able to figure something out.

The Importance of Desires

Our desires are of utmost importance; for desire is the most significant factor in determining outcomes. The key insight behind this has to do with the ideas that pop into our heads. Where do they come from? Can we claim responsibility for them if they seemingly come about magically? I mean, in building a car there are steps we can take that will result in a car. With thinking we can try all sorts of strategies and still nothing is guaranteed. The only coordination then that remains is that of desire to outcome: the more we want something the more likely we are to attain it.

There is, however, one other important factor, which may or may not be positively correlated with desire. This factor is the ability to "ask the right questions." If we want to get from point A to point Z, but totally ignore B through Y, we are most likely not going to get far. To start, we must ask why we desire what we desire. If we desire a large home in the country we must think about why. If we desire economic equality we must ask why? Is it the thing itself that we want or instead the feeling associated with attaining the thing? The answer is the latter. We ultimately want to be happy and certain things tend to make us happy, but still it is the feeling of happiness we are ultimately after and not actually the things.

This has giant implications for public debate and policy development. Currently the dominant mode of thinking is not one that views the ultimate purpose as that of achieving the greatest level of happiness. Instead we have people totally focused on achieving particular things. What we need is a change in thinking toward treating the achievement of things as a means toward an end (the only legitimate end being a higher level of net per capita happiness). So the key is in thinking how certain policies will increase happiness. And on the personal level, how will particular things make one happy? And further, why will a particular thing make one happy? We need to really think about why anything elicits happiness within us. Deep thought on this question should get one quite far down the right path.

A Painless World?

I started thinking about what life would be like without all the suffering, without all those things I don't like, without those cultural or economic structures which make me feel repressed. What would I then have to talk to people about? I don't know. I could sing a song to them, draw them a picture, go hiking with them, have sex with them, but what would there be to talk about besides that regarding some problem we need to solve in order to accomplish some objective we set for ourselves. Perhaps this would be enough. Perhaps, no matter how good a job our society does of eliminating those repressive structures, we will still have meaningful challenges to overcome.

This reminds me of the problem in the arts of saying or doing something that hasn't been done before? Really, what is left to do that matters? Why write another love poem? Another short story about alienation? Etc. What will be a human's driving force once we reach "utopia?!" This really gets at it, this "driving force." So I suppose we will go work our wonderful humanistic jobs, come home, and then... and then what? Read books? Watch films? Laugh at comedians' jokes? The distinction I see is between learning activities (reading, watching films--at least the possibility is there), and pure entertainment (laughing at comedians' jokes). We can add traveling to the first category and sports to the second. Sure, engaging in the first activity seems more virtuous at first thought, but why bother trying to figure out the world if everything is already going so well? Just for curiosity's sake? Perhaps that's not so bad, but then neither can engagement in sports.

Perhaps utopia wouldn't be so bad. I'd go to work optimizing the economy and the public debate and then would come home, have some food, work on some music, maybe go for a run... and then maybe reflect on how absurd life is and make myself laugh? (Though that would probably get old after awhile). Ah, playing sports would be nice. I used to love doing that when I was a kid. Yes, games are generally fun if you're not too horrible at them. And maybe I'd try to invent or build something. Who doesn't love that? Well perhaps utopia wouldn't be all that disenchanting after all.