Note: This post will contain a good amount of philosophical ideas. It has been sectioned for ease.
What is the desire-action conundrum? Let’s begin by looking at Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths:
The truth of suffering. Life will almost always contain suffering
The truth of the origin of suffering. Desire, attachment and cravings cause suffering
The truth of the cessation of suffering. Removing desire, attachment and cravings will get rid our suffering
The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering. This includes acts of meditation, living ethically and the deepening of wisdom to achieve enlightenment.
2. Let’s look at a Stoic point of view for desires. A rudimentary understanding of Stoicism is that it is all about focusing on what you can control in life (for example, for an exam you can’t control the exam questions that you receive, but you can control how you study for it), and it states that your feelings should be based on how well you are focused on things you can control in life. An ideal Stoic is always only focused on what they can control, so by that logic, they will always feel content. A focus on things you can’t control, such as the satisfaction of a desire (for example, a farmer desires great crop yield, but the weather is out of his control) then you will feel angry, annoyed, unhappy and unsatisfied when your desire can’t get fulfilled. One of the founders of Stoicism wrote:
The faculty of desire purports to aim at securing what you want…If you fail in your desire, you are unfortunate, if you experience what you would rather avoid you are unhappy…For desire, suspend it completely for now
-Epictetus, Enchiridion, 2.1-2
3. Taoism has many interesting ideas, and one is Wu Wei. Wu Wei means non-action. It refers more towards the desires underlying our action/improvement. But at many times in it’s book called the Tao Te Ching, it also hints at literal non-action; you don’t need to improve. After understanding the concept of desires under Buddhism, Stoicism, and Taoism, it makes sense that desires are flawed. They may work for now, but in the long run, they can be mentally damaging.
The general model of desire that these three philosophies try to explain is shown below:
Figure 1: The general model of desires. The post will assume this model is true.
4. However, improvement and action are inherent parts of human nature, and to be motivated for that, we need a desire. Therefore on the other end of the spectrum we have other philosophies such as Nietzsche’s Übermensch or ‘Overmen’ who use desires as motivation for improvement. Both the need for improvement and desires seems necessary, yet it seems logical that holding desires can be harmful. This is the desire-action conundrum that we face.
5. If improvement and action is important, and desire is required as motivation, then we have to find a desire which escapes the model for desires shown in Figure 1. I believe that a well cultivated, genuine curiosity as a drive, excels for finding answers (obviously), finding ways to optimally help people, and a way to uncover the truth—improvement—escapes that model. There’s no bad event for someone running under curiosity.
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
What we find to be true helps. If we don’t find something to be true, it brings us a step further. If we can’t find the answer to something, we can always move onto something else or try again later, because we have a limit on how many things we can care for.
6. A 2018 study was conducted and it was ascertained that higher levels of curiosity correlate with better mental well being. A 2019 study was conducted which showed that curiosity was bi-directional, where people show more curiosity when happy. There’s also other countless anecdotal pieces supporting this, such as this one by user jasoncrawford.
Many of the world’s geniuses such as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci etc. would have many famous quotes about living a meaningful life, but alongside them they would always reiterate the importance of imagination and curiosity. I suspect that this is not a coincidence. They believed that curiosity is an essential part of well-being and a great way to attain it. I also personally agree and find this to be the case.
I don’t aim to persuade, but to provide food for thought; to lay a path to different philosophies if you didn’t know them before, and to show a different view of curiosity which you may not have thought of before. Thank you for reading!
A Solution to the Desire-Action Conundrum
Note: This post will contain a good amount of philosophical ideas. It has been sectioned for ease.
What is the desire-action conundrum? Let’s begin by looking at Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths:
2. Let’s look at a Stoic point of view for desires. A rudimentary understanding of Stoicism is that it is all about focusing on what you can control in life (for example, for an exam you can’t control the exam questions that you receive, but you can control how you study for it), and it states that your feelings should be based on how well you are focused on things you can control in life. An ideal Stoic is always only focused on what they can control, so by that logic, they will always feel content. A focus on things you can’t control, such as the satisfaction of a desire (for example, a farmer desires great crop yield, but the weather is out of his control) then you will feel angry, annoyed, unhappy and unsatisfied when your desire can’t get fulfilled. One of the founders of Stoicism wrote:
3. Taoism has many interesting ideas, and one is Wu Wei. Wu Wei means non-action. It refers more towards the desires underlying our action/improvement. But at many times in it’s book called the Tao Te Ching, it also hints at literal non-action; you don’t need to improve. After understanding the concept of desires under Buddhism, Stoicism, and Taoism, it makes sense that desires are flawed. They may work for now, but in the long run, they can be mentally damaging.
The general model of desire that these three philosophies try to explain is shown below:
4. However, improvement and action are inherent parts of human nature, and to be motivated for that, we need a desire. Therefore on the other end of the spectrum we have other philosophies such as Nietzsche’s Übermensch or ‘Overmen’ who use desires as motivation for improvement. Both the need for improvement and desires seems necessary, yet it seems logical that holding desires can be harmful. This is the desire-action conundrum that we face.
5. If improvement and action is important, and desire is required as motivation, then we have to find a desire which escapes the model for desires shown in Figure 1. I believe that a well cultivated, genuine curiosity as a drive, excels for finding answers (obviously), finding ways to optimally help people, and a way to uncover the truth—improvement—escapes that model. There’s no bad event for someone running under curiosity.
What we find to be true helps. If we don’t find something to be true, it brings us a step further. If we can’t find the answer to something, we can always move onto something else or try again later, because we have a limit on how many things we can care for.
6. A 2018 study was conducted and it was ascertained that higher levels of curiosity correlate with better mental well being. A 2019 study was conducted which showed that curiosity was bi-directional, where people show more curiosity when happy. There’s also other countless anecdotal pieces supporting this, such as this one by user jasoncrawford.
Many of the world’s geniuses such as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci etc. would have many famous quotes about living a meaningful life, but alongside them they would always reiterate the importance of imagination and curiosity. I suspect that this is not a coincidence. They believed that curiosity is an essential part of well-being and a great way to attain it. I also personally agree and find this to be the case.
I don’t aim to persuade, but to provide food for thought; to lay a path to different philosophies if you didn’t know them before, and to show a different view of curiosity which you may not have thought of before. Thank you for reading!