Overview: Everyday Desires and Choices

Choices have to come from somewhere. This source or fount of choice is our desires. Of course, human desires are about as common as grains of sand on a beach, nearly infinite in number, of staggering variety. Attempting to link choices to desires would be impossible if those desires did not have a hierarchy. Fortunately, they do.

For our work here, we are going to start by moving up to the top of the hierarchy of human desires. When we do this, we find three: Joy, Peace, and Love.

With such simple and straightforward desires, you might think that all of us would act the same way in seeking those desires for ourselves, but we don't. Look around you. What do you see happening in the world? In your own life? If you're like me, you see all sorts of things, from love and compassion, to conflict and abuse.

How could such a tremendous range of outcomes flow from the three basic and wonderful desires for Joy, Peace, and Love?

The reason is simple. Each of us pursues these fundamental desires by making choices, and then we cement our choices by taking actions that we believe will move us closer to our desires. It is possible to choose and act in pursuit of a false or corrupted form of each of these desires. Therein lies the key to understanding why we see such a range in outcomes.

Remember, a choice is not made concrete until it is embodied in a specific action in the real world. Until that person takes that action, his choice is only theoretical. He could change it. Everything remains suspended, not yet made real. He could choose to go back to his desire and select a different way to achieve that desire, right up until he acts and makes his choice real.

Desires as fundamental as Joy, Peace, and Love aren't themselves subject to change. "Love, joy and peace are deep states of Being, or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being." (The Power of Now, by Eckhardt Tolle, Chap 1, 'Emotions' section). There is no freedom of choice or action here, but rather an anchoring into what it means to be human. On the other side of this chain of desire-choice-action, we find that taking an action collapses all the possibilities into a fixed outcome.

This means that the key to human history, and to our own personal histories, lies in the moment of possibility that is inherent in the making of a choice, of any and every choice we make, no matter how unimportant or significant. We choose the direction of our lives every time we make a choice, and we make hundreds of choices every day.

The good outcomes we see in the world around us arose from someone choosing to pursue his or her fundamental desires by making a positive choice. The bad outcomes we see in the world arose from someone choosing a negative path, seeking to obtain a false form of these "deep states of Being".

Everyday Choices Are Meaningful

Facets Versus Core

A brilliant-cut diamond has well over 50 facets. If you were holding one in your hand, I could ask you to look into the center of the gem and tell me what you see. As you looked into the diamond, trying to see the core of it, you would find your eyes being attracted over and over again to the flashes of the facets. The constant distraction of the fiery, sparkling facets would actually make it difficult for you to see the core as it truly is. However, with patience, you could ignore the sparkles of the facets and see into the heart of the stone. There, you will be presented with a different problem. The core is very simple, transparent. It can be hard to believe that it is that simple, after the complexity and beauty of the surface faceting.

Humans are like brilliant-cut diamonds. Lots of variation, lots of superficial sparkling, far simpler at the core. However, like examining a diamond, seeing into our core is easy in concept but not at all easy actually to do. We routinely get distracted by the surface facets of our lives and selves. To find our core seems a nearly impossible task. Yet it is our core, where our beingness exists and where our particular spark of the Divine can be touched, which determines what we want, what we choose, and how we act.

You cannot increase your degree of liberation if you are ignorant or unaware of what lies at your core. If you are indeed unaware even as you think you drive your own course, then whatever is deep inside you, hidden below your awareness, will drive you, instead. Who knows where it will take you!

Do you think it is any different for everyone else in the world? No, we are all human and share many of the same problems.

As we would do with a diamond in our hand, we must hold our self in our mind's eye and look into our core. We need to relax and look beyond the many surface aspects of ourselves, without getting caught up in them or getting bored or tired. The reward we hope for and receive is to see what makes us all human and know the commonalities that connect us. Then, when we choose, we have a chance of choosing more wisely.

A Brief Look at Ethical Systems

In the book Guilt: The Bite of Conscience, by Herant Katchadourian (pp 6-7), the author states:

[...] some psychologists have attempted to find the basic ways in which various ethical systems inform moral standards. One such approach addresses three major components (the "Big Three"): The "ethic of autonomy" focuses on individual rights and justice, with particular attention to rules against harming others. The "ethic of community" is concerned with shared social conventions that determine moral rules. The "ethic of divinity" addresses religious beliefs and practices, including concerns over purity."

Katchadourian will probably be surprised where I intend to go with this excerpt, and any mistake or over-stretch is certainly mine. Nonetheless, this is indeed a fruitful starting place for us to look at fundamental human desires, which I think you will agree must be closely linked to the basics of human ethics. As it turns out, each of the above "ethics" is closely related to one of the three fundamental human desires we are going to discuss here.

We are interested here in how actions flow from choices and choices from underlying desires. We need to have some way to determine where to start in this chain, and this quote, with its three types of ethics gives us the way to do that by helping us narrow the immense range and variety of human desires down to just three "Big" ones.

Human Desires, History, and Human Development

We could discuss the three major ethics and their associated Big desires in any order. For our purposes here, I find it convenient to discuss the ethic of divinity first, since in a historical sense, divinity as a major organizational force in human society came first. Religion, religious traditions, and spiritual matters governed most or all of daily life and social structure for millennia. Even secular leaders were confined inside of or were required to use the trappings of the religious traditions of their societies. Shamans and priests held primary position in most or all ancient societies. (I realize this is all somewhat of an assertion, but it will suffice for our discussion here.)

I am associating the ethic of divinity with Joy and will refer to this portion of society as the Sphere of Joy.

As societies evolved into more modern structures, one of the more significant changes was that secular leaders became more and more independent from and eventually even exerted control over the religious establishments. In Europe the "Divine Right of Kings" helped provide a gloss over this trend toward greater secular independence. In England significant advances were made not only in separating church from state but also in providing for limits on royal powers, limits that were bound in Law, such as Magna Carta, with its subjection of King John to the Rule of Law.

This is the time in history where the ethic of autonomy began to grow and mature. For that reason, we will cover this ethic and its associated desire, Peace, second. I will refer to this area of society as the Sphere of Peace.

The ethic we will cover third below is the ethic of community. This societal structure couldn't fully develop until after the ethic of autonomy had gathered sufficient strength and definition in Law. "Community" relates to voluntary association and cannot truly exist when society is governed by an unrestricted religious or secular control mechanism that intrudes into and corrupts the voluntary area of social activity.

Only after (i) secular leaders subordinated the religious establishment underneath themselves and (ii) were in turn strictly limited in their powers by the development of the Law (where all are equal), could voluntary associations take their rightful place as the third leg of society. The freedom for large numbers of people to live a mostly voluntary life may be unique to modern times, and it is that portion of the overall society where people can pursue their happiness and develop their willingness to be generous.

The ethic of community is appropriately associated with the desire of Love, and I will refer to this portion of society as the Sphere of Love.

Now let me update these three ethics to modern times. The ethic of divinity has increasingly become the realm of the personal or internal, including the experience of joy. The ethic of autonomy has become the part of society where harm is defined and restitution is determined so that peace can be maintained, and it absolutely requires that every person be treated equally before the Law in matters related to harm and restitution. Finally, the third ethic, the ethic of community, is that area of society where love is most freely expressed, where compassion can flourish, and where people can and often should treat each other differently, unequally, by voluntary choice.

When the matters of one area spill over into one of the other two areas, the ability of both areas to serve their function in our society is compromised and even corrupted. We will return to this later in much greater detail when we get to other articles on other pages, but I wanted to mention this important distinction now. As we examine the three ethics below and link each of them to one of the three major human desires, keep the three threads separate in your mind.

A Brief Note about Graphics

I will be using three large graphics on other pages in this section of the website to set forth the inter-related bits and pieces associated with each of the three major human desires, their choices, and a number of example actions, as well as some of the more interesting or useful implications. On this page, below, I want simply to enter the top portion of each of these three graphics. This will give me an opportunity to introduce you first just to each of the three desires and to the two positive and negative paths I believe are most appropriately associated with each desire.

The bolded titles and words in each of these graphics are the main concepts to consider. The normal-weight words are illustrative concepts related to the bolded phrase under which the word appears.

Now let us start by examining Joy.

Joy through Ennoblement, False Joy through Corruption

Katchadourian states that the ethic of divinity "addresses religious beliefs and practices, including concerns over purity." In modern times this ethic has become associated more often with personal beliefs and conduct than it has been in the past. Here, we will associate this ethic with the basic human desire for Joy.

Immediately below is the the top portion of the larger graphic for the desire of Joy:

[To see the full graphic and its associated article, click  Sphere of Joy.

The positive choice associated with joy is to choose the Path of Ennoblement, which may sound a bit strange. Essentially, though, it simply means that the person has made the choice to seek Joy by lifting himself and others up to a higher level of Being or of functioning. The highest joy is in connecting to the spark of the Divine at our own core and then helping others find and connect to that spark in themselves. Personal spiritual practices associated with finding one's way inside oneself to the core of Beingness that exists in each of us are associated with experiences of joy, as are outward-directed contemplations.

Of course, we have to recognize that it is possible to choose a negative path toward a false kind of Joy. In this case the negative path is to choose to force or tempt or seduce oneself or others away from Beingness, away from the internal spark of the Divine in each of us. This is the Path of Corruption. When a person obtains his pleasure from addictions or from dragging other people away from the Divine, he is obtaining a false form of Joy.

Peace through Justice, Dreadful Peace through Abuse

According to Katchadourian, the ethic of autonomy “focuses on individual rights and justice, with particular attention to rules against the harming of others.” Why should we care about individual rights, justice, or harm? After all, each of us just wants to have absolutely anything we want whenever we want it, right? If someone is in the way of us getting a specific item we want, why would we not simply push them down and walk over them to get it?

Well, some of us do. Perhaps it's surprising, but not everyone walks over others who get in their way. Why not? Because something else is more important to them than that specific desired item, something more fundamental that ties to this ethic of autonomy.

That more fundamental desire is for something we can best describe as Peace. It doesn't do any good to get a specific item we want if we can't have a quiet and safe place and time to enjoy that item. If someone else can come in and take that item away from us (and possibly imprison or kill us while stealing it), then we have no safety, no calmness, no relaxation, no tranquillity.

Peace contains calmness, tranquillity, relaxation, and safety all wrapped up in itself for the person who can arrange to have peace. The phrase “For the person who can arrange to have peace” illuminates a key consideration here and gets to the different choices people can make when they pursue peace.

Below, you can see the top portion of the Peace graphic, which shows how the desire for Peace can flow into either the positive choice to follow the Path of Justice, or the negative choice to follow the Path of Abuse.

[To see the full graphic and its associated article, click  Sphere of Peace.

In the most general sense, a person can arrange to have peace for themselves in either of two general ways. Choosing between these two approaches to arranging peace for oneself is the essential choice that people must make to achieve their desire for peace.

Choosing Justice leads a person to be civil and respectful toward others and to attain peace by giving peace to others. A person who attains peace by abusing others is using his power to create so much dread in others that they don't even think about bothering him.

We may think that this choice is only faced and failed by well-known tyrants, but each of us has the ability and sometimes the desire to be petty tyrants ourselves. We must learn to school ourselves to choose the positive path of Justice, even when we want to yell at somebody, or smack them “upside the head”, or get the government to force them to do what we believe they should do.

Love through Happiness, Selfish Love through Discord

Katchadourian discusses the ethic of community second in his list of three, saying, "The "ethic of community" is concerned with shared social conventions that determine moral rules." As we discussed above, Love as one of the functions of our overall human society developed third in history, after religious and secular authorities were appropriately restrained.

In our work here we will concentrate on Love as the central aspect of what we will call "Civil Society", that portion of overall human society where people create a community that allows and encourages them freely and voluntarily to pursue that which they enjoy or want.

Here you can see the top portion of the Love graphic, which shows how the desire for Love can flow into either the positive choice to follow the Path of Happiness, or the negative choice to follow the Path of Discord.

[To see the full graphic and its associated article, click  Sphere of Love.

Increasingly in our modern world, we see individuals assuming that they will obtain Love by focusing on their own personal selves and what their personal selves want. We see many people pursuing these personal wants rapaciously ("Greed is Good") or because they believe society owes them what they want ("I'm entitled!").

Choosing self-love and self-advancement is perfectly fine within the bounds of not causing harm to others (breaking the Peace) or acting malevolently. However, too often now it seems that individuals are demanding that others give them what they believe they deserve, that they are exhibiting a growing sense that they are entitled not simply to obtain what they want but that everyone else owes it to them.

In individual cases this can and often does lead to discord between that individual and the people around him. When this kind of situation becomes widespread in society, the community loses its emphasis on mutuality and generosity as it deteriorates into widespread discord.

Our desire for Love is positively served by our own choice to pursue happiness. It is true that Thomas Jefferson held that the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right, but he is actually not correct in this. It is in fact a choice we make when we seek to give and receive Love, and we can make it regardless of our outer circumstances. Nobody "s;grants" it to us or can take it from us, but we can give it up ourselves.

Some Broader Points

Before we conclude this page, I think it is worth taking a brief look at a couple of points having to do with how these different "spheres" connect or contrast. First, let's examine whether or not Joy is the same as Happiness.

You might think that Happiness is the same as Joy and should therefore be in the "Joy" section above, but in fact the two are distinct from each other in a fundamental and important way.

Joy comes from seeking and finding the greater Self inside you, that spark of the Divine that rests at your core. Joy also comes from helping others find their way to their own spark, their own greater Selves, where they are not simply like you but in fact are you.

On the other hand, Happiness comes from forgetting your small self and moving outward to others, to love them, help them, and have fun with them, to live Life with them. In contrast to Joy, which is primarily inner-directed, Happiness is primarily outer-directed.

Just as Joy and Happiness are different, so too are their dark alternative choices, Corruption and Discord.

Corruption is the opposite of Joy in that a corruptor chooses to pull other people away from their greater Selves, to obscure their Divine Spark and make them less than they were. Discord is the opposite of Happiness and different from Corruption in that it starts from selfishness, from seeking only the advancement of one's own small self. In pursuing what the small self wants, the person tends to increase tension, to take from others, and to engender conflict among those around him, as he agitates for what he wants or takes what he thinks he deserves.

It is important to realize that Happiness includes not only pursuing one's own happiness but also compassion, where one person helps others achieve their dreams or provides generously for the welfare of someone less fortunate. Happiness comes from giving: giving to oneself in pursuing one's own happiness, giving to others in helping all of us enjoy life, and giving to those who are in need of our help.

Civil Society is where compassion sits. In a properly functioning, vibrant Civil Society, we have a large section of the overall human society that is concerned with compassion and with voluntarily caring for and serving others. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" creates a compassionate connection with others that enables one person to care for and help another. Then both can experience happiness, the giver by being generous, and the recipient by being grateful.

Compassion enables each of us to distinguish another person from the huge crowd of people on the planet and to treat that person compassionately, mercifully. For the vast majority of us, compassion is not a matter of treating everyone else as equally in need of our help. We tend to love those nearest us more than those we do not know. Charitable organizations know to personalize their appeals for money in order to trigger or enable that altruistic impulse for people more remote from us.

This is in contrast to treating people equally before the Law in matters related to harm. It also points to the important realization that we want to make that portion of our civilization that is associated with Love and its subsidiary feature, compassion, as large a part of the overall human society as possible. This in turn makes clear that we need to keep that portion of our civilization associated with Peace and its features of justice and equality before the Law as small as possible. Doing so will leave the most room possible for voluntary actions and for voluntary compassion.

This implies the need to strictly limit government to only those tasks which it and it alone can do, and which do not deal with compassion but with equality before the Law in matters that must come before the Law. We will be looking at this concern more in other articles.

Finally, I should also like to note that the effects of a negative choice made in one sphere of human activity can and generally do spill over into one or both of the other two spheres. For example, the Abuse of power in the Sphere of Peace often leads to Discord in the Sphere of Love.

It is important to remember that it is usually a good idea to keep the activities of the three spheres (of Joy, Peace, and Love) generally separate. The intrusion of the choices and actions of one sphere into another sphere can create a decidedly negative outcome in the sphere that has been intruded into, even when that intrusion is done for reasons of high ideals or out of the best of intentions.

Conclusion

In every moment of every day, in every choice and in every action, no matter how small or large, you build your world.

If you build on a broken foundation, you will construct a twisted world. Correct your foundation, and you will rebuild your world straight and true.

We would not be human if we never felt the pull of the negative path. What we choose matters in that very moment of doubt and uncertainty. Facing our capacity for error, for selfishness, makes us human, at the same time that it offers us the opportunity to rise above our base desires and choose a positive path.

To continue on to the next step, about actions and changes, click  Everyday Actions and Consequences.