El objeto del deseo

What do I desire? Well, when we answer that question in a naive way We figure out that we want the desire What we want is to control everything To create girls that don't grow old Apples that don't rot Clothes that never wear out Conveyances to get from one place to another instantly So we don't have to wait Power available to do anything that you could conceive And do it just instantly like that But if you take time out to think about that And really go into it with your full strength of imagination And find out whether that's where you want to be You will soon see that's not what you want Because the moment you have a situation Where you are really in control of things That is to say in which the future is almost completely predictable You will see as I said last night That a completely predictable future is already the past You've had it That's not what you want You want the surprise You don't know what that's going to be Because, obviously, it wouldn't be a surprise if you did You want a pleasant surprise But like you say, what sort of a surprise would be pleasant? And you can't really answer that 'Cause you know if there are to be such things as pleasant surprises Then it still should be unpleasant surprises It must be rude shots So you're like somebody taking one of those wishing-well boxes You know? Tubs, you know? Where you fish in and then you bring out a package And you don't know whether you got a dead rat in it Or a new camera And that's the way That seems to be what really excites people But quite certainly that comes out of this inquiry A feeling of real disillusionment with the ideal of power To be in power, to be in control Is not something that any sensible person wants Now you may say that's shirking responsibility That if you were a really responsible person You would go out of power and try to use power To the best possible advantage for the benefit of all All right, what would be the benefit of all? Ask them, what do you want me to do with this power? I'm dictator, what would you like me to do? Well, nobody knows 'Cause they haven't thought it through But again, when it finally comes down to it Nobody wants to be God So when you think things through like that You do understand you do not want power You don't want to control everything And therefore in the exploration Of what you want You get to the point Where Having all pleasures at your command And eventually you get like the ancient Romans Who had all this mad crowds of barbarians 'Cause they had public baths They had prostitutes They had every kind of luxury They got a big sadistic kick out of that Because, you see Pursuing pleasure Beyond a certain place Takes you in To what the Buddhist call the Naraka World That is to say the hells When you have explored pleasure To its ultimate limit The only thing you can get a kick out of is pain You get to the hell world As a result of not knowing what you want As a result of thoughtless pursuit of pleasure Which ends you eventually in the pursuit of pain So when you're in the hell world that's where you want to be What do I want? The answer is I don't know