No end to our desires 

There is no logical place where our desires end. Most of our desires are not extinguished when we fulfil them. Instead, they lead to greater and greater desires. So, the first problem with intense desires is that the more you feed them, the more you need them. The second problem with excessive desires is that when you are a slave to your desires, you become a slave to people who control what you desire. 

This is not to say that you should lead an ascetic life and not enjoy the good things. But the best way to deal with desire is to neither resist nor avoid it. The special skill of moderation teaches us to tone down our desires, so they are fully under our control and we don’t need anything outside of us to make us happy. We can then enjoy the good things in life without our becoming slaves to them or feeling deprived when they are taken away from us. 

This is the third special skill, moderation. This is knowing what to select, what not to select, and what does not matter. 

Why wait until there is nothing left for you to crave? That time will never come...There is a succession of desires; one is born from the end of another. 

Seneca, Moral Letters118.6 

Excessive desires make you a slave 

Excessive desires make you a slave to the things you desire—be it alcohol, food, drugs, money, sex, power, or exotic experiences. For example, if you desperately desire public recognition, all your actions are influenced by this desire, no matter in what other ways it may damage you. If you desire security excessively, you become too afraid to explore any new possibility. 

Excessive desires also make you a slave to people who have control over these things. You can become sycophantic or go along with unethical behavior if you think that it will get you what you want. Excessive desires are unhealthy because your desires start controlling you and you resemble a sick person. 

Don’t you know how thirsty someone gets who is feverish? It has no resemblance to that of a healthy person. A healthy person drinks water and his thirst is gone. But a sick person feels all right for a while, feels nauseous, turns water into bile, vomits, bellyaches, and is even thirstier than before. 

Epictetus, Discourses 4.9.4-5 (Chuck Chakrapani, Stoic Freedom, Ch. 1) 

Desires have no logical end 

When we desire something, we are convinced that whatever we desire will bring us happiness. But once we get it, we find that it doesn’t make us as happy as we thought it would. Yet we assume more of it would make us happy. 

Would a million dollars make you happy? Would ten million? Maybe you already have a million or ten and probably you are no happier than you were when you were in school, or when you got your first job. You only need read about the rich—people who have earned more than they can spend in their lifetime—still craving for more, still constantly trying to acquire more, still trying to find happiness in drugs and alcohol. 

The nature of desire 

That’s the nature of desire. When you feed fire, it is not extinguished, but burns even more brightly and looks to consume more. As you eat more, you want to eat even more, becoming obese; as you drink more, you want to drink even more, becoming an alcoholic; as you earn more, you want to earn even more, sacrificing your social and personal life. 

Not everyone who eats become obese, not everyone who drinks becomes an alcoholic, and not everyone who earns more becomes obsessed with money. But when you start desiring something very intensely, gradually it starts consuming your life. When a non-addict has a drink, he does so for the enjoyment of it; when an addict has a drink, he does so more to avoid the pain of not having a drink. Because desires have no logical end, we cannot hope to fulfill all our desires anyway. 

Who was ever satisfied, after attainment, with that which loomed up large that they prayed for it? 

Seneca, Moral Letters 19. 

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This is the fifteenth excerpt from our 10-week course on Stoicism. The book covering all course material, readings, and exercises is available from https://amzn.to/2Ck0fje. 

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