On Desire, Political and Personal Reality.

I think nobody will believe just how
stupid this is if I don't directly quote the text so let's begin by directly quoting John Stuart Mill quote if I am asked what I mean by a difference of quality and pleasures or what makes one pleasure more valuable in another merely as a pleasure except it's being greater in amount there is but one possible answer of two pleasures if there be one to which all or most who have experience of both give a decided preference irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it that is the more desirable pleasure let's pause to reflect on how absurd how abhorred in rule a society along the lines of this philosophy if we were to believe that society should be reshaped to serve the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people and this is our definition of happiness so should the government encourage people to eat cheese or not should they eat cheese or should they quit eating cheese and eat a vegan diet well apparently the greatest happiness the greatest number of people is is shown because people love eating cheese the vast majority the vast repeal have tried both lifestyles prefer eating cheese fact that it's unhealthy doesn't matter greatest happiness of the greatest number of people through a simple appeal to popularity fallacy that's all there is to it so should people eat doughnuts deep fried dessert products like doughnuts or should they eat a meager diet of boiled vegetables as recommended by the Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine crude appeal to popularity should the government encouraged people to gamble or should they discourage gambling should gambling perhaps be made illegal would we have a happier society this is all about happiness would we have a happier society with no gambling in it as opposed to say every major city in the United States encouraging gambling the way that Las Vegas Nevada does guess what guys the polling data is in the vast majority of people enjoy gambling a lot more than they enjoy the study of political philosophy I want to say very briefly if you listen to people who are former members of cults reflecting on their lives they very often say that when they first joined the cult when they first joined a charismatic religious group whatever it was that they had misgivings they could tell that some of the things they were reading and some of the philosophical principles they were hearing really didn't make sense but they pushed that doubt aside and they told themselves they have to believe in this they have to make it make sense they have to rationalize this to themselves and then later they look back and they say I wish I I wish I'd paid more attention to my own misgivings all right for me even as a child the fundamental absurdity of utilitarianism the idea of ruling greatest happiness the greatest number of people the idea of defining happiness through this pleasure pain calculus appeal to this appeal the popularity whatever is the most popular enjoyment is the objectively real enjoyment okay the problems of this the profound incoherence in this was obvious to me even as a chef now I'm heterosexual okay and within heterosexual males my taste in women is not that uncommon okay there are some heterosexual men who prefer really fat women not me okay how does this make sense to them you read this oh well some guys some guys like slender fit women and some guys like fat women oh yeah well but you know objectively it's just ridiculous it's just ridiculous to pretend there's something objective living how do you think gay people feel reading this okay homosexual people read this and they say oh well um if objectively the majority of people the great majority of people who have experience of both pleasures would choose one of the via the great majority of people are heterosexual that's completely meaningless to you if you personally are gay right if for you personally one kind of sex would be misery and another would be pleasure that's all there is to it there's no way we can find a foothold to make pleasure objectively real outside of the merely subjective reality of desire what does water taste like when you're thirsty and especially if you're suffering from thirst outdoors in the heat and you're uncertain of where or how you're gonna find drinking water if you've ever been in those circumstances the way that water tastes when you're desperate for a sip of water is unbelievably delicious and if you're already full and satiated and relaxing and sitting in an air-conditioned room and you're not particularly thirsty then the taste of water seems like nothing at all the difference between a beautiful woman and an ugly woman is in the eye of the beholder it's subjective it's relative to me and my desire whether you find women attractive or men attractive is subjective it's relative to the perceiver it's relative to human desire and that is all there is to it what we desire subjectively seems to us with the most real thing in the world but of course it's the least real whether eating a doughnut is delicious or disgusting depends on you and your cognition and your desire whether eating french fries from McDonald's deep fried saturated with oil french fries is delicious or disgusting is relative to you and guess what the good news is the way you experience the world what seems to be pleasant and unpleasant it can change with knowledge it can knowing changes feeling feeling changes desiring I find french fries disgusting and it's partly because I know what they are I know what they're made up I feel revolted eating french fries I eat a very spare vegan diet to eat a lot of broccoli eat a lot of peas lately frozen peas I mean okay however I do not share this utilitarian delusion that what I find Pleasant is objectively real and I know that if I were stupid enough to subscribe to this appeal to popularity fallacy I'm over only further marginalizing myself because then I'd be recognizing what the majority of people consider to be pleasure to be the objectively real pleasure and all of my health of all the things I'm committed to whether it's caring about philosophy or humanitarian work or caring about animal rights then all of those things become unreal they become subordinated relative to this ridiculous hierarchy of the pleasure pain calculus however John Stuart Mill himself was of course a snob John Stuart Mill had a lot more in common with me that he had in common with the average man who enjoys gambling and smoking cigars and eating deep fried doughnuts John Stuart Mill like myself was somebody who would enjoy reading Aristotle and Plato so of course he cannot let his philosophy stand on this one leg alone the most famous part of it the greatest happiness for the greatest number people know immediately after this quotation he then presses on to say that of course he believes in a distinction between higher and lower pleasures and for this argument there is absolutely no basis whatsoever except bias prejudice cultural familiarity ultimately a religious mentality this is simply the founding of a new religion it is appealing to your sense of faith and belief now if you don't think this is culturally relative what is a higher pleasure and what is a lower pleasure imagine how different this would sound to someone who grew up Muslim in a Muslim majority culture in that culture they have a very clear sense of what are the higher pleasures what are the refined pleasures what are the pleasures a refined gentleman would enjoy an indulgent and what are the lower and despicable pleasures think about a stereotypical Parisian Frenchman someone from Paris France who grew up in that culture with a sort of mixture of Christian and atheist background what they think are the refined pleasures all right both of those groups I utterly revile the things they consider most pleasant ok people who grow up in Paris France they think that drinking red wine and eating steak tartare and trying to seduce the woman who they're employing as an au pair or to take care of their daughter as the highest pleasure ok let's let's be real sorry I've spent a lot of time in France alcohol meat and cheating on your wife with younger women these are like the dominant refined pleasures of French society you know even the stuff that's on French public television and radio the sitting around in a reading of what they consider literature what they consider high literature in France I despise all of that stuff also ok that's me subjectively ok but there is no way anyone can sit and come to this ridiculous utilitarian judgment at all in French culture their idea of what are the high pleasures the refined pleasures those are correct whereas in a Muslim society their idea of the high the high pleasure is the higher more refined jokes that's incorrect there's no way you can come to the judgement that what Japanese people or Tibetan people think is high or think is low in the sense of high and low is correct or very there is absolutely no objective reality to this discourse whatsoever whereas the first premise the first leg at least you could measure that you could go out and ask people you can poll people you can just you know measure the economic reality of it what percentage of people enjoy gambling what percentage of people think gambling is a better use of their time food money to reading philosophy or reading about politics even okay we know gambling is really popular there's something in human nature that enjoys gambling but I for my part if my own son were spending twenty percent of his money every year gambling if I had a son who grew up and he went to Las Vegas Nevada every three months or six months or something there are a lot of people that have a regular vacation schedule going to Las Vegas Nevada I would say to him look this is bad and depraved and wrong and I'm aware I'm aware that the gamblers the people enjoy gamblers they outnumber me they maybe the vast majority or they maybe the plurality gambling is popular people who truly believe and experience gambling as pleasant they outnumber the people like me ten to one or a hundred or one and I'm in the position of saying against the utilitarians no that doesn't mean that they're right wrong I can't accept this this is ridiculous and again if you're a homosexual addition to the way you can say like just from a sincere subjective perspective there's no way you can say that heterosexuality is right and homosexuality is wrong these things are radically subjective they're reciprocal with desire in the same sense that a shadow is reciprocal with its source of light you turn off the light bulb you lose the shadow . period one is not more real than the other in comparing one shadow to the other it's not convenient for me to look at gambling this way and recognize you know what it's a really difficult aesthetic ethical and political argument for me to argue that gambling should be illegal when you live in a culture where gambling is celebrated as normal all right and then of course from the other side look at an Islamic majority culture in an Islamic majority culture they really look down on gambling as being a very low pleasure SP very despicable something a refined and educated gentleman would not do so this is all that utilitarianism comes down to is authoritarianism it's just John Stuart Mill saying that from his perspective some pleasures are truly human are truly suitable for refined sophisticated humanity and he's going to decide what those are and then he's going to force everyone through education or coercion or legislation to agree with his hierarchy of the pleasures and that is absolutely no better than Catholicism or Islam or an authoritarian form of Buddhism like Tibetan Buddhism there's someone in charge who's a religious leader or a shaman who decides what is pleasant and unpleasant and they've written up the so-called calculus and they now rural society in the pursuit of the so-called greatest happiness of the greatest number of people but it's not it's not the greatest happiness the greatest number of people it is one ideological religious leaders idea of the greatest happiness of the greatest number people they believe on a religious level they believe it is in your best interest for you to study the philosophy of Socrates Plato Aristotle the great names from ancient Greece right how does that sound to a Japanese person you think that's an objectively real pleasure pain calculus for what you think that's you think that's an objectively real measure of utility you think there's social utility in forcing children to study the philosophy of of ancient Athens you don't think that sounds a little bit strange to someone who's born and raised in Beijing China born and raised in Tokyo Japan born and raised in India how about the people who are conquered by European imperialism how about someone who is ethnically mohawk or a jib way or Cree or den a or Navajo okay so you conquered them you destroyed this site linear sum hey guess what guys it's objectively real that your culture and your religion and your philosophical heritage is worthless and here's here's the up here here's the utility for your for your happiness in order to make you more happy as an individual in order to make society more happy in aggregate for everyone's greatest happiness we're gonna force you to read Socrates Plato Xenophon Aristotle right that's the true philosophy okay that's not oh yeah right that's not a culturally relative concert well that's not just our bias or our prejudice because that's who we happen to be how do you think a Muslim leader would regard these philosophies don't you think a Muslim King or monarch would have a different idea of what philosophy would be in society's interest to force everyone to study they did it for centuries the Catholics did it for centuries all these different authoritarian societies including China I mean with China it was a relatively small elite who were forced to read the tomes of philosophy that define the society but it was a tremendously influential anyone who wanted a position in government even a very lowly position like a clerk or a scribe or all of the bureaucrats in China they all had to read the same stack of books is this long list of philosophical tomes they had to read and some of them they were expected to almost have memorized okay and they felt that reading that literature reading that philosophy and a lot of its political those discussions of political examples legal and moral examples they felt that that was integral to developing yourself into a sophisticated gentleman who was capable of doing the business of state of participating in a rustic Radek life in courtly life so gee what why is it why is it the people in Italy just never developed a an appreciation for the philosophy of Lord Shang that nobody nobody in Europe is interested in the Han Dynasty critique of the advantages and disadvantages of the rule of Qin Shihuang well what do you why do you think that is why is it that a book like the Han fascia is not regarded in Europe as being objectively for your greater happiness for the utility of sizeable for us to force you to read the same way it was in in China do you not see how profoundly stupid self-serving and ridiculous this is that this whole argument relies on the fantasy of having a philosopher-king force everyone to agree with his subjective notion of what is truly pleasure and what is truly pain of what is truly in your best interest what is truly going to lead to your happiness and to the greatest happiness of society as a whole the utilitarian philosophy is a secular robe draped over a fundamentally religious authoritarian and dogmatic corpse [Music]