Kieran Setiya has another nice post, this one about self-destructive desires and their continuing hold on us long after we've seen and repudiated their darkness.
"What kind of world do we inhabit, in which things that bring us consolation at intolerable cost might continue to cost but cease to console?" Great question, not merely rhetorical. And great post (but as with Wittgenstein's Tractatus I'm not quite sure what to make of the numbers.)
In a better world consolation would be on tap, without cost. That's James's "wishing-cap" world, utopia, literally nowhere.
...the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers... In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first... We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button... Pragmatism VIII
So we have to work for our consolation, without guarantee of success. We have to be meliorists. The upside is that it becomes easier to identify the sources of false consolation, the "degrading poisons" of misleading allure, and renounce them. Smoking and drinking were relatively easy to give up, for me, compared to dreams of Utopia. But dreams of an incrementally better world are easier to believe in. Slightly.
I always look forward to your Saturday dispatches, Kieran. (And we're reading Life is Hard in my classes again this semester.) Thanks for this. Carry on.
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