I Want...

I don't want to bore my readers with too much of an introduction, but it seems like it would be appropriate, since this is my first post. I'm not going to bore you with details. But for the sake of this blog, my name is Mrum. I have never ever thought about having a blog before, nor do I read them. This was completely spur of the moment. My posts are probably going to be me asking myself a lot of questions. I love playing devil's advocate with myself and others, so that's probably what this will be.

I got myself a bit down in the mouth a few nights ago by realizing that all human desires are the same. I don't want anything different than what the person next to me wants. I want freedom, he wants freedom. The old lady on the other side of town wants freedom. We want stability, and yet at the same time we want excitement. There are variations in what we want, but they are all basically the same.

We all want power. Do we? What about people who don't want to be president, who don't want to control people. What about people who just want to be left to themselves? I argue that these people want power just like the guy who wants to be president. No, I don't believe they're lying about wanting to be left alone. When I say that their desires for power don't differ, I'm speaking of the concept of power, not about the wanting to be president. Power is anytime we have control over something or hold some kind of authority over someone or something else. It's not a bad thing in itself. The person who wants to be left to himself (or herself) could be said to desire power over his own life; he (or she) desires the power to make his (or her) own decisions without the interference of someone else. That might not be his only motive, but it's certainly one of them. And it's not a bad thing either. Not a bad thing at all.

Another thing we all want is to be different from others. Individuality. This is what really got me depressed, because I do want to be different than other people. Yet we all want to stand out. Even if it's in little ways. The recluse feels that he's being different by shutting himself off from the world and the firefighter feels he's being different by saving people. They feel that they are making themselves more pronounced amongst all the people in the world by trying to do what others don't.

And yet people are so different. Why, when at our most basic levels we are so similar, are we so different? There are a number of responses that could be made to this question, but since we're on the topic of desires I'll make propose something from this particular area. We all have the same desires. But where they are directed and why is different. Two people who want power could want two completely different types of power, or power over two completely different things. I want power over my own life, I want power to influence people, I want the power to make people think, etc. Someone else might want these same types of power, but for different reasons and to different ends. It gets into the realm of motives (you could argue that motives and desires are the same, but for the sake of this rant, they are two related but different concepts).

Also, there are mixtures of desires and subgroups to these desires. For instance, everyone wants to be satisfied, but we don't all get satisfaction out of the same things. Thus we don't go searching for satisfaction in the same way. One person might get satisfaction out of excitement, which becomes a subgroup desire. So this person goes traveling. Another person is satisfied by music, so he composes a symphony. Contrariwise, people might have the same basic desire, have different subgroup desires, yet come to the same conclusion or action. For example, I'll use the person who gets satisfaction out of excitement, so goes traveling. Then another person comes along who gets satisfaction out of meeting new people, so they go traveling as well. You could also make the argument that these two people are both satisfied by excitement, but are excited by different things. But I don't want to wander too far. I'll just confuse myself and things would get too messy.

In conclusion, we all have the same basic desires, but we are so very different as individuals because of the details. Details are everything. It is these basic desires that tie us together as the human species. It's what makes civilization and culture possible. Granted, desires may not be the only thing binding us together as people. And it still doesn't make us happier by being so similar to one another. But in the end, if we didn't have similarities then it wouldn't matter if we were different.