Lacanian "demande" misattributes existential confusion as object-level needs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_(psychoanalysis)
Adorno's "jargon" reifies object-level needs as the fundamental human condition: https://boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/
"Demande" is jargon.

I've been reading through Roaring Silence, a short, extremely readable book on Aro Dzogchen meditation (I also strongly recommend their free email course: http://aromeditation.org/learn-dzogchen-meditation-techniques.html) and something came up that was relevant.

One chapter tells the story of a Tibetan peasant who's decided to pursue enlightenment, and travels into a remote village in the highlands to study with the lama there.

Everyone in the Dzogchen commune is described as somehow ineffably more alive than the people in our protagonist's home village. They seem more relaxed and alert at the same time, they laugh readily, they are working but have time to help a stranger out...

The one who kept a lookout for this stranger is described as *standing up* from a resting position with remarkable grace.

The lama is described as unpredictable in an intimidating way, but the specific unpredictability is that - by reputation - she might be grumpy, playful, serene, stern, etc.

In other words, she's "unpredictable" because she has the full range of human emotions available, rather than playing a stereotyped role.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the surviving nonmonastic (or at least noncelibate) culture cultivating mental aliveness was until recently centered in the Tibetan highlands, one of the last major cultures to be colonized.

The preparatory work for Dzogchen - and the good parts of most mind-body meditative work - seems to be, basically, decolonizing one's soul from stereotyped patterns of tension and attachment.

It wouldn't make sense for evolution to install patterns that make us less sexy, less alive, and more predictable, but it would make a LOT of sense for civilizing priesthoods to install such patterns in captive grain-farmers.

Related:
Grain is part of the addictive control system, and major world religions include the memory of a failed rebellion against bread: https://twitter.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1297547149778067456
The superego is new: http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-order-of-the-soul

Discourse about "attachment" that doesn't recognize its political nature can't find *efficient* solutions that reduce the rate at which it's recapitulated.