22 beyond wishful thinkingTh e pragmatics of suffi ciency forms men and women who work only
to uphold a certain customary form of life. When they have done so,
they stop working. Th ey do not allow themselves to be driven by an
impulse toward relentless striving and accumulation. Th e character of
t heir experience of life in societ y g uards t hem— so t he arg ument goes—
against the ordeal of insatiability.
Th e question can then be presented squarely: Are we the beings who
become insatiable only when we depart from the theology of imma-
nence and the pragmatics of suffi ciency? It is true that there is a history
of desire, as there is a history of ideas informing desire. Th is history,
however, is not aimless or random. It does not converge to a single end.
Nevertheless, it has directions. Its directions are not to be mistaken for
the scales of divine justice. However, they reveal, in the course of time,
who we are and what we can become.
Th e restraints imposed by the theology of immanence and by the
pragmatics of insuffi ciency inhibit the development of our powers: not
just of our powers of production but also of all our powers of invention
and innovation. Th ey prevent us from pressing against the limits of the
practices, institutions, and assumptions about human association that
hold all our interests and ideals ransom. Th ey require us to treat one
structure of life and thought— the established one— as our defi nitive
and authoritative home in the world. We cannot do so, however, with-
out pretending to be more like the other animals than like gods.
Th e falsehood of this pretense is prefi gured by the irrepressible ele-
ment of uncertainty about what the established regime of life and of
thought is, and about how this regime is to be understood and upheld
as circumstances change and confl icts arise. No real society can fully
conform to such a script. No real individual can be made into the pas-
sive performer of the lines that the script assigns to the occupant of
each social role. If he does not defy the script openly, he will neverthe-
less rewrite it secretly. Th e falsehood of the pretense is further con-
fi rmed by the irreversibility of any departure from this supposed Ar-
cadia. No people and no individual could ever return to this Eden,
once having experienced the advantages as well as the troubles of its
disruption.
Th e revolutionary changes that are associated with the rejection of
both the theology of immanence and the pragmatics of suffi ciency have