Cuong

"selfish, unjustifiable, or questionable desires"

Because I really love Philosophy and Cognitive Science, here is some thought in a more close perspective for the essay. Certainly I know you don't really expect me to comment too often upon your essay:

First, what are these people in your paragraph trying to looking for?

- They ought to look for Happiness, for pleasure and satisfaction. That is the goal of all creatures in this earth. Without happiness, why else we even exist?

- During the course of this seek-and-hide game, they are attempting to search for the ultimate Happiness, that is the ultimate success. Yet, are you sure that they are actually following what they really claim. They seek WHAT? that is the question?

"Dorian Gray assumed that achieving eternal beauty was a pivotal point in life’s success. However, his quest for eternal beauty was based on his unmitigated vanity and narcissism."

Dorian, for instance, according to you, is seeking after the eternal beauty. But the faulty in his action is that he IS NOT SEEKING after what he thought he might be. He is, indeed, seeking a SHADOW of THIS ETERNAL BEAUTY. This shadow is gruesome, it is ETERNAL TORTURE. For you know what? The eternal beauty is nowhere else except what you have given beforehand:

"ultimate price by sacrificing his soul, true love, and his only true friend"

He trades all his ETERNAL CHARACTERISTICS of BEAUTY to seek after the most trivial and foolish things in this world. A foolish investment.

Thus, the origin of suffering is not seek after the ULTIMATE SUCCESS, but seek after the ULTIMATE SUCCESS IN A WRONG WAY. Human presumption causes suffering. We, with all of our egocentric nature, have never truly treasured the value of what we are given. We always demand more, and this is the self-destruction. This is the birth of Tragedy, this the victory of Dionysian over Apolonian side of one human.

Certain, there are those who also seek after the ULTIMATE SUCCESS and fail, too. But these people are better than those given examples because they do not reject to be suffered from human common flaws. They, too, have to immerse themselves in the lake of sins to let THEMSELVES, THE SELF OF AVARACIOUSNESS, THE SELF OF FOOLISHNESS die. They have to vomit out their Ego, so that they can accomplish their goal.

THE ULTIMATE SUCCESS and MY/YOUR/OUR/THEIR ULTIMATE SUCCESS is totally different from one another. The former is only an object contains certain specific properties, that is its Essence. While the later always belong to someone. It is possessive. And if something is YOURS, none can strip it away from you, none but yourself. Unless you let yourself to be blind by the shadow of the ULTIMATE SUCCESS, you always share the same opportunity in the search of true happiness as other existents.

Your essay is not OK in this matter. These examples do not seek anything called ULTIMATE SUCCESS. They are practising simply the art of LOSING. Right at the beginning, the so-called ULTIMATE SUCCESS has never existed, has never come into life.