How important is passion?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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In my opinion, Passion and Attitude are more important than beauty, intelligence, physical prowess, talent, or peace.

Most of life is about maintaining our passion and approaching things with the right attitude. This is an area that most philosophies ignore, or treat only as a side notion. Peace is great, but passion is better. The key is not to let your passions burn out of control, add more importantly, not to let it die. Our world is a place that runs in cycles, and so does our passions.

Its our passion that drives us through life, and attitude that allows us to take it all on. Our primary goal should be to hang on to our passion, and maintain the proper attitude. Living is Defying Inertia.

All that we do, and all that we make out of our life in this world comes from our passion to make these things happen, and bring our dreams alive.

In the modern world, as more and more people lost their faith in religion, seeking more concrete purposes in life, they found themselves looking out into oblivion. A vast nothingness where all sense of meaning is lost. Everything is temporary, and possibly nothing more than an illusion, or perhaps in a darker view, everything has already been determined, and no matter what we do, we are all consigned to our fate. All trappings of self awareness are only an illusion.

This leads so many to embrace nihilism, that nothing matters, and truth only exists in the moment.

What it most often comes down to in modern pop culture is:
Live fast and die young;
Who ever dies with the most toys wins;
Because nothing matters, because everything in life is temporary and therefore meaningless, and these are the paths so many people find.

My personal philosophy is that doing the right things in life, being inventive and creative, doing for others as well as yourself, in the end, leads us to a richer, fuller life. Maybe fate exists, maybe time will wash over everything that we have ever done or been or thought, but even so, there is no evidence that we can not take advantage of the moments life offers us, or change our fate. Rather than looking out into the eternal nothingness, we can look for closer goals to guide us into the void. Maybe that tower will eventually fall centuries from now, but if we are no longer around to see it, does it matter? That we were able to ascend that tower, and look out over the world from the perspective it offered, and take in that moment, makes that moment ours. Who knows, if higher dimensions exist, and our conscious lives on, these moments that we have lived might turn out to be gold. We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain, by taking advantage of the time life gives to us.

Whether or not you believe in a God, an afterlife, or higher plains of existence, a philosophy of building for a better future stokes our passions, leads us to a more fulfilling way of life, and has far more advantages.

Here is a link to a book I have published online titled "The Pursuit of Common Sense, in which I discuss this concept in greater detail. I am looking for input on this topic, and other topics I plan on posting in the future.

amazon.com/dp/B006P3MNLU

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you should read this specifically the second post: beforethelight.forumotion.com/t3 … beginnings

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Abstract

Interesting, well written concepts by people who have studied the philosophies of others very deeply.

The first post ends pointing out the same thing I start with here on this thread, and that is to bring passion back to the front where it belongs, and look for realistic, closer goals rather than concentrating on the final end of everything. I don’t agree with his opinions on equality or power. Concepts of equality allow those men who do not seek power to avoid being trapped by those who have chosen, and succeeded at obtaining power. I see power as something we should wield only when we must. Power brings its own unique problems and restrictions. Yes there are wretches out who seem to have made their life’s goal to make the rest of us miserable, to poison the world to satiate their own egos, but from my observation, most of those men are the type who are obsessed with power, mainly because their own lack of understanding of this world deprives them of an internal sense of power.

The second post is written very eloquently as well. However, I do not see why you can not speak to your passions and your intellect, Shakespeare seems to have carried off rather well. Passion should not, and is not, dependent on intellect or rational thought, but is completely independent of it, serving its own purpose, which is to give us the drive necessary to achieve something with our lives, hopefully something worthwhile.

How much of one’s disgust for their fellow man is separate from ones disgust with oneself? Passion has very little connection to morality. While passion can lead us to do terrible things, it is the rational mind that ponders morality, and decides whether or not to violate such things. In this modern world of technology where we currently exist, few of us are slaves to survival, our desires are mostly more petty than actual needs.

As Bruce Springsteen sings, “You gotta stay hungry”, and in our modern era there is truth to this. Rather than suppress or control our passions, we need to feed them, and before we can feed them, we must find them. In my philosophy, passion is very distinct from need, want, or desire.

To deny ones passions, is to choose to turn away from reality, to become deluded.

The third post I find more mathematical. What we want, desire, often turns out to be not what we wanted or desired at all, once we obtain it, or simply not satisfying. Passion occurs when we find something that does more than just satisfies a need, want, or desire, it drives us to the next level.

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I think i agree with you on the position of equality of the first post… though it seems accurate that perhaps to a degree things have become more meager from a result of it that is more the fault of other things I would think…

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How important is drinking water?