In the essay "Love: Providence or Despair," Renata Salecl presents an intuitive assessment of human desire. She explains that desire arises out of "lack," a natural hindrance to love, that desire always searches for what is unavailable or prohibited (similar to the forbidden fruit syndrome), that when desire obtains the desired object, desire loses interest in that object.
Salecl makes the statement that when desire obtains the desired object; desire loses interest in that object: "'love for others know only one barrier-love for oneself'" (Salecl 535). In common terms, this could be referred to as "the thrill of the hunt," but once caught or killed, the excitement is over until the next time. Salecl brings out a selfish, yet important feature of Man, which is the insatiability of human desire. Her theory sheds light on why we are constantly unhappy with the state that we are in cause we believe that whatever we possess is never the thing that we want most. Hence we keep on pursuing and searching. Unlike other animals, we are not satiated when our biological needs are fulfilled. The more one has, the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs.
One striking example of how this theory of insatiable desire manifests itself in society is through food, sex and words. The human effort to configure and reconfigure and extend and elaborate the gastronomic or sexual or verbal desires is constantly transgressive exactly because it is excessive. Gastronomic desire finds no rest when adequate nutrition is assured and taken care of. If it did there would be no chefs, no restaurants, and no shelves groaning with diet and recipe books. Sexual desire finds no rest when procreation and loving intimacy are given and received. If it did, there would be no adulterers, no affairs, no pornography, no poetry of romance. Then, verbal desire finds no rest when the communication necessary to survival has been mastered. If it did there would be no...