To quote John Galt:
QuoteYour teachers, the mystics of both schools, have reversed causality in their consciousness, then strive to reverse it in existence. They take their emotions as a cause, and their mind as a passive effect. They make their emotions their tool for perceiving reality. They hold their desires as an irreducible primary, as a fact superseding all facts. An honest man does not desire until he has identified the object of his desire. He says: "It is, therefore I want it." They say: "I want it, therefore it is."
By what standard do you judge what you want? Food is a rational desire; you need it to live. If you desire poison, you are not long for this earth. What value, to you, is a certain object of desire, and how do you know its value to you? To know requires a process of identification, of thought, of judgement. If you ride on the wind of your whims, landing on one and then being blown, by chance, in any direction, you will not achieve true happiness.
To address your 5 points more directly:
1. Insisting on having something without regard to facts will not further your life. If you choose not to discriminate between poison and food, you will die.
2. Having wants is not intrinsically bad. If you desire nothing, you will strive for nothing, and achieve - nothing, nothing but the end of your own existence. If you desire a relationship with someone, and you work for and achieve your aim, the result will be your happiness.
3. If you attempt to satisfy an irrational, fleeting whim, your end will not be its opposite: long-term, rational happiness.
4. To want nothing is, if taken literally, to desire non-existence, i.e. to desire not to live. Human life has certain requirements that are not given to us automatically, including happiness; we need productive work to achieve our values. A plant does not; it just sits there, absorbing the sun and the rain and nutrients in the soil. That we don't always achieve our values is not to negate our need of them. Your choice is: the pursuit (with its inherent risks, including emotional risks) of rational values, or death.
Use reason. Check your premises. Identify existence. Achieve happiness.
