I'm going to continue with a very narrow focus in each post. That means you will have to wait until at least Monday to hear much more from me on this. Here my focus is that repeated prhase you use, "irrational desire." I can make no sense of this at all. Why is it irrational to dislike suffering? We are not angels sitting outside the universe, deciding whethher to join it or not. Wherever and whenever we find ourslelves we are always already enmeshed in an ensemble of social relations. We never start from scratch (as Milton's characters and narrators do). It is a historical fact, neither rational nor irrational that most of us most of the time to reduce suffering in ourselves and others, that fact howver always occurring within a rich context which constrains our sense of whether and how suffering can be reduced. (That is awkward & illustrates mostly Ian's point about the clumsiness of e-mail for philosophical discourse.)
It is not through abstract discourse that we occupy our historical position and what it entails (e.g., dislike of suffering), but it is through abstract discourse that we explore options etc. for the lessenting of that suffering. Moral discourse is merely a obscurantist bother in that context.
Carrol