Thin desires are eating life

> There are two kinds of desire, thin and thick. Thick desires are like layers of rock that have been built up throughout the course of our lives. These are desires that can be shaped and cultivated through models like our parents and people that we admire as children. But at some level, they’re related to the core of who we are. They can be related to perennial human truths: beauty, goodness, human dignity.

> Thin desires are highly mimetic (imitative) and ephemeral desires. They’re the things that can be here today, gone tomorrow. Thin desires are subject to the winds of mimetic change, because they’re not rooted in a layer of ourselves that’s been built up over time. They are like a layer of leaves that’s sitting on top of layers of rock. Those thin desires are blown away with a light gust of wind. A new model comes into our life; the old desires are gone. All of a sudden we want something else.

Comparing the above conceptualizations with the ones offered by Westenberg (OP) could consume hundreds or thousands of words -- more than I want to spend at the moment -- but I will say this: both sets feel wrong, by which I mean they trigger my early warning detectors.

I'm not asking anyone else to trust my intuition. But you should trust yours. Intuition is usually a good starting point, at least.

With intuition alone -- without writing a full analysis -- we can see the above quoted explanations/definitions are highly complected. [2] Also, in my view, the offered metaphors don't carve reality at the joints. [3]

When I put ~20 minutes of concentrated thinking into the problem, here are some of the constituent parts of "desire" that I can unpack. (These are only fleetingly glossed over in the article.) In no particular order, to what degree are desires:

  - conscious?
  - intentional?
  - intentionally trained and reinforced?
  - authentic?
  - ones we want to have?
  - situational?
  - pattern-matched responses?
  - evolutionarily-selected?
  - socially constructed? (imitative, mimetic)
  - moral? (positive, neutral, negative)
  - permanent, durable, lasting?
  - self-reinforcing?

Over-simplication can be a disservice. Adding another metaphor reminds me of the "N+1 standards" problem. [4] Maybe the new metaphor helps, maybe not. Either way, now we have more to sift through.

[1]: https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/mimetic...

[2]: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

[3]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/303819/what-do-t...

[4]: https://xkcd.com/927/

We all cheer. We know this. Then we move on.

A catchy title. A novel enough term. That will hook them.

We all read. We all smile. The daily grind.

This insight is not original to me.

[1] It’s just content now

Not essays

Not music

Content

Made me reflect on my own persuasion of thin desires and my struggle to control them.

It also made me see that my hobbies and my career are actually about following my thick desires. I'm in tech, yes. But I chose, among all the possibilities, to be an analog circuit designer. The analog part is what makes it a long hard skill to master, and my day job feels like constant learning from my interactions woth the world. I can't imagine doing anything which isn't interacting with the actual physical world!

As a software engineer, I decided to build an app about side quests. Reading this article I realized I could not put a finger on what I was getting at either, but I just knew I hadd to add wholesome activities that were not part of my life into my life and I kinda built this app for myself (initially for a hackathon) and just shared it with friends.

Hopefully it's useful to someone else on here (nasty self promotion): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sidequests-hq/id6751321255