Enjoyed reading this, thanks! :) Those Buddhist ideas really click for me, I can easily map this clinging to things I experience regularly.
I was reminded of Lukas Gloor‘s article on Tranquilism and craving, which seems to think in similar directions, only that clinging is about desperatly trying to preserve and craving about desperately trying to change.
Tranquilism tracks the subjectively experienced need for change. If all is good in a moment, the experience is considered perfect. If instead, an experience comes with a craving for change, this is considered disvaluable and worth preventing.
Absence of pleasure is not in itself deplorable according to tranquilism – it only constitutes a problem if there is an unmet need for pleasure.
Tranquilism states that an individual experiential moment is as good as it can be for her if and only if she has no craving for change.
A craving in the tranquilist sense is a consciously experienced need to change something about the current experience.
I haven’t engaged much with tranquilism. Glancing at that piece, I do think that the relevant notions of “craving” and “clinging” are similar; but I wouldn’t say, for example, that an absence of clinging makes an experience as good as it can be for someone.
Enjoyed reading this, thanks! :) Those Buddhist ideas really click for me, I can easily map this clinging to things I experience regularly.
I was reminded of Lukas Gloor‘s article on Tranquilism and craving, which seems to think in similar directions, only that clinging is about desperatly trying to preserve and craving about desperately trying to change.
https://longtermrisk.org/tranquilism/
Glad to hear you enjoyed it.
I haven’t engaged much with tranquilism. Glancing at that piece, I do think that the relevant notions of “craving” and “clinging” are similar; but I wouldn’t say, for example, that an absence of clinging makes an experience as good as it can be for someone.