(no subject)
When it comes to the perennial question of what it is we want--and we have only become the people we are because we have wanted--there are, traditionally, two forms of escapism available to us. One can escape into doubt about what one wants, or one can escape from doubt about what one wants. These two forms of doubt, these two refuges, coexist in everybody, and are not always easy to tell apart. And even though they are never found in their pure form, people tend, in the ways they actually live their lives, to be escape artists of one kind or another.
People with what psychoanalysts--and other committed moralists--call perversions seem to know exactly what they desire. However shameful or otherwise troubling, their excitement, their engagement, is apparently guaranteed by certain acts or scenarios or kinds of people; to spank or be spanked, to watch or to flash, to urinate on or be urinated on, to be rich, to be beautiful, to be enlightened, to be safe, to be honest (and their opposites). These people know exactly what works for them. They always know beforehand what the object of desire is; they know the aim, even if they don't (yet) know the way. They have what might be called a sense of direction, or even a vocation of sorts. They are narrow but sometimes bright with purpose. Their lives are utterly dependent on their objectives. And they are people who are on the run from a fundamental and unnerving uncertainty about their desires. They can't risk too much questioning of what they want because it would question who they are. They are the fundamentalists of what they take to be their own nature.
It is characteristic of these people that they wholeheartedly recognize themselves in their desires; from their own point of view, they are what they want, and there is virtually nothing else left over. How to do anything other than wanting is inconceivable to them. They are always shopping, and they rely on their quest's being at once endless and perpetually successful. They are often hopeful, in other words, because they believe that if they want something it must be there somewhere; and they will always know it when they find it (it is as though they have already read the story of their lives). So to lose faith that wants are knowable, and therefore potentially satisfiable, amounts to what used to be called an existential crisis. These people live in continual dread that they might forget what they want and how to want it; or that they might even forget that they want. And contemporary culture has acknowledged this fear; there is, for example, clearly widespread panic that we might forget about, or lose interest in, sex, so a lot of work and money goes into keeping at least the idea of sex, the image of it, in circulation.
These people, that is to say, are fleeing from confusion and uncertainty about what they want and whether, in fact, they want anything. Any culture that takes wanting as seriously as ours--that offers so few alternative satisfactions--must be talking itself into something, and out of something else. It must obscure what it might be escaping from by dazzling people with what they might escape to. These people, the people with conviction, are the fashion victims of their time. At their most frightened, what they desire above all is certainty, what they have to be certain about is secondary. For them skepticism is not an easy option, it is a terror.
For the other kind of people--those who are so convinced of what they want they will do anything to obscure it, mystify it, disguise it, sabotage it--their refuge is doubt. When their heads hit their pillows at night, when their minds wander, they know exactly what they are looking forward to in their heart of hearts. It is so obvious, so self-evident that it is a full-time job--an entire life story--to insure that they never get anywhere near their heart's desire. They live in mortal terror of not frustrating themselves. For these people, the faultfinders and ironists, skepticism about what they and everyone else really want--skepticism about whether the phrase "really wanting" means anything--is the easiest, most necessary thing in the world. To avoid their crisis of choice they need to see through everything. The convinced are in flight from the experimental nature of wanting, from the fact that you can only find out what you want by trying to get it, and in the process you may find something else that you hadn't known you wanted. The unsure are in flight from acting on inclination, from following the compass of their excitement. For the unsure there is always a safe haven of compromise, of world-weary wisdom about the impossibility of satisfaction, and the noble truth in disappointment; whereas the convinced live in a different kind of inner superiority, the belief that they really know what everyone really wants, but that they are the only ones with the courage, the recklessness, the moral strength, or the good fortune to be capable of the ultimate satisfactions that life has to offer.
Skepticism is a refuge from conviction, and conviction is a refuge from skepticism. Each is a relief from the tyranny of the other. But these two parts of ourselves that we can play are always envious of each other, and often secretly believe that it is the other who will be saved, the other who just might be the happier one. So they must never meet, never be on speaking terms, because they fear conversion; and for both of them conversion is the only imaginable form of change. Indeed it is their mutual suspicion that sustains and fortifies them. Both of them, in other words, glamorize risk to avoid taking one.
--Adam Phillips, Houdini's Box (2001)
People with what psychoanalysts--and other committed moralists--call perversions seem to know exactly what they desire. However shameful or otherwise troubling, their excitement, their engagement, is apparently guaranteed by certain acts or scenarios or kinds of people; to spank or be spanked, to watch or to flash, to urinate on or be urinated on, to be rich, to be beautiful, to be enlightened, to be safe, to be honest (and their opposites). These people know exactly what works for them. They always know beforehand what the object of desire is; they know the aim, even if they don't (yet) know the way. They have what might be called a sense of direction, or even a vocation of sorts. They are narrow but sometimes bright with purpose. Their lives are utterly dependent on their objectives. And they are people who are on the run from a fundamental and unnerving uncertainty about their desires. They can't risk too much questioning of what they want because it would question who they are. They are the fundamentalists of what they take to be their own nature.
It is characteristic of these people that they wholeheartedly recognize themselves in their desires; from their own point of view, they are what they want, and there is virtually nothing else left over. How to do anything other than wanting is inconceivable to them. They are always shopping, and they rely on their quest's being at once endless and perpetually successful. They are often hopeful, in other words, because they believe that if they want something it must be there somewhere; and they will always know it when they find it (it is as though they have already read the story of their lives). So to lose faith that wants are knowable, and therefore potentially satisfiable, amounts to what used to be called an existential crisis. These people live in continual dread that they might forget what they want and how to want it; or that they might even forget that they want. And contemporary culture has acknowledged this fear; there is, for example, clearly widespread panic that we might forget about, or lose interest in, sex, so a lot of work and money goes into keeping at least the idea of sex, the image of it, in circulation.
These people, that is to say, are fleeing from confusion and uncertainty about what they want and whether, in fact, they want anything. Any culture that takes wanting as seriously as ours--that offers so few alternative satisfactions--must be talking itself into something, and out of something else. It must obscure what it might be escaping from by dazzling people with what they might escape to. These people, the people with conviction, are the fashion victims of their time. At their most frightened, what they desire above all is certainty, what they have to be certain about is secondary. For them skepticism is not an easy option, it is a terror.
For the other kind of people--those who are so convinced of what they want they will do anything to obscure it, mystify it, disguise it, sabotage it--their refuge is doubt. When their heads hit their pillows at night, when their minds wander, they know exactly what they are looking forward to in their heart of hearts. It is so obvious, so self-evident that it is a full-time job--an entire life story--to insure that they never get anywhere near their heart's desire. They live in mortal terror of not frustrating themselves. For these people, the faultfinders and ironists, skepticism about what they and everyone else really want--skepticism about whether the phrase "really wanting" means anything--is the easiest, most necessary thing in the world. To avoid their crisis of choice they need to see through everything. The convinced are in flight from the experimental nature of wanting, from the fact that you can only find out what you want by trying to get it, and in the process you may find something else that you hadn't known you wanted. The unsure are in flight from acting on inclination, from following the compass of their excitement. For the unsure there is always a safe haven of compromise, of world-weary wisdom about the impossibility of satisfaction, and the noble truth in disappointment; whereas the convinced live in a different kind of inner superiority, the belief that they really know what everyone really wants, but that they are the only ones with the courage, the recklessness, the moral strength, or the good fortune to be capable of the ultimate satisfactions that life has to offer.
Skepticism is a refuge from conviction, and conviction is a refuge from skepticism. Each is a relief from the tyranny of the other. But these two parts of ourselves that we can play are always envious of each other, and often secretly believe that it is the other who will be saved, the other who just might be the happier one. So they must never meet, never be on speaking terms, because they fear conversion; and for both of them conversion is the only imaginable form of change. Indeed it is their mutual suspicion that sustains and fortifies them. Both of them, in other words, glamorize risk to avoid taking one.
--Adam Phillips, Houdini's Box (2001)