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beyond wishful thinking 23

aroused, and will continue to infl ame, all humanity. Th eir infl uence,

despite all calamities and reversals, will appear as a force that is irresist-

ible and providential not only because it empowers us but also because it

reveals us to ourselves.

If the variations of society and culture cannot save us from our insa-

tiability, can some of our initiatives as individuals nevertheless shield

us against it? Can we not have in love and in work experiences that

wholly absorb us, modify or even suspend our sense of the passage of

time, without depriving us of consciousness, and interrupt the cycle of

unrequited desire?

Indeed, we can, if we are both lucky and wise, but only for a while.

Th e work will come to an end, and no longer represent for its creator

what it represented in the throes of creation. Th e love, ever tainted by

ambivalence, will cease to waver only if it ceases to live. Th e work and

the love will be seen to be the par tic u lar engagement and the par tic u lar

connection that they are, and we will continue to seek, absurdly and

inescapably, something that is not just one more par tic u lar. Our re-

prieves from insatiable desire will be momentary; our insatiability will

remain as the lasting undercurrent of our experience, thrown into

starker relief by its remissions.

Insofar we are death- bound, existence is urgent and frightful. Inso-

far as we are groundless, it is vertiginous and dreamlike. Insofar as we

are insatiable, it is unquiet and tormented.

Belittlement

“Th e true sorrow of humanity consists in this;— not that the mind of
man fails; but that the course and the demands of action and of life
so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desires;
and hence that, which is slow to languish, is too easily turned aside
and abused.” So wrote the poet Wordsworth, describing what we may
be tempted to mistake for a fourth irreparable fl aw in the human
condition.
No feature of our humanity is more important than our power to go
beyond the par tic u lar regimes of society and of thought in which we
participate. We can always do, feel, think, or create more than they