The Library
I hit the library and picked up Sartre’s Nausea, which I will hopefully read this weekend. I’m listening to Playboy’s Jazz After Dark, also a freebie. I wanted to pick up some crappy videos on such topics as country line dancing or Mt. Rainier, but I’m a little video’d out right now. I must say that I was fourth and inches on getting as many of the old In Search Of tapes that they would let me carry out of there, but I held back. This is probably a good thing.

On Desire

“C’mon think, I want you to reach back into those minds and tell us, tell us all. What is it that you fantasize about? World peace? [class laughs] Thought so. Do you fantasize about international fame? Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer prize, Or an Nobel peace prize, an MTV music award? Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk, ostensibly bad but secretly simmering with noble passion and willing to sleep on the wet spot?

You get Lacan’s point. Fantasies have to be unrealistic. Because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore.

In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the “it” that you want, it’s the fantasy of “it”. So, desire supports crazy fantasies.

This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill, or be careful what you wish for – not because you will get it, because you are doomed not to want it once you do.

So the lesson of Lacan is living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires, but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.”

-The Life of David Gale, 2003

We hunt for a laptop or a game or a turbo diesel. When given the option to buy, we walk away.

Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Philosophical BS