Development of Desire

Copyright

Copyright^© Mattanaw I., the author.

The Moral Rights of the Author are Hereby Asserted.

Abstract

Forthcoming.

Contents

• Academics and Peer Review
• Author
• Copyright
• Abstract
• Contents
• Edit History
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Absolute Prohibitions
• Doctrine Of The Mean Versus Advanced Self-Process
• Surprising Insignificance of Desire in Morality, and Simplicity of Its Use
• Desire, Sexual Reproduction, and Evolutionary Theory
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References

Edit History

• 539 Wanattomians, Epoch 1769109679, Thursday, January 22, 2026 12:21:19, United States of America
  • Expansion of the contents from the intitial draft.
  • Surprising insignificance of desire, initial contents.
  • Word count: 2730, characters: 19588
• Thursday, August 10th, 2023, at 2:16 PM Flagstaff, AZ Time

Introduction

Forthcoming.

Absolute Prohibitions

Forthcoming.

Doctrine Of The Mean Versus Advanced Self-Process

Forthcoming.

Surprising Insignificance of Desire in Morality, and Simplicity of Its Use

If one thinks about one’s desires, one will recognize, that one does not think of them often, as such. Desires are well learned by most people who have a somewhat average level of self-awareness, and since they constitute an extremely repetitive motivational force, and are few in number, there are many opportuntities to learn what they are quickly. People know them intimately and they form an important component of their stable identities. However, they are not listed as desires often in one’s personal planning, and are instead assumptions in one’s thinking. So while it is definitely true, that desire as it relates to nervous system is highly significant for the overall influence it has at the species level on human behavior, and behavior in many other organisms, it is not really something needing much attention in personal planning.

Being highly experienced with personal process, and personal planning, motivational elicitations, which do relate to specific desires that exist, are identified, and altered, eliminated, or retrained, without a need to specify the desire system in which they relate. In my experience making self alterations, I identify specific behaviors I am wanting to change, the elicitations that connect to those behaviors, situations which result in elicitations, and process updates corresponding to needed updates, but all of this is done, without a need to talk about the subject of desire itself as if that subject is unnecessary.

The arrival at this way of handling personal ethics may seem objectionable to someone who sees clearly, like I do, that desire is a central component of experience, but this overlooks the limited role attention to it has, after some basic advancements in ethics, that reduces it because that is already matured beyond, and that ethics itself is so basic at a personal level, following the study of the absolute prohibitions and the attention management process, that there are too few behaviors worth having, and too few behaviors needing modification, to make desire a serious subject, for anyone who gets to even an early stage in personal moral improvement.

Throughout history, desire has been depicted as a subject of profound importance, and being directed to ancient misguided texts, there is an ancient prejudice still existing, that desire is ahard subject, one that will be life-long, and will contribute to personal suffering. From the perspective that behavior is hard to change, I agree with this partly, in that some behaviors relating to strong desires, will be hard to eradicate or bring to a level that one wants and many will not be able to do it before death. But the perspective here that I’m sharing, is that there is no complexity about desire as a result of this. There isn’t a “desire problem” that is hard as a result. Rather, the process of self-alteration which occurs with a slowness typically in the context of natural determinism, leads at the current time, to an expectation, that human behavior will not be what humans want it to be. But that does not mean there is special difficulty with desire in particular.

Desire is really the easiest of subjects.

Ancient prejudices about this subject, causes people to think, that because they struggle to self-improve, that desire is an intellectually challenging subject. The behavioral part is a challenge, and really only to some, and to others only partly, or sometimes, but the intellectual part is really rudimentary and even trivial.

Buddhism, being a religion, so something I ought not mention, gives example of a system that keeps reminding you that desire is going to be your intellectual mental problem, requring specialized ancient therapy. This is not the case. Desire will be obvious to you and easy to understand and there are not many desires. It’s not like there are more than 10 primary desires for most people.This requires qualification and elaboration, but shows how few there are to handle, and they are not handled with their being desires in mind. They are dealt with as behaviors on pathways that require updating to new more postitive pathways that are wanted to be repeated. Buddhism then would continually expect people to keep thinking again and again desire is their problem, but as I stated, desire doesn’t need to be thought of after early stages. That information is known, so behavioral alteration methods become the concentration. Since that is the case Buddhism is too basic to be taken seriously as a world religion in the primary documents related to the pathway it recommends. Buddhism is nearly “Read it once, remember it, use parts of it later, without reading it ever again”. Others however, think they need to have buddhist texts carried beside them all of life, without modern texts.

Consider sexual desire. “I have sexual desire” would be true regarding myself, but I never as a rule think about sexual desire, and have no need to. Too long ago, I had an idea of what a better sexual behavioral pattern would look like, and I attained it fairly easily. But from the time of understanding the trajectory, the work was only on strategically altering my behavior using what I know about psychology and what I’ve developed about attentional-behavioral process and it simply never refers to sexuality. Considering what I said above, about desire being quickly learned, for having many “training opportunities”, because one simply experiences it as a motivation often, it was at an early stage complete. I learned it when I learned I was heterosexual. The heterosexuality too is simplistic, and the objects of interest and behaviors are stereotypical and normal. To think about this desire as such to understand it further is not really to intelligently move foward in ethical understanding.

Consider the subject of eating. Does one consider this as an important subject, regarding the desire “as such”? This is obviously not the case, because it’s like not understanding that one eats and wants food. Instead, what one does, is considers given what one does prefer and want, what seems to be possible regarding future improvements given goals one has, and attempts to alter behavior to line up with those goals, meaning there is never any thinking about desire, as much as simply changing behvioral pathways. As I worked on changing my food behavior, which involved significant changes, because I shifted from a typical American diet, to the diet of a vegan/vegetarian. This means my eating behaviors are much more self-altered than usual compared with most others, and yet, for someone who has made more changes than others, I spent almost no time thinking about desire. It was more about “which foods are healthy?”, and “which foods are available and when, and how can I use these foods, and are they budget friendly?” and so on, and “how do I ensure I redirect my attention to pathways having these foods and behaviors over others?” and this thinking resulted in the moral result of actually becoming vegan/vegetarian.

This example above, is really analagous to each of othe other basic desires people have, and we are so well-acquainted with our desires, that the subject has a childishness. The more complex moral subject, for us as non-ancients, in a temporarily modern period, meaning we’re just current and newest, is behavioral alteration, because still it is not well understood. Psychology has not been pervasively understood, and is a college major some take, but the principles of psychology, applicable to everyone, need teaching to all at an early level, so they can manage their own brains. The ethical system presented in The Book and Journal is about a subject matter that is needed largely by everyone, but can only be taught to future generations, at early ages. The current generation doesn’t have the information. So the challenges of morality at present in adulthood relate to what is in this writing and it is exclusive of efforts like concentrating on desire. If desires are not known some nervous system pathology is to be expected.

Expansion Upcoming.

Desire, Sexual Reproduction, and Evolutionary Theory

Conclusion

Forthcoming.

Glossary

Forthcoming.

References

Forthcoming.