What is your lust?

I know it doesn't sound like a CA topic, but I'd like serious, analytical answers here; it's an interesting psychological question.

Umberto Eco piqued my interest when he was discussing medieval conceptions of three lusts:
- lusts of the body (sex)
- lusts of the spirit (power)
- lusts of the mind (knowledge)

Now, without talking about how power gives sex, or knowledge gives power, what is your deepest lust?

Me: although I love knowledge, and research, and esoteric facts and figures, my real lust would have to be power. To me, knowledge is a means to power; it may be a sort of artificial power in the field of academia, or slightly more real power in the workforce, but it's always a means to an end. I think I desire power because I, deep down, think I could actually do a lot of good. I don't really get the point of being powerful for the sake of it, or merely to feather one's nest. Power, rather, is an ability to show one's abilities; with power, you don't have the chance to say "if I'd only had the ability", because you do.

So me: power.

Yous?

Respect tinged possibly with a touch of fear.

So I guess power for me also.

Experience for me.

I'll try nearly anything once. I hate missing out on things. I have a thirst for knowledge too, but it's mostly that it bugs me when I don't understand something; again, I feel like I'm missing out.

You can't make up a lust.

Experience would be knowledge. Experience IS knowledge.

Okay I know it's not power. I have no desire for power. I sort of feel that if I was a ruthless person and more motivated I could get power anyway. But I'm neither ruthless or motivated to acquire what is needed for power. That is fine by me.

Um... The next two are more difficult. I do enjoy knowledge and at times I like to acquire it. But it's never always of interest. As I get older in fact I care less for some knowledge. I know I'll never get to know all the things that I want to know. I'll never get to read all the books I'd like to read. I'm so unmotivated to read any books at all a lot of the time these days. I have let go of the need to know shit. If it doesn't serve me in some way, I don't care to know about it. Perhaps I have always been like that and I just did not realise that knowing some things serves no purpose. So I stopped reading certain periodicals.

However I like pleasure. I like love. I like company. I like the body (and the mind that goes with it). I like all that stuff and everything related, and bugger the rest of the world when I have got those things.

When you die, what good is power and knowledge to you? I want to have fond memories of lust, sex, love and companionship. So yeah, maybe I sound a little shallow, but that's what I like.

smiley - power gives you (as vadz wants) the ability to change things, and that means a degree of immortality.

I lust for freedom to do what I want when I want it. Not necessarily grandiose stuff. Just simple things but at my call.

I could never understand people who have this constant "thirst for knowledge".

I think knowledge and power should go into one. Why on earth would you thirst for knowledge unless you had an end purpose? Why would you study or read a book about something unless you wanted to put that knowledge into a use of some sort? It doesn't have to be a use that involves making changes to the world around you, it could be something as mundane as being able to argue a point more effectively because you have more knowledge on the said subject - that in itself is power. The ability to asset your views more strongly than an opponent is power.

Hence why I don't believe knowledge and power should be separate.

I should point out that while I believe lust for knowledge equals lust for power

I don't believe the reverse is true, ie;

lust for power doesn't equal lust for knowledge.

and yes I realise I did exactly what you said not to do, but without that discussion this thread is actually quite boring and should just be moved to the lounge

knowledge (for that can bring freedom and power)

knowledge is the potential for power, for some people much of it goes unrealised.

theres a fair bit of psychology (and pop psychology).

Types of Power (wikipedia)

Referent power - is based upon the identification with the person who has the resources, or the desire to be like that person. It could be regarded as imitative power, which is often seen in the way children imitate their parents.

Legitimate power - is based on agreement on commonly held values which allow one person to have power over another person, for example an older person or one who has longer service or is seen to be charismatic.

Expert power - is based upon one person perceiving that the other person has expert knowledge of a given subject and is a recognised authority in a given situation eg. the engineer in a building project.

Coercive power - this enables a person to mediate punishments for others. For example, to dismiss, suspend, reprimand them, or make them carry out unpleasant tasks.

Reward Punishment Power- when a person has the ability to issue rewards and punishments and issues one or the other or both, eg. promotions, recommendations, praise or answers to questions.

Information Power - when an individual has information that the others cannot easily access.

Personal Qualities - an individual’s personal attributes make him appear powerful to others.

I like boobs and stuff.

Knowledge and Power are only useful because they help you score chicks.

If you could get the chicks you wouldn't need the knowledge/power. Besides, what would you do with it? You'd be too busy fucking...

You've reduced my post to it's basic core in such a perfectly crude way.

No, it's not If I go bungy-jumping, then afterward, I have gained the knowledge of what it's like to go bungy jumping, what I feel like while I'm bungy jumping. But then how do you explain my desire to do it again? It's not knowledge, because I've already gained that. I want to EXPERIENCE the feelings again.

I thought you said you'd try anything ONCE, so your 'experience' argument fails

As for my lust, besides Josh Hartnett Clive Owen and Matthew Bellamy, I'd say its power too. However I exist in a constant conundrum because as much as I lust for power, I fear it too.

lust for lyf

I never said ONLY once
You fail.

:>

You fuckers are incapable of keeping a serious thread on track.
I posted it in CA for a reason.

:/

We're still talking ON point! You're the one who took it off-track by getting pedantic about whether my entry qualifies as 'lust', instead of just appreciating that I was bothering to contribute to your thread

You said "I'd try nearly anything once", you don't need to say ONLY once, once means once, one time, not twice, thrice, etc

And the way I see it, there is a difference between a lust to experience things once (which is what you said) and a lust to keep experiencing things (which is what you didn't say). If you lust for the former, then your lust is knowledge. If on the other hand you lust for the latter then it's experience but of course that's not what you said (and it's a little odd don't you think? to lust for repetition of presumably positive experiences?) so the answer to vads' question from your end should have been knowledge.

Of course, you could have always said that your lust was BG. I wouldn't have objected to that.

Perhaps a lust for repetition of positive experiences isn't so odd, and that sort of lust isn't accommodated in the 3 categories which vads has referred to, so I suppose it would be a separate category. Though I don't think 'experience' is a good word for it. It's such a broad term, it could encompass everything and lacks content that knowledge, power and body all have.

Could you plebs please familiarise yourselves with Bertrand Russell's distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description?

Why is it so hard to keep within the parameters that vadz described? That is the point of the thread, not to fuck it up with arguments about what the parameters should really be.

I note the distinction, so I'll rephrase: my lust is to experience things AT LEAST once So in that way I'm leaning more toward the former of your options, but I dispute that it's still the same as just 'knowledge'.

It's all about what state I want to be in. So let's give an example of sky-diving. I've always wanted to go sky-diving, but my lust is not simply to know what it feels like, my lust is to actually BE in the moment and be experiencing what it feels like. And sure, if I like it, then I want to do it again.

This is distinctly (yet perhaps subtly) different to the thirst for the mere knowledge of what it is like to go skydiving. One is a thirst for feeling, one is a thirst for knowledge. "I want to feel like I'm flying" versus "I want to know what it feels like to fly"...

Same as if I exposed that I was lusting for 'BG'. It would not be for knowledge :>

Well, one poster has identified a parameter that vadinho's original post does not encompass and moreover that is the parameter which this poster feels is an accurate description of his lust. Whether in fact that parameter is a valid addition to those identified by vadinho (or rather Umberto Eco) and the precise content of that parameter, is an interesting topic for discussion. It is, though indirectly, related to the thread topic and will enhance the thread rather than 'fuck it up'.

Ok. But is that properly a 4th lust? If you interpreted the lust for knowledge to include a lust for knowing how something feels (which I think isn't an unreasonable extension of the term), would that not - in a general sense - accommodate the lust to feel that you refer to? I accept that there is a subtle difference between the two but I query whether the difference is such that we need a whole new 'lust' in order to accommodate it.

Incidentally, I would be perfectly happy to add BG as the 4th parameter

As you point out yourself BG:

It fits within knowledge, which I (also) pointed out before.

Feeling is simply a type of knowledge.