How desire and not reason makes us do things
Margaret and I thought everyone might like a story that’s not about politics, but still related to the current moment.
Conclusion first: A few years ago Margaret the Pug and I were reading David Hume together. We fell in love with his idea that humans do things because of desire and not because of reason. Margaret had known this for years, but it was news to me. I was happy because I learned something new. She was happy because someone famous agreed with her.
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” — Hume, Of the influencing motives of the will, from Treatise of Human Nature
Passion and desire don’t just overwhelm our reason, they are the foundation of reason. Hume didn’t believe we have a firm and definable self. Instead, we’re a collection of perceptions, feelings, and experiences. Shared experiences are what we call ideas, and ideas have no independent life outside of feelings and perceptions.
So much for Plato.
Reason is what we use to examine, understand, and justify our desires. I’ve never spoken with Joe Biden. I don’t know why he wanted to run for President after turning 81, but I can guess why. He had a strong desire to remain President until he was 86, long after he would no longer be fit for the job. There’s no reasonable argument to justify that desire, but reason has nothing to do with why people run for President or who we vote for. Desire explains it. I’ll let David Hume and Margaret the Pug explain.
What Hume Says
David Hume was an eighteenth century philosopher of the Scottish enlightenment, something I didn’t know existed before I read him. He studied law, like my other dead friend Montaigne, but gave up on it early and decided he was unfit for anything other than philosophizing. God knows how he paid his bills, but there were a lot fewer bills in the pre-subscription economy of England in the 1700’s than there are now.
Hume believed cause and effect are illusionary, and that passion and not reason motivates all our behavior. We can’t know for sure why anything happens, or even why we do anything. We just have experience to guide us. If we assume the future will always look like the past, which is what experience suggests, we’re sure to be wrong at some point. That seems like a very dog-ish way to look at the world, and that’s what inspired Margaret to write her story about the little pug who gave away her bowl of ice cream in search of love.
The Little Pug Who Wanted to Be Loved
by Margaret the Pug
I do things because I want to, not because I think I should. I will tell you a story to show what I mean.
Somewhere there is a little fawn pug who has a bowl of ice cream. The little pug wants her brother to love her, so she calls to her brother, “Will you help me eat this ice cream?” This is a very silly thing to do since dogs don’t share, as everyone can see, but the little pug feels insecure and wants to be loved.
“I will help you eat your ice cream!” says her brother, and pushes the little pug out of the way. Soon there’s no ice cream for the little fawn pug. She’s sad, but it’s her own fault, and she knows it because she knows dogs don’t share.
The next day the little pug gets another bowl of ice cream. The little pug calls to the house cat because she wants the house cat to love her (a good indication this pug isn’t too bright) and asks, “Will you help me eat this ice cream?” although the little pug knows cats don’t share any more than dogs.
“Yes, I will!” says the house cat, and jumps over the little pug to place himself between the pug and the bowl. Soon there’s no ice cream left for the little pug, and the pug is sad again, but it’s still her fault, and she knows it because she’s seen cats steal food before, particularly ice cream.
The next day the pug gets another bowl of ice cream. She is angry with her brother and the cat, and although she still wants other animals to love her, she’s too angry to ask them to share her ice cream, so she calls to a bird and says, “Will you help me eat this ice cream?”
“Birds don’t like ice cream,” says the bird. “It’s bad for our digestion.” The bird flies off leaving the little pug confused. Why don’t birds like ice cream? Should the pug not like ice cream? And what’s digestion anyway?
The little fawn pug lays down and stares at the ice cream bowl. She thinks and thinks, but none of her thoughts can make her eat. She knows ice cream is delicious, but she wants to be loved by other animals. Her desire to be loved overpowers her knowledge that ice cream is delicious. After some time the human who gave her the ice cream picks up the bowl because it’s attracting flies. Still no ice cream for the little pug, and still it’s her own fault.
By this time the human who gave the little fawn pug the ice cream decides that she doesn’t like ice cream. This is a very bad decision, but it’s how humans think. A long time goes by. The little pug wants ice cream very much, and her desire makes her work to earn it. After many cute head tilts and big sad eyes directed at the human, the she earns another bowl of ice cream.
“Want some help with that?” asks her brother.
“Get way from me!” barks the little pug. Now her desire for ice cream is greater than the idea that she should please her brother.
“Want some help with that?” asks the house cat.
“Beat it, you pest!” barks the little fawn pug, and the cat struts off pretending it never asked.
The little fawn pug eats the whole bowl of ice cream and enjoys it immensely. With her wonderful full feeling, she goes outside to talk to the bird.
“Bird! Hey Bird!” yaps the little fawn pug. “How can you not eat ice cream? It’s delicious.”
“I have no desire for ice cream,” says the bird.
“And what’s this digestion thing?” asks the little pug.
“Give it some time,” says the bird, and flies off to be with its kind.
What does this story mean? We think we can make animals love us if we give them ice cream, but we can’t. I don’t love other animals because I think I should. I love other animals because I feel love for them, and feelings are not thoughts.
I love ice cream, and I like you when you give me ice cream, but only because you gave me ice cream. I eat the ice cream because I love it, not because I’m grateful you gave it to me. Reason does not make me do things. Desire makes me do things.
Also, don’t waste your time talking to birds; they never make any sense.
What This Story is About
I’ve gotten feedback that Margaret’s stories can be pretty hard to understand. She’s not intentionally vague. Sometimes she chooses things for no more reason than she likes them: “That sounds right. I like it. I’ll keep it.” Her choices are no more strategic than that. As Bob Dylan is alleged to have said when asked what his lyrics mean, “I don’t know. Let the freaks figure it out!”
Here’s my attempt to explain Margaret’s story and tie it back to David Hume and Joe Biden.
When Biden ran in 2020, he described himself as a transitionary figure, which many of us interpreted as he would be a one term President. That’s what I voted for when I voted for him in 2020. So when he ran again, I felt a bit betrayed.
Joe could have eaten his bowl of ice cream— his one term — and been happy and retired a hero, but he followed his desires, almost catastrophically, in search of a second term. Joe had something in hand, a hugely successful single term as President, and nearly wasted it in search of something he wanted but didn’t have, a second term, a second term that’s impossible to justify at his age and in his health. So it’s not just puppies that act foolishly in search of love or some other passion and waste perfectly good bowls of ice cream. It’s Presidents and all the rest of us, too.
Joe Biden may have sought a second term and given up his candidacy for the same reason the little pug gave away her ice cream. We’ll likely never know why he did it, as he likely isn’t sure himself. He has reasons why he did it, but are they real, or just explanations of his feelings and perceptions? Hume would say the latter, and so would Margaret and I. No matter why he gave up his candidacy, he made me happy that he did.
“Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.” — David Hume, Of the reason of animals, from A Treatise of Human Nature
“Here’s another evident truth: old dogs stink, and we don’t smell better the older we get.” — Margaret the Pug
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I totally agree that desire naturally makes us do more things than reason does. Years ago, my mother purported that all one needed to do to eliminate unwanted pregnancies was to make sex education mandatory. She reasoned that education would provide information and instruction and eliminate unwanted outcomes. I asked had she never been caught up in the moment and made a rash decision based on desire. She blinked a few times and responded, “no!” For her, reason outweighs desire. I think that was more true in past generations. For most of us (my opinion), as we grow and mature, we learn to apply reason and tell our desires to wait their turn. Sometimes reason wins.
I can see why you like Hume (“ Reason is, and ought to be the slave of the passions”). His finances came first from his essays and a multi-volume history, The History of England, which was sort of a standard university textbook. It kept him going. It also helped that he didn’t marry and had no children !