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Your paper was very well thought out. I agree with what you are saying, that we can not control our desires.
I agree. I feel that same way.
Your arguement was well thought out and I agree.
You have made some very interesting points about the controling and non-controling of desires. I am not sure if I agree with you totally. I believe there is a limit to ones ability to control his or her desires. Yet, I believe desires can be tamed.
I Find it hard to imagine a world in which everyone who desired to kill another person actually followed through with it. Stephen King, for lack of a better example, often states that he writes to fight off his desires to commit some of the violent crimes depicted in his novels. So, maybe one of the worlds most popular horror novelists even has the ability to control his desires. I think that everyone can control, to a certain degree, the desires that they are faced with. This control just takes effort and training of the self.
On the other hand there does seem to be a limitation to the controling of desire. In this case I would like to use the desire for food as an example. We all desire food. If you disagree with this check your pulse because you may not be alive. We seem to desire food, even if we do not desire the taste of it (think marriott), because we need it to survive. This desire is, thus, unsupressable unless someone chooses to starve themselves to death. Most would not take their control over desire that far though.
well thought out paper.
I agree with you, it is a good paper.
I agree that we cannot always distinguish between what is in our control or outside of it. But I think people have more control over themselves and the external world than you or the stoics give them credit for. Look at the world as a chain of dominos falling over and continuing to go in a straght line. Some dominos represent people, at these dominos there would have to be several branches to represent Possible reactions be that person. Depending on the persons action it would depend on which domino it knocked over. I believe people can control there mind, and most of their actions, and perhaps even some of their desires. People can change to flow of the dominos if the act on the world instead of sitting and watch the world simply turn as they sit and watch.
Well thought out, so is our control an illusion?
I agree.
I'm glad you said that people do not have "complete" control over their happiness becuase it is nice to know that we have "some" control over our happiness and the events in our lives.
I agree--there is not a distinction between events in and out of our control.
I really like Russell’s comment on this paper and agree that if we work at it we can achieve control over our own desires even the desire for food, take for example Mahatma Gandhi. He starved himself for political reasons and lead a very restricted lifestyle.
Formal Comments Completed
I completely agree with your position. You seem to have thought out this paper very well.