The Desirability Fallacy

The more we are envied, the happier we get. This has been the most persuasive message of social media. Exploiting our social drive for admiration and belonging, the algorithm-optimized feed became a fertile ground for desires rooted in comparison and pollinated by envy. Watching the algorithm at play and analyzing my own desire map, I feel confident saying being “enviable” leads to the opposite. It traps us in a telic life and accelerates the perfection epidemic that author Thomas Curran talks about in his Nautilus interview.

I will draw on Aristotle, West African traditions, Haitian culture, and my own experience to make the case.

In the tale of Eshu and the two-colored hat, two men working in parallel on neighboring plots of land made a friendship vow. But one day the African god Eshu, known as the trickster, tested that bond. Wearing a two-colored hat, red on one side and black on the other, Eshu visited both men. He engaged in a “lodyans” with each man separately from their side of the land. Later, when the men sat to discuss, a fight broke out. Convinced by what they saw, they refused to accept each other’s views until Eshu came the next day to reveal the hat. On the surface, it’s a tale about perspective and closed-mindedness. Still, deep down, it reveals our vulnerability to deception and inclination to believe the obvious. The algorithm is that trickster showing us one side of the hat; convincing us how desirable we will be in that color. Contrary to the tale, the algorithm will not reveal its trick nor teach us a life lesson. Exploiting our need for novelty, it will play the same tricks in an infinite loop. Only this time, with colored illusions.

20 years earlier, someone living in Kenscoff, Haiti was exposed to her friends and neighbors’ possessions, experiences, and aspirations. Now we can binge 200-minute-a-day episodes of the lives of people we will never meet and don’t care about. Capitalizing on our fear of finitude, social media companies’ shift from the chronological feed to an infinite one. But these endless motifs and possibilities create three illusions that trap us in a telic life:

The first is the illusion of choice, a belief that what we are exposed to is accessible. Seeing it makes it familiar and within reach. But that doesn’t make it true, at least not the whole truth.

The second one is the “highlight-reel bias,” curated moments in time extended to everyday life. It elevates the context-free novelty to perfection status impossible to reach in the specificity of an actual life. Perhaps, the built-in novelty of the infinite feed is why I reach for my phone as much as I do.

Finally, the harder one is the “do-over fallacy”. A strong hunch that we can get a do-over at life based on half-understood possibilities. It pushes us towards digitally-induced decisions with real consequences: trading the actual life we have for the better ones we’ve only been shown.

Made for infinite play, the digital slot machine never pays out. Yet, we keep feeding it, expecting one day to win at contentment.

Envy and greed become evil or sinful when the pursuit of resources becomes unhealthy, excessive, and insatiable. Nathan H. Lents

In his enlightening book, Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals, where he presents the key similarities we share with animals, American scientist Nathan H. Lents, writing about the bird Cliff swallows, stated that having a highly desirable nest can also be a downside because it attracts parasites as well as greedy eyes.

In Haitian culture, desirable things are often paired with a negative qualifier. You would hear a wife speaking about a good husband or a man bragging about a new car use the word “vye,” translating to “no-good” or “old,” next to the word “good”. So a good husband becomes a “good no-good husband”. A car recently purchased is “bon vye machin”. The desirability is implied and softened. I have always found this fascinating, and perhaps this cultural habit offers a compelling philosophical stance and practical way to see both colors at once.

Almost no one envies John, who enjoys reading a 200-page book, or Paula, who bikes 30 km weekly, or Jacques, who has grown emotionally. These experiences are within the reach of almost everyone, so they tend to inspire. What people envy is the social status or resources that come with them; the bike or shoe brand telling a social narrative. Yet in most situations, someone with lesser-status gear would gain the same emotional, sensory, and developmental rewards. As Aristotle argued in the Nicomachean Ethics 322 BC, our possessions and experiences should serve human flourishing, not perform it.

Whatever choice or possession of natural goods – health and strength, wealth, friends and the like – will most conduce to the contemplation of God is best… But any standard of living which either through excess or defect hinders the service and contemplation of God is bad ― Aristotle

Our actions and possessions are a bridge to life-forces, virtues, and the divine. When they become ends in themselves, we experience the telic part of life, which dies with each purchase and project completed.

Refusing to chase the desirability that provokes envy is to attend instead to the atelic part of life, the unending experience that engulfs us in the present moment. Once I publish this essay, I will begin another task, but the atelic experience, the flow and the pleasure of thinking on such important topics never ends. We cannot avoid playing status games. But the ever-expanding life promised by the quest to be “enviable” is only possible through the atelic side.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, in social animals resources bring status, and status brings reproductive success. We have seen how relationships, whether social or sexual, are interconnected with status. Possessions, too, can enhance social status. Nathan H. Lents

This essay is not a critique of consumerism, nor a case for minimalism. Biology is inescapable, and no amount of philosophy can rewrite that. This essay is a reflection on owning, being, and chasing what generates life rather than depletes it; leaving us in constant states of wanting. The lesson is: the less we own what generates envy, the less we compare, and the more content we become. Generating envy asks us to upgrade, get the latest gear, and chase perfection but never arrive. Thus, the individual manufacturing envy not only elicits it in others, but also falls upon its emotional Doppelgänger’s sword, comparison.

But how do we know if we are manufacturing envy? One looks at the source of one’s desires. When my desires are rooted in proving people wrong, in needing to feel worthy, or in striving to humanize myself because I feel less than, I am manufacturing envy and will fall into the envy-comparison trap. So what’s the alternative?

Lift our heads from time to time, look at the horizon, instead of searching ourselves in the river of the algorithm.

Sources

1. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross. The Internet Classics Archive, MIT. https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html

2. Nathan H. Lents. Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals (please confirm title/edition). https://a.co/d/016Z1yUd

3. “Cliff Swallow.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_swallow

4. MythCrafts Team. “Eshu, Wisdom for the Digital Age.” Myth Crafts, 19 January 2017. https://mythcrafts.com/2017/01/19/eshu-trickster-for-the-digital-age/

5. “Lodyans.” Wikipédia (French). https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodyans