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from The Pull of the Man
  • And if something shameful adheres to the notion of longing, at least a ritual allows people to do it collectively, to align their longings with that of others. Individual longing may be a puerile waste of time; collective longing defines a culture.

longing

25 Mar 2022 - 23 Oct 2026
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    • Longing sounds respectable, but it too easily turns into despair when you realize that the object of longing is unattainable. Buddhism is not big on longing, labeling it craving or Taṇhā and a source of suffering, which it certainly can be. addiction is also a relation.
    • America is not a culture of longing. We are pragmatists; if we want something we are supposed to go our and get it, or at least, not whine about it. Longing is neurotic and we are supposed to be healthy-minded.
      • Ask Claude
        • This is a genuinely interesting claim worth pushing back on, because the evidence is more complicated than the premise suggests.
        • **The premise has real merit — but it's only partially true.**
        • You're right that American culture is built around a forward-looking, action-oriented ethos.
        • Pragmatism has been described as "a distinctively American style of thought."
        • The myth of the self-made person, the frontier, and the American Dream all encode a bias toward doing rather than pining. Longing, in that frame, is either a problem to be solved or a weakness to be suppressed.
        • But consider several complications:
        • **1. America has its own form of cultural longing — it just gets politicized.**
        • The MAGA movement taps into nostalgia for a perceived era of American "greatness," sparking pride and longing.
        • Nostalgia — broadly defined as a bittersweet longing for the past — emerged as a mainstay of Trump's political appeal, with the "Make America Great Again" slogan cited as a salient example of nostalgic reverie.
        • American longing doesn't disappear; it gets channeled into politics.
        • **2. America has "Americana" — a whole aesthetic category built on longing.**
        • The concept of "Americana" is tied to national identity, nostalgia, and patriotism, centering on ideals like the American Dream and encompassing people, places, concepts, and historical eras popularly identified with American culture.
        • Country music, diners, Route 66 — these are all objects of longing, just dressed up as celebration.
        • **3. The English language's poverty here is telling — but not absolute.**
        • Hiraeth "has no exact cognate in English" — the best approximation is "homesickness."
        • Whereas other cultures have "saved" nostalgia as "a poignant and durable feeling relating to the transitoriness of life," there is a tendency to "consign nostalgia to the all-encompassing dustbin of sentimentality."
        • The lack of a rich vocabulary for longing in English does reflect a cultural discomfort with it — but absence of a word doesn't mean absence of the feeling.
        • 4. Nostalgia appears to be pancultural anyway.
        • Research has found key points of cross-cultural agreement regarding conceptions of nostalgia, supporting the notion that nostalgia is a pancultural emotion.
        • The experience of longing isn't culturally constructed from scratch — it's human. What differs is whether a culture valorizes it, pathologizes it, or ignores it.
        • The real argument, then, is not that Americans don't feel longing, but that American culture lacks a respectable framework for sitting with it. Where the Portuguese have saudade as a way of life, and the Welsh have hiraeth as a form of protest against loss, Americans are expected to convert longing into action — or else be accused of wallowing. The emotion is there. The permission to dwell in it is not.
    • Claude pointed out that country music is full of longing (and other popular music forms come to think of it, think Springsteen). OK.
      • Maybe its the tech world I inhabit. MIT engineers are not supposed to moon over things, they solve problems and build shit. Venkat and the protocol crowd are distinguished from cybernetics by a lack of romaticism.
    • Also that is a very white sentiment. Blacks obviously have a culture of longing, it animated the civil rights movement. Jews have their own longing, mostly involving assimilation on some level.
    • The whole premise of America is longing, something I think it is too easy to forget.

    • The psychology of longing

      • This must be a huge topic in psychoanalytic literature, but before I look there, my own thoughts:
        • Longing is almost definitionally a frustrated desire. It indicates a front in the constant struggle between id and superego, between energy and restraint.
        • In a way it becomes a game, it perpetuates itself. Do I really want x? If not, why not take action y? Or a neurosis. Yes. Same shape, the mind trying to hide from itself.
        • Longing vs love
          • different algebras. Love is actual mutual desire, longing is a frustrated version of that, a desire that is not reciprocated. If it was, you'd be fucking.
      • The generative nature of this process.
        • The popular idea that Freud reduced everything to sex is wrong, I think. He was a materialist who "reduced" mind to energy.
    • Ask Claude
      • This apparent contradiction reveals something fascinating about how different spiritual traditions approach the relationship between desire and liberation. Both traditions are working with sophisticated understandings, but they're often addressing different types of longing and pursuing different spiritual goals.
      • In Buddhism, tanha (craving) specifically refers to the compulsive, ego-driven grasping that creates cycles of dissatisfaction. It's the desperate clinging to pleasures, the aversion to pain, and the attachment to a fixed sense of self. This type of craving indeed perpetuates suffering because it's rooted in the illusion of a separate self trying to grasp something "out there."
      • Sufi longing (ishq or shawq) for the divine operates quite differently. This isn't ego-grasping but rather the soul's recognition of its fundamental connection to the divine. Sufis describe this longing as actually dissolving the ego rather than reinforcing it. The famous Sufi poet Rumi wrote about longing as the very mechanism by which the separate self is burned away in divine love. > The key distinction might be what is doing the longing. Buddhist tanha emerges from and reinforces the illusion of separation. Sufi longing arises from and dissolves that separation. Some Buddhist traditions actually recognize similar dynamics - the aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicitta) involves a kind of spiritual longing, but it's qualitatively different from ego-driven craving.
      • Rather than one being "right," they may be addressing different stages of spiritual development or different types of practitioners. Both traditions ultimately point toward transcending ordinary ego-consciousness, just through different doorways.
      • That was pretty good esp "The key distinction might be what is doing the longing".
      • Also something something nondualism you already have what you long for and just need to realize it.
    • Thread by @QuwwatTakhayyul on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App
      • An intense yearning for the Divine is the prime spiritual state of a true heart.
      • Like an ocean longs for the shore, like a moth longs for the flame, like a nightingale longs for the rose, we yearn for union in the Divine.
      • Below are 10 Islamic mystical expressions of yearning…
        • You have infused my being Through and through, As an intimate Beloved must Always do.
        • So when I speak I speak of only You, And when silent, I yearn for You.
        • —Rabia Basri (718–801)
    • Matt Cardin
      • The only type of nostalgia that’s ultimately valid and true is nostalgia for the infinite. Sehnsucht. The holy longing. Intense yearning sparked by the shimmering memory trace of our true identity flickering in the shadows and interstices of this dream of separation. All other nostalgias are sentimental egoic projections of a time and circumstance that never really existed. But this one is genuine. It’s also the ultimate clue and the final path of return.
        • I want to argue back – he's saying that nostalgia for something we've never had and never could have is realer than nostalgia for our actual pasts.