The 16 Desires of Life
This is a report on scientific research published in distant 2000 in ABC Science News. Research conducted studies with more than 6000 people.
I also came across the article about general people’s desires published in Forbes. Guess what was at the first place in a list. It is ‘happiness’. Now, this is the most abstract desire could be imagined. This is one of the most misleading concepts. I will use a reference to 20th century psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in order to confirm my opinion. Basically, you cannot chase the happiness. The reason for that, to me, is that happiness consists of other things. So, chasing happiness equals to flee after the empty vessel.
The list, which I have found, contains more or less imaginable things from the perspective of achieving them and create actions for it.
I have decided to republish it because in order to open new doors, we should know that they are.
“These desires are what drive our everyday actions and make us who we are”, Reiss said. “What makes individuals unique is the combination and ranking of these desires.”
- power
- independence
- curiosity
- acceptance
- order
- saving
- honor
- idealism
- social contact
- family
- status
- vengeance
- romance
- eating
- physical exercise
- tranquility
Power may be about building career path. “Independence” sounds much better than “money” in terms of accomplishment. You may have some money. Is it what you craved? Basically, it is good we can identify it. However, people do not think: “Well, I know what I want. I wanna have power”. It is more complicated, but at the core of action we carry this idea.
These concepts above distinguish romance and family, which is absolutely fair. The category of social contacts is separated from others, which may be friends or community.
This is a navigation and reflection.
Curiosity is quite paradoxical one because we can see it as an intermediate desire. We want to be curious, but curiosity leads to the desire of being curious about specific things. This is derivative and intermediary one.
The desire of eating is also interesting. Does it mean the need of eating or something more? The flat of simplicity of this desire lead me to the conception of Bronislaw Malinowski. He was 20th century anthropologist and spoke about desires from the perspective of their mutability. He explained that our desires transform in a way how society evolves. For instance, the desire of eating in modern society contains from the basic need plus cultural aspect of people gathering together in a trendy cafe. Thus, the basic desire transforms into the social event.
He argued that all our desires is socially conditioned.
The question I came across after understanding that our actions are driven by desires is “What desires drive our laziness and procrastination?”. And these two popular types of behavior, actually, are a kind of non-action. No action is no desire behind.
“Free from desire, you realize the mystery caught in the desire, you see only the manifestations.”
― Lao Tzu
Simultaneously, there is a use to think about the contradictory conception. I think about it from the perspective of drivenness. If desires make people ambitious, do they deprive part of people’s freedom?
There is a fine line between the process of self-actualization and chasing an achievement with no end.
There should be a balance between being ambitious and being grateful.
If desires produce actions, then we should strike the balance and do not produce too much actions. If the ultimate aim is power it may be transformed into an uncontrolled desire to subjugate people, what may even lead to dictatorship.
Albert Camus argued that the absolute freedom does not exist, and that one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins.
Eventually, our desires are not the ocean without ending.
