Gordon Underscore White (is that the correct spelling?) contends that materialism as a worldview gets broken by desire.  He’s probably right.  Straight up materialism leads one to only do things which are good for the procreation of your species.  Under strict materialism, everybody should make babies, and furthermore, monogamy reduces the available genetic diversity, so that shouldn’t work either.  We know very well that reproduction is not all that humans are, that there must be more.

Here we have the monks and nuns, who don’t have sex, and don’t bear children.  Well, of course there are those stories of the nuns in the convents being raped repeatedly by the monks and throwing their hidden newborns into the trash heap.  Power corrupts, after all, especially hidden away like a harem behind walls.  Still, there are ascetic practices which do not concord with the evolutionary materialist worldview of everybody humping and procreating with reckless abandon, unable to stop themselves.

We know that fasting is a thing that people do, right up there with infanticide and abortion-promoting plants getting eradicated from the Roman hillsides through overuse.  We know that people can in fact not have sex.  See the herbivores in Japan, or the MGTOW movement.  We know, also, that the vast majority of sex that occurs is NOT for the purpose of procreation.  See period sex.

With this introduction, I can ask a complicated question: What do you want?

Oh you think you know what you want.  To be rich, powerful, popular, skinny, healthy, strong, part of a community of smart and hard-working people who teach you and are taught by you, always learning something new.  Is that true?  Or do you want sex?  Or do you want to be safe?  Maybe you want your progeny to be safe enough to grow up and have their own progeny, not as slaves.  Maybe you secretly want your progeny to all die so you can be free to do the things you could do if you weren’t tied down to a house providing for their upbringing.  Do you want to eat delicious food?  Do you want all the pleasure and none of the pain?  Do you want to play Halo or watch the entirety of the Game of Thrones or Doctor Who collection back to back to back?  Do you want to acquire some donkeys and chickens and pigs and turkeys and dogs and cats and grow a farm because it tugs at your soul to dig your fingers into the dirt and bring it to life?  Do you desire to kill a bunch of lousy people who have wronged you and yours?

What kind of capricious god would you be if you got all that you desired?  Would that be boring?  How would you learn to be benevolent, yet ruthless when necessary?  How would you ever face your fears if you got everything you wanted?

One of the tenants of Tae Kwon Do is self-control.  Self-control is not eating the entire bag of chocolate.  Deeper, self-control is being able to step outside of your fear, your anger, your shame, and feel the calm center of yourself more than those transient emotions, and to be able to make wise decisions from that calm place.  Deeper still, self control is also deciding which path to set your feet upon, which desire that you want to desire, which dreams to pursue even through the teeth of Poseidon himself, and which dreams to be cast off as not really yours anymore.

Is there a molecule which causes you to dream of your ancestors, or other living people and have deep meaningful conversations with them?  Is there a physical reason why people living on opposite sides of the world resonate with the same ideas at the same time, following the same philosophical paths?  It’s not enough to point to the dopamine and the serotonin.  Desire and fear are so much more than these molecules.

Why do so many people wish to break the world?  Why do so many people fear human extinction?  That’s the Wizard’s First Rule.  People believe that which they desire the most, or that which they fear the most.  This is the reason why people must fully understand, acknowledge, and embrace their shadow side.  The Litany Against Fear isn’t just for fear.  It also works with desire.  “Claim victory in your heart, and the Universe will follow.” – Babylon 5

This is why activism starts with meditation.  Ora est labora.