The Opiate of Desire: Justifying Internal Dissonance
“I want what I want, when I want, and how I want it!” Such statements point to a thought life that is self-centered, presumptuous, and arrogant. But it also reveals a desire to satisfy one’s ambitions at one’s own expense. The expense often manifests as cognitive dissonance, where rational consistency is overridden by a greater desire, which in turn creates an internal conflict with one’s core values. In such cases the presence of a specific desire seeks to justify the its fulfillment by usurping the autonomic process of mind that pursues internal cognitive consistency—creating a moral conflict. Over time the dilemma becomes desensitized through a series of justifying assaults against one’s reason, thus forcing the episode of internal dissonance to conform to meet the satisfactory requirements of the desire. The net result is that once one reaches the point of having justified their internal dissonance it becomes easy and may even appear logical to think or say: “I want what I want, when I want, and how I want it!”
Take for example the desire for personal beauty. The desire itself is not a bad thing. But, when the desire for personal beauty consumes the autonomic safeguards of financial stewardship and cognitive health a dissonant struggle may be apparent. People spend fortunes on tending to their appearance and some bankrupt their bodies, cognition, conscience, health, livelihood, and relationships to pursue their opiate of desire.
How about the desire for success? This too is not a bad thing and is even a good pursuit if balanced with rational deliberation. However, the desire for success can devour the autonomic urge for rational coherency. When the pursuit of success overrides sound reasoning and cognitive health the individual is inclined to debase themselves, dehumanize others, discard relationships, shift the ethical goalpost, and champion their ends as justifying the means. The opiate of success bankrupts their ability to reason.
Both examples illustrate the extremes of desire. When desire is unchecked, it may morph into an irrational ambition to achieve what is contrary to the individuals autonomous process of mind. Consider the following, highly simplified process. The desire and ambition begin with the thought of “I want”. Such a simple statement does not indicate a self-destructive thought. All people experience such thoughts. However, an indicator of cognitive dissonance might be found by the predicate that follows immediatly after: “I want what I want”. No justification is supplied in this statement. Rather, justification is presumed within the statement: “I want what I want (because I have already reasoned that I want it)”. At this point we are observing a desire-based statement that is only a statement, even though it presumes that the statement is justified. The statement does not reveal a direction or goal at this point. However, we can observe the preeminent rise of ambition by the insertion of how and when. “I want what I want, when I want, and how I want it!” The desire is verbalized as a pursuable ambition (even though the specifics of when and how are not stated), the declaration of ambition assumes that specifics lie in the background to the statement. The opiate of desire, from a simplistic standpoint, operates in like manner. Internal dissonance is irrationally justified by the pursuit of ambitions that stand contrary to one’s autonomic process of mind.
The question we must ask is whether our ambition coherently and cognitively aligns with our autonomic compass. Ambition stands at a crossroad when objective desire shakes hands with delusive resolve. The kind of delusion in view is the belief that one’s ambition has satisfactorily met the standards of coherent reasoning when the opposite is likely true. The premise undergirding this statement is that ambition (that is the personal objective desire toward a specific end) can be mistaken as a sufficiently reasoned condition that justifies the resolve for and the engagement of actions that lead toward achieving the ends. In short, the fact of objective desire can often be conflated with rational deliberation, cognitive justification, and commensurate action. These three, internal debate, sanctioned endorsement, and pragmatic effort are definitionally blended and confused as supporting the inner monologue that justifies desire. In such cases the presence of desire justifies the ambition as a worthwhile pursuit—dissonant ambition can therefore be the opiate of desire.
I remember my dad talking about prudence and spending. He would often tell my brother and I: “Turn your penny over twice before you spend it.” In other words, carefully ponder whether you should spend that penny for an item that you want now, rather than saving it for something else that you may want or need later. This kind of advice is good for evaluating our own ambitions and desires. We can rephrase the saying as follows: “Turn your ambitions over twice before you pursue it.”
