Insatiable Desires

Insatiable Desires

………and they all lived happily ever after.

Whether it’s parents, clergy or advertisers spinning the yarn, there’s something fishy about eternal happiness. From a Darwinian perspective pleasurable sensations can only be fleeting. Functionally speaking, they’re an incentive, a reward for certain kinds of behaviour, not something to wallow in indefinitely. Limitless food, love, sex, drugs, wealth and prestige might sound nice(!) but it all wears thin, eventually. Pleasure arose because it kept us on our toes, not our backsides.

The model of the mind popularised by Stephen Pinker is modular, and to some degree genetically pre-programmed. Rather than a blank slate upon which environment sketches a personality, each mind comprises specific modules or ‘organs’ that have evolved in response to specific selection pressures.

To some extent this seems undeniable. Without any conscious intervention all normal humans develop capacities of hunger, thirst, and sexual desire. Whatever our upbringing, our brains seem pre-programmed to exhibit these drives. In Darwinian terms it’s not hard to imagine why. Those of our animal ancestors with a strong genetic disposition to pursue those goals passed on those genes. Those with lesser urges reproduced proportionally less. No surprise, we are the horny born of the horny, and the hungry born of the hungry.

More controversially, the model can be extended, positing an innate basis to more subtle psychological traits. The desire for prestige or kudos, for example, could be an innate feature of the human mind. Prestige can get you more food and more partners, so it too may have established a genetic basis, on the back of its own replication-enhancing effects. Similarly, the desire for material wealth, be it possessions or territory, seems a likely candidate for an evolved, rather than purely learned urge.

Although these organs are common to us all their strengths are not uniform, from person to person. Each of us suffer a different level of effect from each of our standard array of mental modules. To put it crudely, the master volume control on each organ may be set higher or lower, from person to person. Indeed, the noise from some can be so great as to almost drown the others out. Some of us seem innately more food-hungry, or sex-hungry, or power-hungry than the next (and some of us all three.) In as much as biology does dictate mental behaviour, human personality could be seen as the summation of the effects of these organs. In combination, their various outputs form the innate component of the psychological makeup of a given individual.

At which point the arguments spiral, even among those who agree in principle. Naturally, as the number of possible variables increases so does the uncertainty: How can we be sure that a specific behaviour is the consequence of a particular mental organ, rather than a learned trait? Which supposed module, drives which identified urge? Is envy a true organ of the mind, selected for it’s reproductive worth, or is it just a symptom of an unsatisfied prestige module? Is romantic love an innate capacity, or just the conjunction of a satisfied companionship module and an overheated lust organ?

For all the disagreement some version of the model seems only reasonable. However difficult it might be to map the landscape of the inborn component of human psychology, few can doubt that some such landscape exists. Indeed some of its features are quite clear and can provide useful landmarks while attempting to survey the surrounding terrain.

Which brings us back to pleasure. Rather than a drive in itself, pleasure can be seen as one of the means by which our drives compel us. Much as pains avert, pleasures encourage. In the main, we feel pleased when we get what we want, when we satisfy the urges our mind-organs foist upon us. True, sex, food, comfort and security don’t guarantee happiness, but equally true their absence tends to make us unhappy. We keep chasing them for the pleasure we hope they’ll bring.

Now it becomes plain why our capacity for sustained pleasure is so limited. Clearly there would be no replicative advantage in a feeling of pleasure that continued long after the period of reproductive advantage had passed. Pleasure wouldn’t help you to pass on your genes if it stayed with you long after a particular meal had been fully digested, when you could be concentrating on ensuring the next; or satisfaction regarding last night’s comfy bed when you haven’t worked out where you’ll be sleeping tonight; or fond memories of the sex you had last week when you could be fulfilling that urge again that evening.

Happiness is of no use in replication terms if it continues long after the act or event that prompted it. Indeed, a disproportionately prolonged high would be positively harmful to our chances of procreation. Like the committed heroin user, we could bask in the warm glow of pleasure while our lives fell about around us. The everlasting orgasm might sound attractive, but it won’t help you to reproduce, or get the housework done. At some appropriate point the anxiety has to kick back in, to get us up and chasing life again.

Clear as this might be, it’s not the easiest thing to remember when you’re clattering through the anxieties and insecurities of real life. When you’re suffering from an absence of a certain form of pleasure it can become all too easy to imagine that fulfilling that one desire would make you whole, happy and complete. If you haven’t had sex for a long time it can come to seem like it’s the only thing that matters, as if its fulfilment would obliterate all other anxieties. And of course it might, for a while. Indeed, that one moment of joy might leave you in a better position to handle all the other problems as they slide back into view. Nevertheless, there’s no long-term escape. At some point they will slide back into view. It’s how we’re built.

Just as sure, though often just as difficult to see, is the insatiable character of our desire for material provision. Of all human needs, this is the most fundamental, even overruling sexual desire when necessary. Everything has to take second place to food and shelter. The pleasure we derive from attaining such essentials (and the anxiety induced by their absence) is a reflection of their fundamental importance.

Given this vital role it’s understandable that many of us crave material excess. Throughout our evolution abundance has always been a rarity, too rare to make a dent in the evolved component of our psyche. In our entire history, scant few have led lives where basic material provision wasn’t a principal anxiety. For the great mass of modern humanity this is still very much the case. For those who still scrape a living it is difficult to imagine anything better than endless material abundance. When your own material provision is uncertain extreme wealth can look like a perfect state of being.

In truth though, there’s no escape. Not even for the wealthy. Anxiety doesn’t depart as riches arrive. You only have to look at the rich. If there’s one truly valuable thing to be learned from celebrity gossip it’s that the rich and famous aren’t any more satisfied than the rest of us. Wealth operates strictly to the law of diminishing returns. Beyond basic material security, and a certain level of luxury, every further penny buys less and less contentment.

Some won’t take the hint. They hope another Ferrari will make things right. But how many Ferraris can you own? If you already own three, how much happier can the fourth really make you, seriously? How many houses can you own, how many banquets can you attend, how many drugs can you take? As difficult as it is for us less wealthy to appreciate, the opulent are still just chasing their tails.

And of course material provision is only one human urge. Money alone can’t shut the others up: Lack of acclaim. Lack of critical acclaim. Critical acclaim but from the wrong quarters. Not having sex with the person you want to. Having sex with the person you want to but they look like they don’t mean it (perhaps they’re just after your money?) Children you’ve given the world to (materially) who now resent you, and take your wealth for granted.

Then there’s one form of material abundance that even the poor of the West can afford to be fooled by. One that also has us chasing our tails, and chasing ourselves to the grave. As with wealth in general, our genes have been little altered by food surpluses. In the main we’ve benefited from every calorie we could get our hands on. Accordingly, fatty, sugary food can be very comforting, in a chilly world. The chronic obesity that currently stalks the West bears testament. Like the fourth Ferrari, the fourth Big Mac won’t satisfy for long. The comfort soon passes and the angst is sucked back in, if anything enhanced by increased feelings of queasiness, ugliness and self-loathing.

None of which is to deny than we can engineer happiness, in the short-term. We do a fine job of subverting our urges. Contraception is a clear case of us cheating the functional aspect of sex and snatching the pleasure: Human Autonomy 1, DNA 0. But the overriding rule still stands. Even the best sex has to end. At some point the other drives loose patience, and start screaming for attention.

Similarly, drink and drugs can cause ecstatic sensations, feelings our bodies were keeping safe for moments of genuine achievement. With the right chemicals we can tap into the pleasures normally reserved for when we genuinely win the race, have the baby, feel appreciated, make a friend, improve the world, get the beloved. But as always it can’t go on indefinitely. At some point the high must end and the hangover begin.

For all its illogicality, the idea of enduring happiness continues to be a useful tool for the powerful. Whatever purpose the myth of heaven might currently serve, its history is littered with abuse. For centuries it’s been a successful means of suppressing the discontent of the poor: Accept your miserable station in life, for eternal happiness awaits. Fat chance. No more plausibly, advertisers promise heaven in the here and now. Lasting contentment is in fact attainable through the right kind of chocolate or car or soap powder. Just look at the ecstatic people in the adverts. Happy with your wash?

Any questioning of material excess is prone to the accusation of sour grapes. It’s difficult to criticise the lives of rich people without it sounding like jealousy (and to be sure, it’s in there somewhere.) But that doesn’t alter the fact of the matter. The notion of eternal joy is a myth, something we thumb-sucking humans couldn’t resist inventing. At best, this is always going to be a roller-coaster ride. No human has ever earned enough money, eaten enough food, or had enough sex to permanently escape the anxiety of simply being here. “Things still aren’t right, I still need something” is instinctive, built in, with us to the end.