In his acceptance speech, Bertrand Russell goes into detail about the desires that power human behavior and to all of his points I firmly agree. He describes them as almost the backbone of our society by driving our economy forward with the acquisitiveness aspect of human nature and the rivalry aspect that forces man to compete for superiority. Among those two desires, acquisitiveness and rivalry, are two more desires that Russell discusses. These two are vanity and love of power. Man repeatedly demonstrates the power of these four desires not only in everyday life, but also in history as well.
Acquisitiveness is the need for more, or never being content what one has. This desire is very prevalent in today's society with the new technology and other up and coming ideas to "make life better." For example, the newest iPhone will be released this September as Apple has said, but in my opinion what is wrong with the old iPhone. It is fully functional, has prime features and gadgets, but is still viewed as old, or outdated. People are never content with what they have and always seem to want more or the newer and better item. Russell gives the example of starved children who came to live with his family. These children had plenty to eat, yet still felt the need to steal potatoes from others and hoard their food. This may have been out of the fear that this food supply would run out just as theirs had, but I believe for the most part that this act was strictly out of greed. Acquisitiveness, not only is a backbone of our society, but also embodies human behavior and expands our economy.
Two of the other desires that Russell states are love of power and vanity. These two desires coincide with one another, but differ in some aspects of their nature. The love of power is what drives man kind to tyranny for the most part. These leaders abuse their power just because they feel they can, but when it is time for that power to be taken away, these tyrants will do just about anything to protect it. I'm not talking about Hitler here, but yes he was a tyrant. I am talking about the tyrants of everyday life. The people in our lives who are just so power hungry they will do anything to feed that hunger. They want to feel as though they have superiority over everyone else. An example of this would be slavery in the South pre-Civil War. The slave owners were the tyrants of slaves, always abusing their power and dehumanizing their laborers. During this time not only were slave owners tyrants, but also whites in general were. They wanted to feel as though someone was beneath them. They wanted the ability to look down upon a population, even when some whites themselves lived in poverty with lower class jobs. The love of power was there and these whites would do anything to protect it; they would even succeed from the Union and cause a Civil War. Vanity goes with a love of power because it is the same kind of ideal. Vanity is seeking for the attention and approval of others. For example, a person rather than doing a good deed in quiet and receiving the self-satisfaction that he or she has helped someone else, would perform that same deed in the public, just so they would be formally recognized and praised for their actions. Vanity is all about how others perceive a person. Presidential candidates care deeply about this desire because their public image is a major factor of the election. This desire is most commonly found in our society today because our society today is so focused on how others perceive us, rather than how we think of ourselves. Vanity differs from love of war in this aspect: "vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power (Russell).Thus, vanity is the need for glory, while love for power is simply the need for power and superiority. These two desires coincide with one another, but differ in the aspect that you can have glory without power; however, these two desires are commonly found in everyday life, just not always detected.
The last desire that is discussed in Russell's speech is rivalry. This competition is our society in its entirety. There is a constant competition between man to be better than the other, but for what? There is no prize for being better than another person, just the satisfaction that he or she has now put down another person, but thats where the love of power comes into play. Russell discusses the desire of rivalry that is constant in our society today by stating that a person would gladly live in poverty if that meant reaping the benefits and leaving someone else's life in ruins, then goes on to state that is the background of taxes. Rivalry is constant in our society; its prevalent in our sciences with Darwin's "survival of the fittest" ideal and the whole concept of evolution, and it is also prevalent in our history and our athletics. This desire is constant and has come to a point in society were man just believes that everything is a competition and just does not want to be left in the dust.
So, in final do you agree or disagree with Russell's points that there really are only four desires of humans that impact their behavior?
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