Monday, January 04, 2010

Want friction

The ready availability for impulse satisfaction keeps our desires from ripening. If we can readily access too much of what we want, we become acutely aware of a time shortage, pressuring us to move through the atomized wants rapidly. This habituates us to shallow satisfactions and a wariness (or weariness) toward depth, toward the obscure of difficult, toward the recondite satisfactions only theoretically available to us. Deeper desires are stifled in the rampant satisfaction of superficial yearnings. (Example: listening to a new album everyday instead of develop a deeper relation to a single one. consuming media in a compulsive serial fashion rather than permitting time for reflection. Choosing consumption over other kids of activity, that don't help clear the overhang of what's available.

The seed of our desire is wasted when it can't ripen into a complex longing. The sun of desire is killed by petty gratifications, ersatz satisfactions. But can satisfaction be false, or should we take what we can get?

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