The tree is over there.
As I was reading about desire theory and its problems, I began to see a much larger problem with language in general, how it shapes our perspectives and thus how we interpret words such as desire and even how we perceive our desires.
When I say "the tree is over there," you may nonconsciously accept this as meaning the lone tree you see on the hill. But if there are many trees you may ask, "Which tree?" And I may say, the tree with yellow leaves. If there is only one tree with yellow leaves, then you may easily understand which tree I am referring to that is "over there." If not ... then on and on we go.
During this convoluted conversation, what goes unrecognized is the hidden statement that is implied when I say "the tree is over there." A more adequate statement would be "In reference to my position, the tree is over there." If I am standing to the south of the tree then the tree is to the north of me. If I am standing to the north of the tree then the tree is to the south of me.
Why is this important? The fact that we can use language such as "The tree is over there" without clarifying that "the tree is over there in relation to my position" hides each one of us as essential subjects when referring to objects. Objects are never independent of us when we use language to refer to them. Objects only exist independently of me when I do not notice them and they only exist independent of us when I do not speak of them to you. I create our relationship to "the tree over there" by uttering that the tree is over there. Before uttering the statement, the tree may have existed for me over there in relation to me and perhaps you also noticed the tree over there in relation to you, but through my statement to you, the "tree over there" has become over there in relation to us. Before there was notice or speech, there was just a tree; even more truthfully, there was whatever was without name or reference of any sort.
Another point about language before I go on: If I say "the tree is over there" and there are many trees spread out before us you may look at me to see where I am looking and infer that I am speaking of the tree in what you perceive as my line of sight. You learned more about the tree I was referring to in relation to me through sensory observation. But even when it came to my statement, you observed, without noticing, through sound, by hearing. Again, your senses were critical; your senses enabled you to detect the language I was using and, throughout your life, your senses enabled you to develop your understandings of language in the ways that you have even if you don't know how that has happened specifically or perhaps even generally. It is almost certain, from my perspective, that you couldn't use your memory to go back and learn about the relationship between your senses and language in terms of how the idiosyncratic development of your understanding of language was shaped by your sensations.
One reason this is important is because it partially explains why we are a mystery to ourselves -- always. Neuroscience, and science in general, will never be able to provide the information we need for us to be able to specifically track how our senses shape our language development and understanding. This is just one thing science--and philosophy or any other type of thought or observation--will never be able to discover. It will always remain a mystery even if we can infer (or discover scientifically) that there is definitively a relationship between sensation and language development. In fact, I am making a scientific claim when I say that there is a relationship between sensation and language development and I think that I demonstrated, in a rudimentary way, one example (hearing words spoken).
These are fresh thoughts written after having first thought them (in this way, this is a first draft and if I were to develop it I would rewrite and edit). This, in itself, provides another insight: language thought differs from language written ... and language spoken. All three means (and Braille and sign language if we include those) differ from one another. The words I am writing are not the same as those I thought--the ideas are disjointed compared to the fluidity of my internal thought. Even though I am using English in my thought as well as my writing, I am more proficient as a thinker than as a writer, more proficient as a speaker of monologues than within dialogues (depending on the subject and the other person speaking).
Why is this important? It tells us something we take for granted and rarely, if ever, think about. It gives us an understanding of why certain speakers and writers may not be as dense or confused in their thought as they appear to be in writing and speech. It may take one person a day to write succinctly what another can write in an hour. We may call that "intelligence," this difference in the amount of time it takes in writing about the same subject succinctly. If we did use "intelligence" to describe this phenomenon then we would be narrowing "intelligence" dramatically. If we observed that the same person who was "dumb" by our writing standards in relation to a subject we might be baffled that the same person could describe in a matter of minutes what it took him or her days to write whereas the person writing well in an hour may never be able to communicate as clearly in dialogue with others. With that new information we discover that what we had called "intelligence" was contextually limited and described very little about each person's capabilities using different forms of communication. This underlies one of the reasons written, standardized tests are so radically biased and distorted and result in so many who may have been capable of doing so much being denied opportunities from a young age, thus shaping their lives forever (but that's another subject).
Why is that important? Rather than answering directly, think about what I might mean when I say "the tree is over there." Writing it is one thing, but if I use italics to create inflection, I radically change the meaning: "The tree is over there" versus "The tree is over there." What if I meant, without saying, that the tree is an evergreen and I had been born in New York City, lived there until forty, never having ventured out of the city until traveling to Portland, by plane, and I was picked up at the airport at night and driven to your house and in the morning I walked out on the porch where you were sitting and I looked out, saw an evergreen, and looked over at you, with your confused, quizzical look, and blurted out, "the tree is over there." If you had no context that I had only ever seen evergreens in magazines and that I had always wondered what it would be like to see that tree then you would think little of it other than, perhaps, "He is weird" before saying, "Yup, the tree is over there, Mike," then returning to your newspaper.
In that sense, "the tree is over there" communicates almost nothing about what I really mean and perhaps I never thought to explain because I had only ever lived in New York and, seeing an evergreen for the first time, it seemed to me that it should be as remarkable to everyone else as it is to me. In that sense, I would be childlike. Why do people think babies are so wonderful? I don't know why others do, but the reason I think they are extraordinary is because by observing them I am able to see their eyes widen the first time they see a jack in the box. I witness from them a wonder I no longer experience when seeing a jack in the box. Why? Because of experience--I’ve witnessed hundreds or thousands of times what the infant has witnessed once. We say, "The infant can't understand because the brain hasn't developed yet." We imagine, in some ways, often because of psychology nowadays, that brains develop in stages that roughly correspond with ages. We assume, because of this, that this is largely because of genetics. While genetics may play a role, a child's brain will develop differently in significant ways if he has been exposed to the woods thousands of times before the age of seven by living in a rural environment in Montana compared to the child who lives in Manhattan and never leaves the city--and only once visits Central Park. In terms of certain measures by psychologists, their sexual development may be the same, their potty training may have been the same, but their attachment development or underdevelopment may be quite different if the child in the rural environment spends a lot of time alone tromping through the woods while the city boy is always accompanied by a parent or adult outside the apartment. I can't say with certainty, but there will be differences in the way the world is perceived. I can say with near certainty, though.
Again, how does this relate to language, written or spoken or thought? The child tromping through the woods may have very little language development compared to the highly socialized boy in the city. Perhaps while tromping through the woods the rural boy thinks a lot in language and thus develops a rich internal language in relation to his environment and his self in that environment. But maybe not, maybe there is so much visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile sensation that most of the child's time is spent engaging and interacting with the environment in ways in which language would be a hindrance rather than an aid.
Throw those two boys in school at age 7 and give them standardized tests and we shouldn't be surprised to find that the city boy who reads a lot and spends a lot of time in dialog with adults and other kids at day care has significantly better language development. On the other hand, that child has difficulty being alone. The rural kid, hampered by poor language development and underdeveloped social skills, struggles in the social environment of school as well as the strictures of imposed structure. The rural child had experienced and developed authentic autonomy (enabled by parents providing life's necessities). But the woods were his playground and he was a master in that domain, alive and free. The city boy might be terrified if alone in those same woods whereas he is right at home in the structured environment of school that is dominantly language based.
Now, in all of these ways, desire theory may be partially correct in saying that everyone will have different desires and objective theories of value couldn't possibly say that the city boy and the rural boy desire the same things (except maybe sex). The city boy, while in class, desires to go back to the woods to explore and interact "alone" (only "alone" in the sense of no other people; hardly "alone" when it comes to the diversity of extraordinary sensory stimuli with no limits imposed by society in terms of where he can go, what he can touch, how loud he can shout, how deep a hole he can dig, how high a tree he can climb). The city boy, left in the woods, desires to go back to his parents in their apartment, to his day care with his friends, to school to read or work on fun language problems.
Desire, then, is defined by what is lacked "within" a person even though what is desired exists "outside" a person. Whether an environment, object, or outcome, what is desired cannot be resolved from within. Desire, as such, is best explored through subject-object relations, if "objects" can include environments and milestones (obtaining a law degree) and other persons (getting married, having a baby). To obtain these things, as desire theory explains, knowledge of what is wanted and knowledge of how to obtain are essentials.
However, desire theory does not provide a methodology for learning what is wanted or how to obtain what is wanted. The first seems less problematic than the latter. Maybe, maybe not. The first certainly must be known in order to ascertain what is needed to acquire the latter. For the rural boy, to keep it simple, what is desired is being in the woods. The problem for the boy is school. Still, the boy may get what he wants after school hours. But if the boy's parents move to a city that is not near any woods, the boy has no way to attain what is desired even though he knows what is desired. His only options are to run away from home (unlikely at a young age) or bide his time until he is old enough to set out on his own. Even then, he will need to find means to provide for his survival needs even if he does not want to have to do that.
The city boy, though, may not know what he wants other than to be with other people and to engage in language. He may not know what he wants because he always has what he wants--being with his parents, being in day care, being in school, reading, having conversations. However, when he becomes an adult, it may be much more difficult to satisfy those desires if he does not know how to obtain the same things as an adult (provided those are still his desires). Having his parents around may not be an option if they do not want him living with them. More radically, his parents may die while he is in his early twenties, denying him of a want forever unless he finds a way to replace them (or separates himself from that desire--need? The question of what is a need versus what is a desire becomes tricky; too much to address here). Finding a structured environment, in the U.S., shouldn't be a problem, but even college may prove to have too loose of a structure for him. If he desires reading and conversing, he may want to teach since that will provide him a way of doing those things in some capacity. However, he may find that teaching, even at a high school or college level, does not involve the dialogue he prefers which is one of being equals or one who is a follower/learner (being talked to by adults as authorities). Maybe a cubicle job where someone tells him what to do and he can converse with coworkers and then, after work, other friends. Maybe.
However, does satisfying these desires lead to fulfillment? Will what is fulfilling as a child, given the relative paucity of experiences, satisfy as an adult, especially into middle age and beyond? This is where desire theory's absence of methodologies to discovering what is wanted fail people. Then there is the world that exists, with its political, legal, economic, and social structures. If desires exist that cannot be satisfied within the structures and systems of the world then desire theory provides nothing of help since there can be no way to obtain a way to satisfy desires (never mind that a method for finding out how to obtain the knowledge necessary for the acquisition of what is desired is lacking).
There is also the problem of being disappointed by getting what one thought he or she wanted--what is discovered is that the person was wrong about what he or she desired. It did not fulfill what was lacking within. As persons become more and more complex as they develop through sensory experience and thought throughout life, desires become more and more complex, interrelated, and difficult to identify. There is also the influence of culture (and advertising and peer pressure and …) persuading individuals that "this" or "that" will satisfy them. If one discovers that the word is working against the discovery of the environments, objects, accomplishments, and conditions that satisfy that which is felt as lacking within a person then a person may perceive the world as an enemy, certainly as untrustworthy.
The further we go down the rabbit hole the more desire theory fails to provide any semblance of help to human beings. In the last case, wanting to be able to trust the world may occur; but with knowledge of the world, the person wanting this becomes trapped, knowing that the desire will never be satisfied. The idea of developing new desires seems simple, but as with the rural boy and the city boy, this seems not only difficult, but perhaps impossible. How can the rural boy "learn" or convince himself to desire being in school? How can the city boy learn or convince himself to desire unstructured uncertainty in an unfamiliar environment? There is even the added problem that if parents wanted to prepare children to desire only what is possible in the world they would need the world to remain relatively static over the course of their children’s lives. This may have worked for a Native American tribe in 968 A.D. (even though they never would have used such a date as "968 A.D."). It may have even worked to some extent for peasants in feudal Europe. But now? We don't even know what the technology will be next year let alone if a new wave of job types disappears from the American landscape (and I'm limiting myself to an American perspective because it becomes too complicated to account for a Pakistani family, a Brazilian family, and a Russian family).
Being brought up in the 1970s, it appeared that, if I couldn't or didn't want to go to college, I could get a factory job. But throughout the 1980s and 1990s those jobs all moved to Mexico or overseas, especially to China in the 1990s and 2000s. Advancements in technology were also a critical factor. The explosion of the Internet in the mid-to-late 1990s meant that individuals who weren't prepared for computer-related jobs or even jobs that were indirectly computer-related were displaced--and also that the desires that they, respectively, had developed may not have been achievable any longer. War, social upheaval, economic insecurity, rapid technological change, all of these factors prevent parents from being able to reliably prepare children to satisfy desires into adulthood. Desire theory does not account for reality, not just because it doesn't provide methods for identifying desires and obtaining means to satisfy them, but because it views desire primarily through a subject-only context. As I mentioned earlier, desire is a subject/object endeavor--more accurately, it may be an object/subject relationship.
What does that mean? That means that agency does not exist in the sense that desire theory imagines it does. Agency is contextual in the world; certain levels of power and wealth are required for a broader spectrum of agency. Money and power may not be able to automatically provide happiness or satisfy desires, but they certainly provide a much greater means for both identifying desires and obtaining that which satisfies desires. This last bit about agency is a crucial factor, as significant as sensation and language. The only way in which sensory experience and language development and usage can aid anyone is if there is also the opportunity to choose. Desire theory fails on all of these fronts: it does not provide an understanding of how language changes perspectives of the world (and, thus, of desires), how sensations create a subject/object relationship that shared language relies upon, or how the social contexts of the world (let alone the physical) dictate the limitations of agency (which determine how sensory experience relates to language). The more complex our understanding of the world is (provided it is more reliable and provides greater understandings and, thus, opportunities than a simpler understanding) the more obvious it becomes that desire theory fails miserably.
