Monday, August 1, 2016

want

On The Question of Wanting

Well, to the extent that we are, let us say, machines - designed and constructed by some cosmic manufacturer - wanting appears to be a system of alarms or alerts, whose purpose would then presumably be to alert the pilots, or the crew, or the operators, or possibly the passengers, maybe the consumers, maybe inspectors, to, well, things having to do with the functioning of the machine which in some way may "require," if we are among the listed personages, our "attention."

Often enough this system operates, we might say, normally, and we simply respond to the alerts, and then everything goes smoothly. The system is quite well constructed and it is clearly something of a necessity that also performs fairly well. 

Often, too, however, we receive alerts which we maybe don't know how to handle, and even ones which may be faulty. For these reasons wanting is a question.

I am thinking of alerts that read along the lines of, just to pick a very general kind of example, the one which is a source of endless amusement, "get more money." That is something we very often simply do not know how to do. We are very likely to attempt, in one or another way, to comply with the instruction, and we maybe are likely, even likelier than not, to succeed in some measure, but it also seems we are quite unlikely to fully succeed. That's an imperfect way to put it. We are very likely to feel we are not fully succeeding, or even that we are only barely succeeding, and this is so even when we have, in absolute terms, succeeded.

One explanation is that such an alert is not actually a complete alert. If we think through what this might mean, we could say that a complete alert provides all the information needed to fulfill the systemic need that triggered the alert. Here's an example: "Take a break, smoke a cigarette, and have some soda. There's tobacco, papers, and matches, in the can. Get a glass from the cupboard and there's soda in the 'fridge."

Even that is not strictly speaking, or almost at all, just an alert. Maybe a pure alert doesn't say anything. It's just a flashing light. But, no, that's taking it too far. Beneath the light there will be a label. This one is thirsty alerts, and the other is money alerts. Here's the thing, though: there's gonna be some way to get additional information. This is a sophisticate system. It comes with diagnostics. And even if it didn't, a capable and responsible operator, receiving an alert, would perform diagnostics.

In fact, you know what? That's all that needs to be said on the question of wants: perform diagnostics. But note that "perform diagnostics" is an alert.