The Theory of Desire Structures

This study attempts to reinterpret all actions, values, and institutions in human society through the concept of the "equivalent or non-equivalent exchange of desires," while also addressing the classical philosophical questions imposed on humanity, such as "What is existence?" and "What is the value of living?" by integrating them on the basis of the relations established in information theory and physics, thereby aiming to provide a formalized answer. Here, the term "desire" does not mean mere impulses or egoism as conventionally understood, but refers to the totality of driving principles that humans can never ignore or halt, such as the maintenance of survival, the pursuit of pleasure, and the acquisition or preservation of social evaluation. In this paper, all acts and thoughts, including reason, ethics, love, sublimity, and compassion, are strictly defined as higher-order forms of desire. These serve to suppress, adjust, and disguise human desires, and they do not belong to a domain that transcends desire. From this perspective, human society is nothing more than a structural apparatus designed to define desires unconsciously within legal or illegal frameworks, and to circulate, exchange, amplify, suppress, and regenerate them. Religion, while advocating salvation and virtue, engages in the selection and ordering of desires; ethics and morality are rules that socially mediate the conflict of desires; and even love and compassion are only acts of exchange that contribute to the selection of desired objects and the reinforcement of self-identity. When adopting this perspective, the concepts of "Humans not governed by desire," "Acts without self-recognition," and "Pure altruism" are redefined as deceptive fictions that humans themselves have selected and constructed for the sake of survival and social stability. A further important fact is that humans have possessed, since prehistoric times, the intelligence to sufficiently perceive and logically understand such structural facts, yet in daily life consciously deny them and act under the delusion that "I am not governed by desire." In other words, the very act of deliberately behaving as if one does not recognize the structural fact of desire is the absolute and universal property that enables humans to be human. From the perspective of Buddhist thought, this is interpreted as meaning that human existence itself is absolute evil. This idea that "Human existence itself is Absolute Evil" has already been made explicit in Buddhist concepts existing since ancient times, and resonates profoundly with the fact that in the Doctrine of the Vicious as the True Subjects of Salvation represented by Shinran and in Shakyamuni's view of earthly desires, human beings are defined as fundamentally beings that require salvation, that is, subjects of suffering. In this study, based on these religious concepts, we present a new concept called the "Minimum Existential Affirmation Condition," established through the integration of information theory and physics. Specifically, it formally introduces the concept of the Minimum Existence Affirmation Operator, and all desires are defined as "cognitive computation of informational energy called thought." Its minimum unit is defined as thermodynamic thought energy per 1 bit by Landauer's principle ($E = kT \ln 2$). Furthermore, by combining this with the mass-energy equivalence relation ($E = mc^2$) established by Einstein, the minimum existential mass corresponding to the minimum cognitive computational unit is derived as $m_{\min}$. Through this definition, it is logically demonstrated that any existence, even if it possesses only thought equivalent to the minimum computational unit of one bit, necessarily possesses definite informational energy of existence and therefore satisfies the condition of being in the Pure Land, given that thinking itself is defined as evil. In other words, when humans think as living beings, they are already in the Pure Land, and human existence itself is likewise already in the Pure Land. By this formalization, an existence that possesses the minimum informational driving force of "desiring something" can be interpreted, both logically and physically, as already worthy of the Pure Land. This study subdivides and organizes concepts such as religion, good and evil, hypocrisy, and emotion, which humans have perceptually recognized from ancient times to the present as "salvation," "happiness," or "existential value," and demonstrates that human existence itself is absolute evil. In addition, with respect to the understanding of the Pure Land in Buddhism, the paper provides a panoramic and operational meaning from the perspective of existing Buddhist philosophy. Furthermore, by integrating and defining quantification concerning human desires through rigorous information theory and physical theory, this study logically demonstrates, by clarifying the minimum existential affirmation condition, that all existence itself can be interpreted as being in the Pure Land.