Want what you like

This page is unfinished. It may be a mere placeholder in the book outline. Or, the text below (if any) may be a summary, or a discussion of what the page will say, or a partial or rough draft.

One defect of materialism is fixating mundane purposes, locking one into the idea that only a few things can bring you satisfaction in the material realm, and getting as much as possible of them is the meaning of life. That’s what you should want.

Meanwhile, mission tells us that material enjoyment is a meaningless distraction from higher purposes. You shouldn’t want that.

Both these voices are wrong. Consequently, to varying extents, we do not know what we actually like and will enjoy, and therefore do not know what we should want. Finding out can be quite difficult, but highly worthwhile. (As well as surprisingly interesting!)

That is a prerequisite to the “enjoyable” part of enjoyable usefulness. See also the discussion of enjoyment in the chapter on the complete stance.

I have written about how to find out what you like, and nurture your desire for it and enjoyment of it, on another site, here and here. This page will cover roughly the same material, in a very different style.