It seems to me, that the problem of desire has three plausible attitudinal responses:
The hedonic approach: there is a never-ending supply of desirable things, and life is best lived by pursuing them all. Want is sated when all desirable things have been had. The goal, then, is pleasure at all times, as an equivalent to happiness.
The ascetic / Buddhist approach: the things to be desired are never-ending, which means there will never be a time when all desirable things are had. This means that want will never cease, and that leads to suffering. The goal then, is to rid ourselves of desire, and in so doing, free ourselves of the anchor of the body, which impedes the pursuit of true happiness.
Sam Harris,
in his latest podcast,
gives his listeners a special treat late in the episode. He hounds Richard Dawkins into submitting to a mindfulness meditation, and we get to spend nearly 15 minutes listening to Harris guide us and his guest through it, while waiting for Dawkins to finally ask Harris “what was the point of that?”.
What is remarkable about this whole segment, is the sales pitch that Harris has to offer Dawkins, in order to cow him into doing it. Through it, Harris essentially admits to a view of the universe that is fundamentally irrational. There are aspects of reality that are inaccessible to the rational mind, Harris insists. There are states of transcendence that require the surrender of the conscious self, and the quieting of the thinking mind, to achieve them. Finally, he tells us, the most skeptical of us must imbibe hallucinogenic and psychotropic chemicals in order to disengage the critical faculties and “take the first step”.
