The Cost of Desire....

Human nature always wants more of what it desires, for both good and bad...

The numbers of the amount of new infections is coming out in States where they let the opening of public places be allowed earlier than was best and, surprise, the number of infections is spiking. Look, I get it, people want to get the hell out of their houses and have their lives back. Combine that with the fact that the number of cases has gone down and everyone wants to taste the old days, especially now since it is Summer. Florida and Los Angeles have seen spikes in own cases, not to mention Texas, Oregon, and Arizona. This makes all the more sense as, well, who the hell thinks about anything "flu-like" when it is NOT winter? Habit and desire are a cocktail that can have massive consequences.

In Camus' "The Plague", this whole thing gets going in April and hits plague level around May. Perhaps this is why everyone in the book thought it was insane to have happen to them. How can you have a plague when it is Summer and all you want to do is ENJOY yourself? Nature is screaming, "HEY! Time to party on the beach!" Yeah, well, biology does not care about fun in the sun. It arrives when it does and you have to deal with it.

We will be at the three month point soon, one full season. It all seems to hinge on the question, "What is enough?" Most religions and philosophies state that desire is infinite. What we need and what we want are, most of the time, radically different. It has even been said by Brian Eno that culture is what happens after all the needs of a group of people are met. Once you have shelter, water, food, and protection in place, stuff starts to happen that causes what we call "culture". Think about it.

Look, I went for a drive yesterday and I LONGED to get out of my car and, I dunno,...DO ANYTHING!? But my desire to live and not get sick has a greater grasp on me than my desire to enjoy my life to what I believe to be the fullest. To be certain, this whole plague has made us have to reign in our desires for the greater good. But, alas, the value of the greater good seems to decrease over time as the threat seems to grows weaker.

That being said, the hundreds of thousands of people who have peacefully protested have placed that equation on its side. The greater good is for a social change and people have chosen take the risk of gathering en masse regardless of the personal risk for something greater than themselves. In "The Plague", the only real mention of riots by the narrator is when times were getting tough in the city for food and there were signs for "Bread or Fresh Air!!" Alas, we have no neighboring geography to go to for safety and what is being fought for is greater than food.

We all desire our old lives back, to not have to live every day within the greater stakes lottery of our random mortality. But this seclusion has perhaps caused us to think about what is wanted and what is needed. And we live in a land of physical and digital saturation where we (for many of us) had not really a need for much, but were able to satisfy our desires a pinpoint. But that is the problem, as desires are rarely static. Once one is sated, more appear immediately. It's human nature tattooed onto human history.

Maybe that's what we can pull from this: the cost of desire and the freedom of what is needed...