The Hermeneutics of Wishes - VI

[First episode of The Hermeneutics of Wishes]

Meanings End

We've come to the denouement of our journey. This is the final episode which contains the shocking conclusion. Hopefully, during our exploration, we have learned about the…

Good ones, poor ones,
Enticingly allure ones,
Vague ones, sure ones—
But also how to cure one's
Desires for wishes,
Although we've had our misses. 

We've endured this tour
More surely as a cure
Of what you shouldn't wish for
Unless your humbly poor.
So what conclusive wishes
Will land us all in riches?

Good question. Let's see if we can come up with some satisfactory answers. These are in reverse order of recommendation—last is best.

The first recommendation (which is really number 5) is to think small. If you're ill, wish for health, If your poor, wish for wealth—but not too much. The worst thing you can do is to let your wish bring you contentment. Remember, full contentment may be reached when you're dead. I have neither the space nor expertise to enter into the money-brings-happiness question. In general, discounting all the uncertainty about what one means, or can even know, about one's state of happiness (By the way, Daniel Kahneman says there is only a .5 correlation between what we report as happiness and what we experience.), the studies seem to suggest greater wealth and greater happiness fit together better than less wealth and greater happiness (up to $60,000/year in the U.S). But a great windfall is suspect. One million dollars, though not what it once was (or because it's not what it once was) is a nice wish. If not that, try the elimination of all remotes so, once again, we get to leave our couches and walk to TV's which have buttons to turn on and off the CD player or other peripherals.

Next, and fourth on the list, if you have taken the advice to "get to know your wish giver", and he/she/it seems trustworthy, let them decide. We've seen in the vast majority of cases that the unpoor are notoriously bad at choosing a wish. Trust is a wonderful commodity.

Thirdly, perhaps better than asking your wish giver, ask your friends and/or relatives, á la "How the Old Woman Got Her Wish". You've been following your desires for a long time now and look where it's gotten you. It's that trust thing again. These people may know you better than you know yourself, and they won't be so greedy. I know these recommendations are unconventional, but conventional wisdom has been without this seminal guide.

The penultimate suggestion is not for everyone. Use your wish to benefit someone else. I know, a once in a millennium chance and you blow it on someone else. Think of the positives, however. You get an unbelievable amount of merit, and who knows how that might play out? You get tremendous gratitude. If the wish was for money, I'm sure a good percentage will be coming right back to you in thanks. And lastly, you avoid the significant risk of woe that seems to follow wishes around. You likely get a great gift in thanks before the recipient realizes you did them no favor.

Finally, here is my last and best recommendation—but it needs a bit of background.

There is a video of Richard Feynman discussing the fantastic behavior of the very small. "Electrons act like waves—no they don't exactly. Electrons act like particles—no they don't exactly. Electrons act like a fog around the nucleus—no they don't exactly." Similarly, the three wish triad generally brings one back full circle—but not always. The poor and kind-hearted gain health, happiness, and often wealth—but not always. Wishes for absurd amounts of wealth and power often backfire—but not always. Just as science fails to find a consistent pattern of behavior for the tiny, our empirical analysis has failed to discover a law of wishes.

Oh, we have learned a tremendous amount, but empiricism has its limits. And when they are met, we nervously turn to thinking, I mean, philosophy. In the world of the small we have the Copenhagen Interpretation (or Multi-worlds, if you're into infinities). Let's try our hand with wishes.

Unlike electrons, wishes don't exist empirically outside of written accounts. Thus, we had to resort to hermeneutics. In fact, wishes don't exist outside of language. Not too worry. Just as you would have to be a madman to think the physical world does not exist outside your mind, you would have to be the same to say wishes don't exist because they aren't in the physical world. We see their destructive effect every day.

And not only are wishes born of language but so too, in a matter of speaking, is everything else. It's a two way street. Our language is stimulated by the world, but also our world is cast through language. The world both generates and is generated by language. It is through our ontological questioning that our way of being and the way of the world is experienced. And when confronted by a wish, it is our own language of the world that forms the wish and drives the resultant wish fulfillment. A wish is a pure manifestation of language as the house of being.

The being of the wish is the communicative event of language in use—its ontology both generates and is regenerated by what is said in that historical moment. So the focus, that up until now has been on the nature of the 'whatness' of wishes, can be shifted to the question of the 'whoness' of the one wishing. The world, as it exists, exists for the wisher as for no other creature in the world. Your 'whoness' determines the reality of your wish more than any outside physics. Ultimately it matters less what your wish or wish strategy is, but rather who you are. Strangely enough, this seems to be endorsed by the tales themselves.

Wishes are fulfilled based more on a Heideggerian 'whoness', than an empirical 'whatness'. So the strategy, then, is to be authentic. Move past thinking of the world (and others) as subjects and objects as those meanings end. Know thyself as you currently are in the world in order to understand your being in the world. No biology of parentage can answer of whence we came into being. We're thrown into the world as by magic and must learn what human being in the world is. Try speech instead of idle talk; wonder instead of mere novelty; and care, mostly care. That is the primordial state of being as we strive towards authenticity.

Now, if much of the above makes no sense to you, even after reading it over a couple of times, then, congratulations! You've already outpaced me in your strive towards authenticity.

Here is how the tales tell it. Live your life as if you were poor and humble. Cultivate your garden. Be generous, especially to curious looking strangers. And when the time comes to claim your wish, your 'whoness' will provide you with just the right one. If you're not comfortable with that, then just wish for a big sunny field.