The Law of Desire

In the deceptive trailer of Primer, you are lead to believe that the main characters have created a wish fulfillment device. They ask "what is truly wanted"? Power, wealth, reputation. Hidden in this is a time travel story, one so low-key and low-tech, to focus on the vices of man once he discovers he can travel back and change things.

Once I moved on my own, which has been a few weeks, I began asking those questions, though in a more mundane way. Before discussing how I answered those questions, I am reminded of a friend, who, with his roommate, decided to purchase the house he had been formerly renting (an unusual setup, to be sure). Up until then, he hadn't done anything too special with the place. They didn't own it.

Something about owning your own place drives some to improve it. Something about not owning it makes you decide there's no reason to improve it. Once he had the place, they started sprucing up the place, trying to decide how to make it better. Even though this would involve both effort and money, it was their place, and it was worth it, if for no other reason than to increase its resale value, thus balancing a desire for more with a pragmatic desire to see it as an investment.

Until recently, I had always had roommates, which is really to say, I had housemates/apartmentmates, because I haven't had to share a room for over ten years. And they always had dishes and utensils and furniture, so I rarely needed it for myself.

Once I had my own place, I realized I lacked a lot of simple things. I had no dishes. I had no utensils. I had few cups. I didn't have a garbage can. And once I realized I didn't have those things, I began to wonder what I needed. For example, my friend suggested that I definitely had to hang my LCD TV off the wall. It wasn't a regular TV anymore. Hang it up!

Of course, my thought was "Will the wall support it? What if my expensive TV fell down and cracked?". And, even before that, I had to make a decision, did I want a better TV? What made a better TV? I used to have a TV, but got rid of it, and so I didn't even have a television. However, without one, my DVD player would lie mostly useless, as would my Wii.

And a garbage can. Should I get a plain Jane one? There are ones that are cheap, but they don't have a cover. Or I could really shell out bucks for the Simple Human cans that cost like a hundred bucks. They look great. They cost a lot for holding garbage. Should I care?

What is wanted? And more importantly, why?

We live in a culture where we rarely question why we want, only what we want. Ask people to take Buddhist ideals, and you find that it's too tough for many to say no. When we're young, we want food, we want sweets. I saw a mother and daughter having a discussion. The daughter wanted this or that, and even (despite her age) questioned why her mom wanted this or that. As kids, we desire. As parents, we try to reign in kid's desires, even as parents themselves desire too.

Of course, when basics needs, food, shelter, water, all require money, then we're already spending that on "essentials", so why not spend more on things that make us happy? And companies, of course, thrive on convincing us we need stuff to make us happy.

And this is so ingrained, that I still think about what next to purchase.

Still.