Is Desirism an Ideal?

I have proposed an ethics that I call[1] desirism. My personal appropriation of this ethics has been unsteady. At first I was simply astounded by the personal discovery (my “anti-epiphany”) that (objective) morality is a myth. Then I was appalled and disconcerted to find myself (seemingly) bereft of morality’s guidance. This was followed by my experiencing euphoria on discovering that I still had plenty of psychic resources, such as compassion, remaining, to assure my existing (formerly known as moral) commitments continued. I then developed this more formally into the ethics of desirism, which calls for the rationalizing of our desires in the formation of motives to act. But my allegiance to this soon became so strong that I was in effect becoming a moralist about my amoralism. After recognizing this problem, I thought it would be simple enough to rectify. Alas, however, the truth does not always set you free, and eventually I discouragingly resigned myself to being a divided desirist, who was “intellectually” partial to amoralism but simply unable to practice it consistently. I surmised that perhaps all of us have moralism built-in, so that amoralism will never come naturally and can serve only as an ideal.[2]

            And then, praise the Lord, I chanced upon a person and a process (a social worker and psychotherapy) that, after a year, enabled me at last to walk the talk. This has led me to conceptualize moralism as an emotional malady, which, with the right ministrations, can be ameliorated or even eliminated (“cured”). This is, then, a happy ending to my anti-epiphany that morality is a myth: from idea to living it.

But this is also just the beginning, since now I can truly test desirism in the laboratory of life. I am able to report that it has been working terrifically well so far. However the caveats are that my personal issues may be more or less common to human beings generally, and I have certainly had a privileged existence (so far) free from so many of the real crucibles (poverty, oppression, war, severe illness, etc.) that an ethics might be expected to address.

            Nevertheless I feel already the force of a secular miracle sufficiently to assert that desirism is not a mere ideal but offers itself as an attainable ethics, albeit requiring (for many of us at any rate) a sustained effort of inculcating it, and not only to understand it but also to embody it. In my writings I have offered myself as the “proof” that it can work, alternatingly as the subject or observer of various “moments” or “episodes,” as I call them, in my actual life, and as the model for various characters in works of fiction. Thus my methodology has evolved from argumentative to humanistic.

Certainly any social scientist is also welcome to examine desirism’s empirical claims; but I think the need to be sure of both the conceptual subtleties (for example, so many people fail to appreciate the way in which desirism is not an egoism) and to find genuine specimens of desirist agents (given the uphill struggle for most of us to shed our moralism) – and not to mention judging the long-term outcomes relative to moralists’ achievements -- would make such investigation daunting. That is why I am unapologetic about focusing on my long-term, reflective knowledge of my own life, aware, of course, that this approach too has its traps.


[1] Somewhat misleadingly, since it could just as well be called rationalism.

[2] Or to express this qualm with what Kant called "the old saw": “That may be right in theory, but it won't work in practice.”

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