An Environment Charged with Desire

This is a further elaboration of Gibson’s theory of affordances outlined in yesterday’s post. Here I extend the ideas to the understanding of human desires.

All animals are genetically equipped with desires. These desires begin as surviving-machines — inboard motors that enhance the likelihood of the animal transmitting its genes to the next generation. An animal’s desires are “aimed” at the environment in which the animal lives, seeking fulfillment in features of the environment that afford survival and reproduction. So: an animal’s desire to eat seeks its fulfillment in things in the environment that afford nourishment. If the animal has no desire to eat it will not survive. If the animal desires to eat foods that are non-nutritious or toxic to its species, the animal will not survive. Genes that induce the animal specifically to desire nourishing foods (e.g. through visual attraction or taste pleasure) would persist in the gene pool; genes that cause the animal to desire toxic foods would not persist.

The animal’s innate desires have been shaped by features of the environment that can fulfill those desires. Perception and action are selectively drawn to these environmental affordances. Affordances are real, existing in the environment as virtual satisfiers of desire; they become actualized when an animal’s desire is drawn to them.

Many of our desires are “aimed” toward other people for their fulfillment. We look to other humans for protection, for learning about the world, for affiliation, for affection, for procreation, for communication, for learning about ourselves. These desires too have been shaped through evolution, genetically passed on to us as motivations to surive and to reproduce. Our desires are attracted to the affordances that other people possess for fulfilling our desires. Everyone else is a virtual fulfiller of our desires, actualized when our desires are drawn to them.

Because we individually are “other” to everyone else, we are also virtual fulfillers of others’ desires. We afford protection, friendship, learning opportunities, sex, conversation — virtual fulfillments of others’ desires, actualized when their desires are drawn to us.

We aren’t isolated atoms traversing the world, occasionally bouncing off or sticking to another atom. We are always immersed in the environment, an environment in which our species evolved and to which we are genetically suited, an environment full of objects and other people that afford virtual fulfillments of our desires. As we move through the environment one or more desires may become activated in us. Then we move through the environment attuned to the multiple virtual fulfillments that the environment affords. The environment becomes charged with desire. Things and people possess features that now attract our attention; they emerge from the flux as virtual fulfillments of our desire. And we are predisposed to respond to their attraction — as if the environment desires our desire.

At the same time we are always also part of the environment. We possess affordances for fulfilling others’ desires. For some our affordances remain latent and undetected, and we recede into the undifferentiated flux of the environment. For others our affordances have become evident, attracting their attention. These are the ones whose desire is activated, who as they move through the ambient environmental array are attuned to the virtual fulfillments of desire that surround them. They detect our affordances — the attractors we always emit as virtual fulfillers of others’ desire. They find themselves attracted to us.