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the desires of the belly

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simple desires which constitute our basic nature

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few and finite

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the desires of the eye

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the things you can see that are far away that you don't have

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that's the problem with them: they aren't things that are here that we are appreciating with our belly

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created by society and socialization

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they are infinite

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society can keep churning out new things that we might want

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they are insatiable

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differences

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where the desires of the belly are few and finite

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the desires of the eye are infinite

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desires of belly satisfy our basic nature

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desires of the eye lead us away from our nature

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desire of the eye for Laozi

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sophisticated tastes that Confucian culture is trying to impose on the population

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taste for music

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appreciation of fine foods

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etiquette

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how to sit properly

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how to dress the right way

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Laozi feels that developing sophisticated tastes is a terrible idea

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the desires of the eye in modern advertising

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has a tendency to create endless new desires

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endless new things to chase

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distorts our idea of what it is we need to be content and happy

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the most obvious example fo this is SUVs

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this phenomenon in North America of people driving these SUVs

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the got bigger and bigger

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there was the Escalade and that wasn't big enough so they had the Hummer

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why are people driving these vehicles?

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often the furthest off roads they get is the supermarket

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it's a good example of a ramping up of what you think you need

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you see this behind any kind of lifestyle marketing

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luxury items

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luxury condos

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luxury hotels

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sold by convincing people that there is a new way of being that we are not yet experiencing yet but we could be

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you see these people in the advertisements that kind of look like you but they're better looking and happier

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so whatever you're doing is not quite enough

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but it's right around the corner

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if you could just purchase this condo

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you will then have this new lifestyle which is better than the one you have now

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the problem is, once you get this lifestyle, there will be another lifestyle that is slightly better which you can also purchase

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modern consumerism

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corporations want to sell you new products

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they don't want you to be happy with the product you have

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we are always chasing the next fashion

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the Daodejing and the primitivist movement

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a reaction against this consumerist problem

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resonates later attempts to oppose capitalism, consumerism and large economies

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Henry David Thoreau

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had similar insights

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"The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same."

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there is a human thirst for new patterns

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corporations are driving this and making money off of our need for this

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we have perfectly good clothes and yet we go clothes shopping

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Laozi's solution to the constant creation of artificial needs

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"know the contentment of contentment"

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know to be content with what you have

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but this depends on having simple nature which does not always need the newest thing

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avoid the hedonistic treadmill

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the need to have new things is probably built into human psychology

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pleasures are fleeting

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people who win the lottery

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had an immediate bump in happiness, they revert back to thei baseline happiness level

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the same is true for negative events

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you eventually return to the state of happiness you previously had

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probably has to do with a phenomenon called adaptation

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when we are exposed to a stimulus, at a certain point we stop noticing it

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if we didn't have this, we would be paralyzed by too much information

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a feature of animal sensory systems so that we can note minute changes

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you don't want to be constantly focusing on all the leaves moving and all the wind blowing

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you want to notice a twig snapping

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this extends to hedonistic pleasure

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we become used to a certain amount of pleasure and well-being until it becomes merely background information and we look for particular points where we don't have certain pleasures and well-being and concern ourselves with getting more

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the emotional reactions to value in the world seem to follow a similar trajectory

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this also explains things called the GDP puzzle

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within a society, typically the richer you get the happier you get, up to a certain point

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it tends to level out once you get your basic needs met

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but if you have a society with a very high GDP and a very low GDP, the happiness levels tend to not differ that much

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it seems to be that people adapt to their level of material wealth

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you have a warm place to live and food on your place

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when you have been starving this is an amazing thing, your happiness levels spike

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then you adapt to it an it just becomes part of your life

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you get used to having food on the table

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the you want really nice food on the table

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happiness as keeping up

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it seems to be the case that absolute levels of pleasure and comfort and well-being as relative levels

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in terms of happiness, whatever you make as a salary is not quite as important as what my salary is relative to my neighbors

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relative wealth seems more important than absolute wealth

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people seem more sensitive to rank among other than to absolute status

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we don't care so much about absolute prosperity but where we are in the pecking order

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this characteristics of humans seems to make sense at an evolutionary level

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if you are going design animals that fight to survive, you probably want to design into them the desire to find it important where they fit in compared to other animals

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you would want to design animals to be less like the slacker Jeff "the Dude" Lobowski

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and more like the Kevin Spacey character in House of Cards, never satisfied with where he ranks among other people and is always scheming about the next person he is going to knock off

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in this way the Laozian concept of the desires of the eye being a corruption of human nature is problematic as an accurate description of human beings

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so when Laozian is talking about the dangers of the desires of the eye, it makes more sense to understand this as a normative claim than an accurate description of how human beings actually are

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Laozi, or the authors of the Daodejing, seemed to be aware that it was a natural tendency to desire too much

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but the Confucians were exacerbating it

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the advice of Laozi is to retreat and not partake