Is it Best to Want Nothing?

Some philosophies advocate eliminating desire. Is this the best path?

The idea that unhappiness starts with need is not some novel idea. It’s been widely believed for millennia. Philosophical movements like stoicism are rooted in similar ideas, while the religion of Buddhism has the concept as a core belief. Many people in history would easily agree that to be unhappy and to desire something are one in the same thing.

In our last article, we talked about how unhappiness is based in need. (And, correspondingly, how happiness seems to come from satisfying needs) Now, let’s ask ourselves: What does this tell us about how to act? How should this change our lives?

Is Desire an Illusion?

Can we escape the cycle of desire?

There are a few approaches to happiness once you understand this. The first and simplest is just to try to get the things you want. If you desire food, the easiest way to fix that unhappiness is to go eat. It’s a basic fact and a simple human instinct. If we desire something, it will somehow fulfill a want we have.

But it should be obvious that we can’t just get everything we want. There are some desires that it seems we just can’t fulfill—most people who want to be pro athletes aren’t going to see that dream come true.

And even if we fulfill those wild desires, it’s clear that it’s just going to bring more desires. How is it that rich and famous people with the ability to get almost anything in the world still feel the need for more? It seems that you simply can never have enough. There’s no way to ‘get everything you want’—you’ll simply wind up wanting more.

This isn’t something to be taken lightly. There are very serious implications for the pursuit of happiness here. If it’s true that there is nothing that can actually make us feel satisfied, then we have to ask ourselves what it is that can bring us any sort of contentment at all.

Approaches to the problem

Many ancient thinkers recognized this problem and looked for solutions. Perhaps most famously, Buddha made this the core of his thought. He recognized that all suffering came from desire and told his followers that the solution was ultimately to get rid of desire—if you can simply get rid of the need for anything, you can ensure that nothing could possibly bring you suffering.

In recent times, many westerners have taken up a sort of philosophical understanding of Buddhism that simplifies it. This philosophical understanding makes religious Buddhism into more of a secular rule for life, explaining how it is that someone can avoid suffering and find happiness through fighting desire.

This more philosophical sort of Buddhism has become popular today. Many subscribe to it as a simple guide for how to live life and achieve happiness. Although it would take far too much time to consider religious Buddhism in all its depth, we can consider this simpler philosophy here.

This is certainly not the only philosophy that advocates limiting desire. In ancient Greece and later Rome, a similar philosophy emerged: Stoicism. Stoicism argued that since your circumstances are out of your control, you cannot rely on them for happiness. Instead, you must rely on your own virtue and character to be truly happy and must become detached from the matters of the world.

Stoicism has remained popular today as a philosophy advocating discipline and self-control above all else. Even in ancient Rome, stoicism was very popular among normal citizens as a practical guide for life. Its appeal is clear, and it certainly offers some valuable insight.

But the real philosophy of stoicism is very radical, and it’s not always the most appealing idea. Many stoics preached caution in love and relationships, choosing to keep themselves distant from friends and even family because of the risk in those relationships. Finding your happiness in another person means gambling your happiness on something out of your control.

What is the end of desire?

Another key point for these philosophies is the idea that there is no end to desire. If you want one thing and you get it, all that will happen is that you’ll suddenly choose another thing to want, something else to leave your happiness in control of.

This continues without end: You’ll get something you want and before you know it, you’ll just have something else you need instead, and you’ll feel miserable until you get that new thing. There’s no clear end to this cycle. (Particularly from the Buddhist viewpoint, where attachment to desire means that you’ll be reborn after death.)

An intuitive perspective on the problem

How should we respond to this? Is it really the case that the best path to happiness is to simply find a way to stop wanting anything, and that any attachment to the world is going to lead you deeper into unhappiness?

For many people, the answer to this question is intuitively no. We have this sense that investment in the world is not a bad thing—rather, it’s absolutely necessary for happiness. Is there any way to defend this position? Can we prove that there is good reason to stay invested in things out of our control and to let our desires remain strong, even if it risks a great deal of sadness?

Arguments against these philosophies

There are many ways to go about this argument. Some, like the Roman philosopher and bishop Augustine of Hippo, have argued that there is no avoiding the pain brought on by your circumstances. Many stoics acknowledge this: The stoic philosopher Cato famously committed suicide for fear of what would happen after his defeat in Caesar’s Civil War.

If there’s no way to achieve the total self-control stoics advocate, it seems ridiculous to subscribe to such a philosophy. If the thing this philosophy is seeking is entirely impossible, why spend life looking for it?

Others philosophers, like the (in)famous German thinker Nietzsche, argued that Buddhism and similar philosophies are really nihilistic—they don’t teach followers to really value life and instead encourage them to simply reject meaning and accept that they will always be lacking real fulfillment. This is no doubt a controversial opinion.

A different approach

But we’d like to propose a different argument altogether. I’d like to focus on something that these philosophies of discipline seem to get wrong about happiness: The idea that all happiness is the same.

Let me explain: What these philosophies argue is certainly true for many things that bring happiness—if you eat a tasty meal, all that will happen is you’ll be hungry and need more in a few hours, and so it seems that there’s no end to the sadness brought about by hunger. Thus, the real path to happiness doesn’t seem to be eating more, but learning to detach yourself from eating and not care about hunger.

It’s the same case with stoicism: For the stoics, all that will happen if you love someone is that eventually they’ll die and you’ll be miserable again, and all you can do is try to replace them with someone else. If this is true, then the solution is simply to learn not to be invested in love. The happiness it can bring you will always be temporary.

But is this really the truth? Is all desire just like hunger, with no possible end and no possible lasting joy? Is the happiness you get from love really just temporary and a path to misery?

Lasting fulfillment

To the contrary, it seems that there are a great deal of things that can lead to happiness even in spite of loss. Would anyone honestly say that they regret loving a parent after they die? It’s exactly the opposite—this loss seems to make us feel that we should have invested more in those relationships.

And many people still find comfort in these relationships even long after they’re done. All of us have fond memories of someone dear to us who we’ve lost, and so many people are transformed and even brought to new levels of happiness by reflecting back on those relationships. These losses do not threaten to destroy our happiness as the stoics suggest. Instead, they seem to lead us to grow in happiness.

In brief, these philosophies of self-control seem to propose that all happiness that comes from the world is the same sort of brief, uncontrollable nonsense that can’t possibly lead to real, lasting joy. But it doesn’t seem that this has to be true. If there are things that can bring us lasting happiness, it seems that these things are worth pursuing even if they are external.

So long as we can find happiness that’s greater than a brief moment of contentment, it seems that there is still something worth pursuing. We can hope for more than just escaping desire—real fulfillment is possible.

But what is it that makes these sorts of happiness lasting? What is it that lets us endure difficult circumstances while still remaining happy? We’ll need to answer this question next time—knowing this will be key in practically finding what it is we must pursue to lead a good life.