What Motivates You?
John Milton on Humanity’s Base Motivation
We warm ourselves near a fire pit of a local wine garden every Thursday through the fall and winter and by the vineyard in the spring. We are a small group of high-school English teachers savoring arguably the greatest classic in the English language: John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The best way to read it is aloud. By “aloud” I don’t mean reading it discretely among patrons sipping wine but loudly and with flourish, which my group does so well. We’re not experts on Milton but reading and discussing it aloud transports this 17th century classic to our time. The book is surprisingly accessible read in this way. Each week we ask ourselves if we will ever finish the book, but it doesn’t matter because we share something unique and priceless: a non-transactional immersion in the present with a sage from the past. And we are satiated.
One of our best discussions is on desire, especially the desire for knowledge, providing a new look at an ancient story. When the fiend sees the bliss of Adam and Eve “[i]mparadised in one another’s arms” (note the clever use of a noun as a verb) he feels envious of their love compared to his unenviable state in hell where “Neither joy nor love but fierce desire / (Among our other torments not the least) / Still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines” (IV.509-11). He thus decides to tempt them with the Tree of Knowledge to seal their ruin saying,
“Hence I will excite their minds
With more desire to know and to reject
Envious commands invented with design
To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with gods” (523-26).
The “infernal spirit,” also called the “grisly king,” whispers into Eve’s ear “discontented thoughts,/ Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires / Blown up with high conceits engend’ring pride” (807-09). Inordinate desire eventually leads to their partaking from the forbidden fruit.
It’s famously known that pride is the origin of man’s fall, but we notice something that comes even before that. It’s desire. Desire gives way to pride, and pride starts a bad chain reaction. We all know the experience of desiring things to be different from the way they are. We have a set of circumstances or limits, but we want different circumstances or fewer limits or another relationship or job or whatever it may be. In moments of quiet, the unmet desire rises up and demands more, creating a longing for fulfillment. We might brood for a while and think about how unfair it is that our desire is not filled. After all, it’s a good desire; it may even be a moral or noble one. But desire for something good has its dangers because it leads to wanting a good thing too much. It’s not raw desire that starts the chain, but inordinate desire.
What is an inordinate desire? Augustine says it is disordered desire that has become too powerful. Desire is not inherently bad, but it becomes bad if pursued wrongly. For example, ambition becomes an inordinate desire when we wish to be preferred over others, honored more than others, or superior. This applies to wealth if it’s for another’s wealth or possessions, or knowledge if it exceeds limits and boundaries. It applies to just about anything we desire, but if we attain it, we fear it will become a grief and cross to us. Elevating a good thing to an ultimate thing turns the good thing into an idol.
Another passage in Paradise Lost catches my attention where Adam asks the angel Raphael about when, how, and why the world was created. Adam is aware that he might be crossing boundaries of divine knowledge, but Raphael assures him that his questions are valid. He warns him, however, about the limits of knowledge:
But knowledge is as food and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite to know
In measure what the mind may well contain,
Oppresses else with surfeit and soon turns
Wisdom to folly as nourishment to wind (VII.126-29).
A footnote adds: “As eating too much results in flatulence, so knowing too much results in folly. The subject of ‘Oppresses’ is knowledge.” Milton is warning that surfeit—an excessive amount—of knowledge becomes folly, so Adam must be temperate. While Adam's questions appear to be simple and understandable curiosity, his curiosity points toward the Tree of Knowledge. What will Adam do in the moment of decision? Will his curiosity get the better of him? We all know the answer and how “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,” another famous quote of Milton’s. This highlights the importance Milton places on proper knowledge and conversation and on knowledge within limits. He reveals that knowledge itself is not the problem but the desire for inordinate knowledge.
We know how a surfeit of knowledge can be destructive from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—a story about the horrible consequences of pushing the limits of science—and real examples in history. What drives a surfeit of knowledge? Is it fear, control, or pride? What if moderns were better acquainted with the limits of knowledge? How would our world be different? How would we be different?
Inordinate desire makes us vulnerable to exploitation. In the cancer community, people desperate for cures are exploited by people claiming quick fixes and one-size-fits-all solutions that elude medical professionals who devote their lives to finding cures. In the realm of societal dysfunction, conspiracists with unproven theories gain control because they connect the dots we can’t seem to connect. The danger is also within us. We might obsess to uncover secrets of the universe, chase ecstatic experiences, or to delve into dark mysteries. Like Adam and Eve many of us feel constrained by the limits of knowledge and want to become more like God. We grow impatient with the constraints on us, but we end up dissatisfied without constraints.
What if we wrestled down desire instead of being brought down by it? What if we asked desire: “Will you really satisfy me?” It’s not about denying our desires but having a reasonable conversation with them and putting them into a proper perspective. We might come to see that our desire is our “Precious,” like Gollum’s ring in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the one thing he can’t live without. He wrestles it away from Frodo but falls—ring and all—into the fires of Mount Doom. Can we allow our precious out of our grasp? Can we ask the question Christi in my reading group poses: “Why not rest in the roller coaster of adventure and be satisfied?” instead of needing answers for everything.
This is a question that leads to peace and contentment.