As humans we all seek to fulfill one thing in our lives: happiness. What brings us this feeling can be categorized into a countable number of partitions. Pick the one that you desire the most.

Before you choose, please allow me to clarify the possible choices:

Wealth: includes hoarding/accumulating of any kind. Money, materials, property, etc.
Power & Respect: includes fame, notoriety, recognition, popularity, amibition, superiority etc.
Hedonism: Physical and mental pleasure via sex, drugs, love of another, lust, entertainment (from watching TV to exotic travel), fetishes, fantasy et al.
Knowledge: Academic and general knowledge, including desire to obtain knowledge via book reading, studying, experiencing, and scholarship.
Enlightenment: encompasses all spiritual and religious aspirations.
Family and Companionship: desire to create, maintain, or receive family love. Also includes friendship.
Ignorance: a cavalier, carefree attitude that brings happiness. Happy just to wake up everyday, alive.
Health & Longevity: Physical and mental health, care for one's body and mind.

Yes, I desire XXX most in my life.

Ups, sorry didn't realise that wasn't an option

I'd have to say "Family and Companionship". I'm currently in my life in a situation, where this is the most important there can be, along with general peace of mind and coming to the terms with myself.

Maybe you should make it [xyz] instead of [xxx]

Can I choose three things?

Please?

where's contribution?

I don't think that category fits together well, there's a big difference between being an attention whore and wanting to use the world as your chessboard.

Hedonism. Though Family/Companionship would be up there too if I didn't already have plenty of that.

For me, everything else is simply a means for it.

Take out the "fame" and "popularity" parts and it's perfect.

Ahh, but then you're missing the attention/vanity/admiration category.

I still have notoriety and recognition. Enough for me.

Ignorance - all the way!
If not that then, in order.. Family & Companionship, Health & Longevity, Knowledge, (then of equal weight: Hedonism, Enlightenment, Wealth, Power & Respect).

Seriously ignorance is good.. because if you have that then you don't want the rest. Ignorance is great in many respects.
Take for example my search for a digital camera or a laptop.. I examined warranties, battery life, cpu, reliability and all kinds of stuff... most people would just walk into a shop and ask for the shop assistants advice and settle on that.

BUT the question is what I desire.. therefore something which I don't have.. so I guess Power & Respect and also Enlightenment - the rest I have in acceptable amounts.

I desire knowledge for the other people and politicians.

Not a lot of people seem to be picking power & popularity or health & mental health, even though those are two for one deals.



But is that really the question, what you'd like to have taken care of for you? If you had unlimited wealth, power and hedonism wouldn't be a problem. And if you have complete "enlightenment", ignorance isn't a problem. And to more limited degrees, this list is a setup of dominos.

And if this isn't a paris and the golden apple type question, if we're not talking about having as much of these things as you want, how would you compare smaller quantities, how would you make them equivalent? The only reasonable measurement for comparing these things that I can think of is effort - "which do you put the most effort into getting?"

Ignorance and enlightenment don't really belong on this list. The other items on the list are things you can have, but these two are nonstandard states of the mind. Like being completely manic, or abnormal hormonal levels, or all sorts of condtions that can alter the way you perceive the world.

I don't think religious fanaticism and cheerful apathy even scartch the surface of all the ways people are capable of telling reality to go to hell. And I also don't think that being oblivious to what's going on around you, whether it is through intense overpowering feelings of calmness, simplistic satisfaction and apathy, through diving headfirst into superstitious fantasies, or through any of countless other methods, is the only frame of mind that can fundamentally alter the way someone reacts to the world.

What I want most in life is pie. And it's not on the list!

I guess glutony falls under hedonism. What you need is a favorite deadly sin poll.

Not hedonism. A pie every once in a while, like once a month so I don't get fat.

Still more desirable than everything else on that list.

You probably want the knowledge of how make the best pie. Or a metabolism that would let you eat more pie.

Knowledge. If I had as much as I want, I wouldn't be typing this right now.

While making up supervillians for a never published comic, I came up with a sentient Pie called... the Pie. Basically, the intention was to use him/it in a humor issue every April. A scientist attempts to do the usual - expose myself to another dimensions energy to get superpowers. In his lab is his lunch and desert. For some reason, he apparently doesn't get superpowers, the pie gets irradiated and becomes alive with vast mental powers. It would have been a crazed melomaniac, a pardoy of the villians that are constantly screaming their dialogue, refer to themselves in third person, etc. While a scientific genius, a lot of his supertechnology wouldn't function because he feels the need to use Pi in all of his calculations. He would wear a little cape and a king crown type hat. The pie would look like just a normal pie, looking stupid with a cape and crown on. Of course, you'd have stories that parody storylines by other companies, such as trying to turn the human race into a race of sentient pies, etc.

Oh, and I wouldn't mind having the ultimate pie recipe. Pie= teh yummy. Oh, and a super metabolism to eat more pie would be sweet as well.

I think Weebl and Bob have pie-eating all sewn up.

(I chose knowledge)

Wealth, because money can buy all the rest, except maybe enlightenment, which is more along the lines of salvation than happiness, and ignorance, which is a bad answer anyway.

Not knowledge, money can't buy good memory, ability to focus, intelligence, motivation or curiosity. Or family if you're sterile. As for companionship, probably only of limited quality. Health, only to a limited degree, and a lot less if it's not combined with effort. Mental health, even less so.

And power can get money. Lack of knowledge can loose money very well. So can lack of mental health.

Sleep

Here's a nice quote from Morrie: When you're in bed you're dead!

You are alive, might as well act that way. That means not longing for sleep, not wanting to mute it with drugs, etc.

I would choose enlightenment. After all, with enlightenment, you wouldn't feel the desire for anything else. With enlightenment would come the peace of mind that would make it so I wouldn't be wanting anything, and I would be happy and peaceful as a monk living in the middle of nowhere, wearing clothes I made myself. This would bring true happiness. With all else, you would be happy for a while, but the nagging feeling of having more and more would constantly be hounding you, and you would end up going crazy. Hey, the richer people are often the most crazy.

An added advantage with enlightenment would stem from the fact that I am a Hindu. Being enlightened, I would be one with god when I died, and I would be free from the cycle of reincarnation!

Ask yourself if this is really true for each of the other categories.

If power and attention were to drive you crazy, it could just just as easily be from having too much of it, from it becoming a burden.

I think religion could also do this, if you feel you understand your religion, then you just might become obssessed with serving it and advancing it, and generally carrying out the implications of what you "know".



Mental health is under the last option.



That sounds to me like religion backfiring in ways similar to those mentioned before for other things. Religion convinces you that you will live again after you die. A lot of people would consider that a pretty sweet deal. Yet it's not enough, and somehow it becomes a burden.

You missed the point, perhaps because he's not taking enlightenment to simply mean knowledge. BTW, with almost any "true" religion, if you "understand" it you've completely missed the point. By enlightenment, I think he means the realization of what is truly important (no, I won't try and define that, I believe it's a mystery apparent only to the enlightened) and the cessation of all desire. This is something that only enlightenment can help you achieve. Just because you have money doesn't guarantee you don't also want power. With enlightenment, this is not the case, obtaining enlightenment entails that none of the other options are worth pursuing except as required by the circumstances (i.e. none are worthwhile in their own right).



Once again, you've missed the point. An enlightened death is a "true" death. Look at what he's said: Enlightenment takes you out of the cycle of reincarnation. Once you're enlightened it is enough because you are a part of God for eternity ... no desire for further life can be manifest because there is no longer anyone separate from God to desire anything.

Seems to me that if you don't have health and longevity, you can't enjoy any of the others.

happiness and longevity?

But that is roughly how religion goes, first you learn the religion, then you live it. My point is that living the religion, even the later stages which most people never get to, could be a burden too. For example, you might feel saved by Jesus, but then you might feel the obligation to help save others. And then you might feel very frustrated if you fail to do so.


How isn't "realizing what is truly important" feeling that you understanding the religion? (perhaps more clearly feeling that you understand the message of the religion) And if you feel you realize what is truly important, why can't it turn out to be unachievable?


Actually, I believe scinju's point was that with all the categories other than enlightenment, you end up wanting more and more of the same thing.


Because I disagree about how religion affects people I've "missed the point"?

I don't see "the point" because I feel that the extremely cynical view of nonreligious aspiriations that the point rests on is not very sound.

Since I'm an atheist, I see my own point, which you seem to miss.

For those posting on the 'Enlightenment' topic, I have the following remarks:
1) 'Enlightenment' is a corruption of insight, and it means addiction to the various bright mental signs that result from meditation practice.
2) The term 'reincarnation' is faulty, since rebirth (the right term) does not require a body of flesh, there are many other possibilities.
3) Rebirth in the Brahma worlds, depicted as 'union with God', is not eternal: whatever existence has a beginning, and therefore has an end. Maha Brahma lives an eon (many billion years, in human time), others on that plane of existence live less.
4) Rebirth is not a 'pretty sweet deal', considering that it could be in hell(s). Would anyone like to spend time there? I hear it's quite crowded, though...
5) Cessation of desire doesn't result in the total end of rebirth, but in non-return. It takes one more existence until the exhaustion of the remaining ignorance.