Transforming Desire
Wanting by Luke Burgis is an introduction to Rene Girard's theory of mimesis. He covers many interesting topics including an alternative, messier version of Maslow's hierarch of needs, how our desires are mediated by others, and constructive and destructive cycles of desire.
This quote is from the final chapter He shares some prescriptions to help us transform our desire. The concepts he talks about here - calculating and meditative thought seem linked to that of resistance that we covered in an earlier post.
There are two different ways of thinking that correspond, respectively, to engineering desire and transforming it, calculating thought and meditative thought.
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Calculating thought is constantly searching, seeking, plotting how to reach an objective; to get from point A to point B, to beat the stock market, to get good grades, to win an argument. According to psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist, it's the dominant form of thought in our technological culture. It leads to the relentless pursuit of objectives - usually without having analyzed whether the objectives are worthy to begin with.
A monk in charge of training novices at a monastery told me that in recent years he had noticed young postulants (men on their way to becoming monks) bring stacks of books with them when they pray in the chapel. They are habituated to think that without "input" there can be no "output". The hypertrophy of calculating thought is a product of our technological development - humans imitating machines.
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Calculating thought has become the primary mode of thought, often to the exclusion of meditative thinking altogether, which leads eventually to forms of social engineering, technological manipulation, and the loss of empathy.
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Meditative thought, on the other hand, is patient thought. It is not the same thing as meditation. Meditative thought is simply slow, non-productive thought. It's not reactionary. It's the kind of thought that, upon hearing the news or experiencing something surprising, doesn't immediately look for solutions. Instead, it asks a series of questions that help the asker sink down further into reality: What is this new situation? What is behind it? Meditative thought is patient enough to allow the truth to reveal itself.
Meditative thought opens the door to transformation. When the calculating, processing part of our brain calms down, the meditative part - which takes in new experiences - is given the ability to work, integrating these new experiences into a new framework for reality.
The calculating brain is only able to fit new experiences into existing mental models. The meditative brain develops new models. If we spend all our time in calculating mode, we spend our entire life trying to fit every new encounter into boxes.
Wanting, pages 200-202.