wish

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The desire is a desire for a thing or ability, a striving or at least the hope for a change in reality or perception or the achievement of a goal for oneself or for another. Wishes include both congratulations and negatively charged desires (curses, curses, wishing the plague on someone's neck .)

According to Zedler, wishes can be divided into good and bad wishes, into reasonable and unreasonable wishes, into possible and impossible (futile) wishes, and into just and unjust wishes. Sigmund Freud also differentiates between conscious and unconscious desires . The wish for peace is contained in many greetings, examples are: "The Lord give you peace", "Peace be with you" (No. 6,26. Jud et al.), Also in other languages.

Wish as desire

Often a wish is directed towards a change in one's own living conditions, towards the satisfaction of needs, instincts or desires, towards the acquisition of certain things, e.g. B. the desire for a (new) car, bike, computer, your own apartment or house. At the top of the wish list for many people is the desire for health and peace, security, trust, respect, acceptance, relaxation, strength, partnership, lightness (effortlessness), freedom or abilities (possibilities, potential) and sexuality.

There are wishes that can and cannot be fulfilled. Some wishes become impossible to fulfill if you miss the point in time for them to be fulfilled (both too early, if a wish is not yet possible, such as a game that has not yet been published, and too late, for example if a hoped-for relationship is already taken). The desire for wish fulfillment is often a powerful force to achieve something new.

trade

In trading, the wishes of the customer and the retailer face each other. Both strive to grant their desires. The customer's wish is to receive goods that meet their needs, the retailer's wish is to make a profit , usually at a reasonable price - but the goal can also be to empty the shop in order to avoid follow-up costs. The trading process is not a zero-sum game. Both sides can have an advantage. Since trading operations are repeated, most traders try to have satisfied customers, that is, to satisfy their needs. This also includes determining the customer's wishes and, under certain circumstances, influencing them. Phrases that are often heard are: “What do you want?” And “Do you have another wish?” There are various methods of determining or influencing the customer's wishes. Targeted offers ("I have something very special for you.") Often lead to (mutual) success. Methods like AIDA should help with closing a sale.

  • Attention - attracts the customer's attention
  • Interest - he is interested in the product
  • Desire - the desire for the product is awakened
  • Action - the customer buys the product

Advertising should help to awaken or stabilize desires.

Dealers who only want to sell without taking the customer's wishes into account can be successful for a short time, but hardly in the long term. In this sense, trading is similar to the Prisoner's Iterated Dilemma . Cooperation usually pays off as a successful strategy . Sometimes defective ("ripping the other off") is individually more successful, at least for a short time.

Wish list

Christmas wish list

Before Christmas , children write down their wishes on wish lists for Santa Claus or the Christ Child . When writing them down, they deal intensively with their wishes. In Advent , making Christmas presents together and secretly had a long tradition. Today it is often replaced by Christmas shopping.

Birthday wish

Birthday wish while blowing out the candle

The birthday wish is mostly based on a material, but often also on an ideal birthday present. Often the fulfillment of the birthday wish is kept secret until the birthday, so that the gift is a surprise.

Desired program

The choice of program on television is made dependent on the wishes of the audience. Examples of this are long-term television series such as “Wünsch Dir was”, “Wunschfilm” and “Wunschbriefkasten”.

Desire for children

An unfulfilled desire to have children is often a big problem for young families. Medical progress has made it possible for many couples to have children. The “ wish-child pill ”, on the other hand, does not usually serve to fulfill a wish to have children, but rather to prevent a child (in this sense it is a euphemism) or to postpone the possibility of giving birth to a later time as part of life planning. However, unwanted children often have big problems. Many people today no longer want their own children.

Wish-fulfilling medicine

Wish-fulfilling medicine describes non-medically indicated interventions in the human organism with the aim of improving, changing or maintaining form, function, cognitive abilities or emotional sensitivities (neuro-enhancement), which are carried out under medical responsibility.

philosophy

Desire and will

Desire and will are related. The will is often a strong desire. The desire differs from the will:

  • Determination: The desire is related to the longing . It differs from the will in the degree of decisiveness or determination: The wish represents the early stage of the will; it is still hesitantly formulated, weighed and considered. In terms of will, on the other hand, one is at least theoretically certain that one is committed to what is now clearly defined desired. (The expression " fulfilling a wish " shows that the wish can be the expression of a shortage that wants to be remedied, and one can also be the one who remedied it, compare also scarcity .)
  • Selective: The wish relates to a certain event or a certain object, the occurrence or receipt of which fulfills the wish. The will, on the other hand, is usually more of a prolonged state of mind that can cause different events one after the other.
  • Addressee: The will works of its own accord, without the direct influence of outside influences. The request is often directed at a specific addressee. You can make a wish from someone and wish something for someone. The person making the request can also be his own addressee. You can grant someone else a wish.

Epicurus: Three Kinds of Desires

The Greek philosopher Epicurus distinguished three types of wishes:

  • natural and necessary desires
  • natural and unnecessary desires
  • not natural and unnecessary desires

Natural and necessary desires ensure survival. This includes food, drink, food and clothing. They correspond to basic human needs, so these desires must always be satisfied. Natural and unnecessary desires are pleasant to the senses, but are actually superfluous for survival. Often, however, the satisfaction of these desires is beneficial. Unnatural and unnecessary desires are caused by an opinion. According to Epicurus, these wishes should never be fulfilled. Epicurus favored moderation, for example he said: "The wealth that has no limit is a great poverty."

Wish fulfillment in dreams with Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud wrote that dreams are hidden wish-fulfillments. They belonged to the inner essence of the dream, to the substantial determinants of every dream. In the dream, repressed and taboo wishes would appear in symbolically disguised form, which pushed into consciousness, but would initially be repulsed by consciousness. Freud assumed the existence of an internal dream work mechanism or censor that converts very strong, socially unaccepted desires (mostly sexual in nature) into not immediately understandable, symbolic images.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein describes wishes as a characteristic experience, like recognizing, remembering. The wish already seems to know what is fulfilling it, it anticipates the future. A wish is unsatisfied because it is an expectation of something. The sentence “I feel like having an apple” is therefore not an expression of a wish, but a dissatisfaction. In many cases the word "wish" conceals what is desired. That an event silences a wish does not mean that it fulfills it. Words like “may he come” can be loaded with a wish. Wishes are sometimes difficult to express.

Wittgenstein differentiates between desire and will. If you are moving your arm at will, you are not using any means to induce the movement. Even a wish is not such a means. The willing, if it is not supposed to be a kind of wish, must be the action itself, for example speaking, writing, speaking. A wish is not to raise your arm. If you lift it, you have not yet wished to lift it. A wish is, for example, if one hopes to draw a circle without errors.

Everyday wishes

In many cultures a greeting is expressed as a wish. Welcome greetings and farewell greetings, birthday greetings and party greetings are common. Many of these desires have fixed phrases. Examples for this are:

Greeting:

  • I wish you a nice good day (good morning, good evening).
  • Good day!

Congratulations:

  • Get well soon!
  • All the best!
  • Best health!
  • Have a peaceful and healthy New Year!
  • Wishing you a happy birthday.
  • We wish you a nice vacation.

For meals:

  • Good Appetite!
  • Enjoy the meal!

Toasts:

  • Cheers!
  • To your health!

The wishes are based on the belief and experience that good wishes can have a positive effect on the future and coexistence. Many of these wishes are mutual. Some of them are now common politeness.

Art and literature

Wish in fairy tale

In literature, especially in fairy tales , wishes often have a magical character. The protagonist often has three wishes, the fulfillment of which he is assured and granted. Sometimes, however, the wishes are fulfilled in a different way than the person making the wish had thought. Many of the most famous fairy tales belong to the dream fairy tales.

There are different types of wishes:

  • good or bad wishes (curses) towards the main character ( Sleeping Beauty ) ,
  • Desire to have children ("Once upon a time there was a king and a queen who wanted a child and never had one")
  • Reward or punishment ( Mrs. Holle ) ,
  • Fulfillment of a wish for the promise of an unknown wage, which is then refused ( Rumpelstiltskin )
  • Desire excess - a fulfilled wish always leads to greater desires ( from the fisherman and his wife )
  • Desires of the main character based on merit (for example, freeing a genie or an elf ; or help for someone in need)

Many fairy tales begin with the opening: "A long time ago, when wishing still helped". The wish-fulfillment is often associated with magic. In modern fairy tales it is often shown what it can lead to fulfilling nonsensical wishes. In the story How the World Got Away Again ( Kyberiade , Insel, 1983), Stanisław Lem described a machine that can do anything that begins with the letter "n". When she is asked to do “nothing”, everything initially seems to stay the same. Then it turns out that more and more things disappear from the world, because the machine literally fulfills the wish. She can only undo a part, she can only create things that begin with the letter "n". For this reason we still have meanness, envy and defeat, but no Singuins, for example. And the night sky is mostly black.

Science fiction

In Andrei Tarkowski's film Stalker , the stalker leads a journalist and a scientist through a zone to a fabulous room in which the most secret wishes are fulfilled.

In Sergei Snegov's book People Like Gods , science has advanced so far that practically anything can be done. The difference between fairy tales and reality disappears. Mythical creatures such as dragons and others arise.

In Olga Larionova's story, The Leopard from Kilimanjaro , the wish of many to know the date of their own death comes true. After a journey through time, this is the only information that is brought back from the future. Many think that this knowledge can help in shaping life, but it turns out to be a mistake. The sure knowledge of one's own death turns out to be a nightmare for most.

Meta wishes

Douglas R. Hofstadter describes in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach - an endless, braided band of meta wishes. Those are wishes that relate to wishes. Occasionally these are also called " second-order desires ". Meta-wishes include wishes for more wishes, wishes for changing the type of wish, wishes for canceling wishes, and other wishes. The fulfillment of meta-wishes is problematic because it can lead to paradoxes. The meta-wishes include all wishes that have self-referential properties with regard to a wish or have a wish as their content, i.e. are wishes on a higher level.

Wishes for more wishes

If a hero has one or more wishes, he could use these wishes to wish for any number of other wishes. In most fairy tales and stories where wishes appear, this thought does not appear. Where it is voiced, it is usually rejected. The ability to fulfill wishes is different among Djinns , depending on their power, they cannot fulfill all wishes. Only rarely does it happen that new wishes can be made with wishes. This limitation also applies to wishes in real life. If these kinds of wishes are possible, they will not lead to the expected result. Shel Silverstein describes in the poem "Lester" a boy who wishes with one wish and more and more new wishes, which then all piled up around him until he finally dies, because he is full of a goblin in a beautiful world Apples and kisses and shoes only always wanted wishes. ( Shel Silverstein , Where the Sidewalk Ends , ISBN 0-06-025667-2 , German: Where the sidewalk ends .)

Desire for non-fulfillment of the wish

If one wishes in a wish that the wish is not granted, it leads to a paradox that is similar to the liar's paradox :

  • if the wish is granted, it is just not being granted
  • if the wish is not granted, it will be granted

Desire to undo a wish

After the hero has realized that his first two wishes did not lead to the desired result, he wishes with the third that the initial state is reached again. This actually leads to a paradox that is rarely taken into account: everything starts the same way and from the beginning. This paradox is avoided if at least the hero can remember everything.

Midas

The legendary King Midas of Phrygia had a wish with Dionysus and he wished that everything he touched turned to gold. This wish was granted to him and resulted in Midas almost starving and dying of thirst. Fortunately, Dionysus granted him another wish, and Midas asked him to relieve him of the fateful wish. Midas' wish that everything you touch should turn into gold became one of the most well-known traditional wishes from ancient times.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: wish  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wikiquote: Wish  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ wish. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 59, Leipzig 1749, column 2201-2205.