construction of desire

[firecat]

This LJ post has some really good thoughts:
http://orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com/105179.html

Someone (in a friends locked post) quoted some of them.

I found some more I wanted to quote:

The heart is totally untrustworthy, people. All you have to do is make it want something and you think you invented that wanting, you think desire is an expression of truth and unmediated self.

The primary arena I've noticed this in myself is in my responses to clothing fashions. Over and over again, I'll see some new fashions or colors and go EWWWWW...and then in six months to two years or so I will see the same fashions and really like them. This doesn't happen with every new fashion, but it invariably happens with some, and it happens even though I know it happens.

This flexibility can be used for good or ill, of course. I've also used it to widen and shift the set of people I'm attracted to, which I think is a good thing. The constant shifting of my fashion sense, not so good (although fairly harmless overall).

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

OTOH, seeing the ideology is the first step toward deciding which parts of it you want to keep or discard.

If you haven't read HellSpark by Janet Kagan, you might want to give it a try. It did very much the same thing for me that this book seems to have done for the OP, but from a somewhat different direction; it showed me how to look at my own culture "from the outside" and see what makes sense and what's just "because".

[firecat]

I agree. I have to say I haven't tried very hard to discard my easily shifted fashion sense. :)

Thanks for the book recommendation!

[ckd]

Oh, yes. Second the recommendation for Hellspark. I was really glad to see Meisha Merlin reprint this in a nice trade paperback edition a few years back, because my mass-market copy was getting worn out.