Reducing Desire
Thou blind man’s mark, thou fool’s self-chosen snare,
Fond fancy’s scum, and dregs of scattered thoughts,
Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care,
Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought -Desire, desire! I have too dearly bought,
With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware,
Too long, too long asleep thou hast me brought,
Who should my mind to higher things prepare.But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought;
In vain thou madest me to vain things aspire,
In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire;
For virtue hath this better lesson taught -
Within myself to seek my only hire,
Desiring nought but how to kill desire.–Sir Philip Sidney, 1581
Since we live in a culture that is suffused with desires; that is more expert than any culture ever in the incitement of desires, and that is on the brink of collapse at the very idea that our desires might finally be momentarily slackened; it is remarkable to me that we were once able to conceive of desire as something that drives us against our will, and that perverts us, rather than defines us.
This post was inspired by Twisty’s last two Thanksgiving posts, in which she examines our privileges as being nearly universal. My response was to wonder what we can do about it, and the only thing I could come up with was to reduce the desires that cause us to crave our privileges. Hence the poem, which I read this morning with wonder and awe. Fond fancy’s scum! Cradle of causeless care!
I note that in Sidney’s culture, Virtue was, first and foremost, a set of ideals for the philosophic mind. Not a codeword for patriarchal submission.