A question I recently started pondering is what drives our desires. How is it that we find ourselves at the end of a two hour Youtube rabbit hole wondering how time has eluded us as easily as the last ice cream sandwich in the freezer? Are we so susceptible to the influence of others and the shiny objects in front of us that we relinquish our grasp on what we know as free will?
As it turns out the question of whether I can be held accountable for the actions I take is nothing new in the philosophic domain. Humans have been pondering what they can get away with by claiming circumstances were outside their control for some time. The friend that pleads there was no choice other than to stop for an oat milk latte since there were only two cars in the drive-thru instead of the usual six and that is the reason for their lateness to the brunch the two of you have been planning since Tuesday, is essentially pleading that they are, in fact, not responsible for their tardiness because of actions from the greater world. They had no alternative.
We can probe deeper than merely identifying options. The buffet of potential options is as wide and vast as the Chinese buffet around the corner with a killer lunch special. For example, the option to hold your breath until your face turns a shade of crimson best left for the fall season in Alabama is almost always available but seldom one worth taking. The question we wish to answer here is which dishes laid out under the moisture-sucking heat lamps of our buffet are going to land on our plate, holding your breath is akin to the soggy-looking chunks of cantaloupe best reserved for those who have no desire for either texture or flavor. One avenue to answer this is to propose that the options that we take are driven by our desires. A craving for a satisfying dish with a bit of tang means the odds are high that the sweet and sour chicken is going to take a portion of the plate. That is not to say that desires can change as readily as the direction the wind blows, but what drives that change? For the wind we can construct a fluid model (albeit a complex one) to describe why the wind is always in our face. But for describing human behavior we have a better chance catching the four gods of wind and forcing them to blow at our back than trying to model let alone understand human behavior.
Two approaches to this problem are worth mentioning here (i) the Hobbist approach and (ii) the Kantian approach. The Hobbist approach (i) argues that if I know the beliefs and desires of a human, I can logically deduce what actions they are going to take. The man driving down the interstate whose stomach is currently gnawing his backbone like a rapid dog on a leftover bone is going to pull over at the first sign of inhabitance and seek satiation. I have a desire and I can predict what the man is going to do given the choices. The Kantian approach (ii) argues that even if we know the beliefs and desires, there is no such thing as absolute certainty when it comes to human behavior. In other words it is an inclination, not a necessity. We know the man is hungry but do we really know for certain that if he turns off the interstate (perhaps he is fleeing from the police and does not have time for a 4 for 4) his eye will not be lured to the glowing neon sign of one restaurant over another?
How is it that these two viewpoints are contradictory, but yet so similar? I posit that they are both correct but there is a context bias. Depending on where the item falls on Maslow’s level of hierarchy gives us some insight into the level of accuracy we can expect with our prediction. The lower the tier, the more accurate the prediction. If I tap your knee with one of those little hammers I can deduce what is going to happen, you are going to kick. Some of you might argue this is not a desire, but a casual process. It is a reflex, not a conscious action. But if I take an actor and place him under one of those buffet lights to desiccate for a few hours while denying him any water, I can predict with almost near certainty that a beverage of any kind (even one he is not paid to promote) is going to be drunk at the first opportunity. The actor was likely not in any real danger of perishing, but through clever manipulation, I could force an action. Deprivation appears to be a powerful tool when shaping the desires of others.
The higher we climb on Maslow’s pyramid the more difficult it becomes to make predictions. A man will reach for food if deprived of it, but what does a man reach for when deprived of self-actualization? In many first world societies with tasty snacks at the street corner and neatly packaged food lining the walls of the supermarket, the lowest level of Maslow’s pyramid is seldom unbuilt. The next tier is a sense of safety. There are laws in place to prevent heinous acts of violence and malovolence that allows us to move about the world unencumbered by the weight of malerious deeds. To borrow a term from chemistry, the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO for short) becomes love and belonging. This is where a substantial fraction, if not the majority, of those of us finding our way in the world are located (those of us with a bit more wear and tear around the edges perhaps find themselves in a higher category). And any developer or chemist worth their salt knows to exploit the LUMO to make changes.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that the current landscape of our culture has been optimized to force us to believe we are deprived in order to shift where we search for love and belonging. Our poor neurons think that this drink from the YouTube pool might be their last hit of sweet dopamine and to guzzle it down while the faucet is on. The ‘social’ interactions we can obtain at the click of a button mold our desires as easily as a potter does a lump of clay. Each click, each double tap, each scroll is nothing more than a way to release your hand from the reins of free will. The only hope I can offer is the words of Frederick Chisholm, “For at times the agent, if he chooses, may rise above his desires and do something else instead.” Let’s just hope that something else is not Instagram.
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