Desire is the essence of human being (Benedictus Spinoza)

Firstly I will talk a little bit about the life of Benedictus Spinoza. He had rather unconservative
theories, and because of them he was expelled from his community. Most of his theories were
about the content substance and the organization of the world. Spinoza continued from the
theories of Rene Descartes, but the difference between them was that Descartes divided the
world in two final substances and one infinite (God) substance, and for Spinoza there is only one
substance that exists. He said that his supreme an infinite substance can only be comprehended
as two attributes ( but has an infinite number of them ) , them being the thinking and the
spreading one . The first we can only comprehend as God and the second as Nature. But there is
no difference between them because they are one and the same. Or said in other words Deus sive
Natura, God or Nature, they are the same thing .Now is the time for the main focus of my essay
and that is Spinozas teachings of the modes. Modes are the final forms of the infinite substance,
everything is a mode and humans are the most perfect mode because they have both the thinking
and spreading mode. And then he began his research on the ethics and what drives us as humans.
So he came up with theory of the affects. This theory, in short, is that affects are the things that
control our way of thinking and behaving, we can say that they are basically our desires, and
one can only have a happy and fulfilling life if we control them by knowing them and
understanding them and I forgot to say that they are the very essence of us.
This was my pure theoretical explanation of the quote now I am going to add my personal
opinion about it. There are two tips of desire, there are those we call well and those we call bad.
The good ones are: the desire for knowledge, the desire of doing well, the desire two live in a
better world etc. And there are the bad ones: desiring someone elses wife , the desire to kill
someone , desire to steal , to cheat and etc. but they have one feature I common that they are
desires that will eventually hurt someone( and the good ones dont have that). But there is one
interesting thing in the eastern philosophy about desire. And that is the basic teaching of
Buddhism, called the teaching about suffering. In there is a statement where is said that desire is
the root of all suffering and if the individual wants to achieve the state of nibbana [or nirvana
(the ultimate bliss)] must firstly free himself from desire I dont fully agree with Buddhism
because without our desires we will lose our inspiration to live, for I believe that most of the
worlds innovations and master pieces, would not exist. On the other hand desires lead to great
sufferings, in most cases because we cannot fulfill them and for that I think they are bad. Maybe
the most practical answer would be if we accept Spinozas theory and try to overcome and
understand our desires.
To sum up this marvelous essay, desires in the very essence of our beings and we are helpless in
handling them , also they are responsible for most of our sufferings and the way Spinoza
recommended for us to fight them is to understand them, more precisely to understand the
reason why they come to be.