18 beyond wishful thinkingcontent from one another; our desires represent a kidnapping of the
self by society. Th is commandeering of desire by other people makes
the content of desire seem empty, as if it always remained on the pe-
riphery of the self, as if it never penetrated the inner and empty core of
the personality. We stand forever ready to exchange one invasion of the
self by society for another.
A third root of insatiability is the prominence among our desires of
those that by their very nature can never be satisfi ed by most people
most of the time. We want from one another ac cep tance, recognition,
and admiration as well as things and power. In par tic u lar, we want
from one another what every child wants from every parent: an assur-
ance that there is an unconditional place for him the world. No such
assurance is ever enough, because every assurance is both ambiguous
and revocable. Even if we can accumulate enough of scarce material re-
sources, we can never get enough of the even scarcer immaterial ones.
What is given to one man is taken from another, so that we fi nd our-
selves in a circumstance of perpetual dissatisfaction. Only love, freely
given but easily destroyed, could free us for a while from this endless
yearning.
A fourth root of the insatiability of desire is that we seek, in the
satisfaction of our desires, not just to rid ourselves of the pains and
privations to which they refer but also to supply a response to both
death and groundlessness. A man may seek to become rich because he
cannot become immortal or because he cannot fi nd any more reliable
grounding for his existence. Th is ceaseless metonymy, this trading of
the ultimate for the homely, is bound to disappoint him.
Th ere is a common element in these sources of insatiability. We can-
not access the absolute, the unconditional, the unlimited. Th erefore, we
try to get it from the limited. We are unable to convince ourselves that,
despite our mortality and our groundlessness, everything is all right.
Th erefore, we use what ever material and immaterial resources we are
able to obtain to compensate for the fundamental defects in life that we
are powerless to redress. We can never achieve enough ac cep tance from
one another. Th erefore, each of us continues the hunt for more tokens
of assurance that there is an unconditional place for him in the world.
We cannot restrict our strivings to a limited set of objects and goals.
Th erefore, we walk a treadmill of desire, satisfaction, boredom, and