#striving

The Striving Sovereign: Why Human Evolution Outsmarts the Monastic Freeze

A Buddhist monk will tell you something like this: "Get rid of desires and your mind will calm down." It looks consistent. If you remove all desires, you will have no future. If you have no desires, then you have no plans, so there is no future; you will be left with the here and now. But what next?

His reasoning tells you that desire creates psychological time. Psychological time creates hope, fear, ambition, and dissatisfaction. Remove desire, and psychological time disappears. What remains is the present moment. The logic is again coherent. The question is whether the conclusion is desirable or even psychologically possible.

This is where we would probably part ways with the monk. The problem is that he conflates desire with suffering from desire. Human beings are organisms. Organisms necessarily have goals. Hunger is a goal. Curiosity is a goal. Friendship is a goal. Learning is a goal. Repairing your roof before winter is a goal. You cannot remove all goals without removing life itself. Even bacteria have goals in the biological sense. They move toward nutrients and away from toxins.

So if someone says they have eliminated all desire, either they are using "desire" in a very narrow and specific sense, or they are describing something biologically impossible. What many contemplative traditions discover is something narrower. They discover that compulsive psychological craving can weaken. For example, suppose you enjoy philosophy. One possibility is that you constantly think, "I must finally understand everything. Then I'll be complete." Another possibility is simply, "I enjoy understanding. Let's keep exploring." Externally, the behavior looks similar. Internally, the emotional structure is very different.

This is actually close to what you can appreciate in Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza never says that wisdom consists in having no striving. Quite the opposite. His central concept is conatus, the tendency of every being to persevere and increase its power of acting. The difference is that mature striving becomes less enslaved to fantasies. Likewise, someone may build a house, not because they believe it will finally make them invulnerable, but because it is a sensible place to live. Someone may study philosophy, not because they expect enlightenment, but because understanding itself is rewarding. Someone may plan for retirement, not because they believe the future will save them, but because planning reduces foreseeable problems.

Notice that all of these involve the future. This is why the monk's or guru's statement that "you will be left with the here and now" is too simple. Our brains evolved to model the future. That capacity is extraordinarily adaptive. The problem is not future-oriented cognition. The problem is becoming psychologically imprisoned by imagined futures. In fact, even they demonstrate the contradiction. The gurus have projects. They teach, they write books, they record podcasts. They hope listeners will understand him. They hope they will gather followers. They organize their thoughts over months and years. These are all future-directed activities. If they literally had no ambitions or plans, They would not be making speeches nor writing books.

So there are three different modes to distinguish . The first is compulsive ambition. "When I achieve X, then I'll finally be enough." The second is practical planning. "Winter is coming. I'd better repair the roof." The third is intrinsic engagement. "Understanding reality is worthwhile in itself." The first easily becomes suffering. The second is indispensable for survival. The third is one of the deepest sources of human flourishing.

The contrast between "ambition" and "the here and now" is also misleading. The richest lives often contain both. A scientist absorbed in an experiment is completely present while simultaneously pursuing a goal. A musician is immersed in the present while practicing for a concert months away. Presence and future-directed action are not opposites. The third mode with regard to the future is the most valuable. Greater understanding is valuable, not because it guarantees salvation or enlightenment, but because it brings one into closer contact with the mechanisms of reality. That is still a kind of striving, but it is not the restless striving that keeps moving the finish line.

Great Neck, New York — It is remarkable that George Strausman of Great Neck, New York, is this spry at the age of 102.   “I’m feeling good,” Strausman told CBS News.  Strausman still works four days a week at his family’s construction business. Amazing as that is, that’s not the story here. Instead, CBS News came to Great Neck because of what Strausman does on his day off. For the past 10 years,…