I want to discuss a few things about human nature that abate us from day-to-day as we accomplish one thing, move to another, see the need to add more, or compromise on others. I believe we must first understand that want does not create need, but it is need which creates wants. Let’s put that into perspective by asking ourselves: what do I want? Really, honestly take a moment before reading on and think of a few things you want. It is important you do not confuse what you want for what you need!
They are in fact two different things. You need sustenance in the form or hydration and other important vitamins and the like you get from foods in order to remain living. I cannot say that without oxygen we can sustain our life as we need it in order to breathe. Those are simple needs -to name a few- that we are afforded. To understand how it is not want that creates needs, let’s view the following closely. In that I am hungry, I have the need to eat. The latter is not attached to any particulars, it is a known, it is a state that must be in a sense fulfilled; to eat would fulfill hunger. Plainly speaking, what I want in relation to the need, is nothing at all, as long as the hunger is satiated with something, the something does not really matter. An available apple, banana, leftovers from yesterday, and etc. What we begin to form is a want that is bound by our desire(s). We particularly want those fries from the fast food place that makes them real good, or we want a stake from the new place on the corner, or we would definitely do well to go to that favorite coffee place of ours for those delicious pastries they have on display. None of those wants would exist without the need being present, and to that I agree. But as the need can be fulfilled by anything, it is in the want that we begin to falter. I want to go to that coffee place, or I want to get those fries, whereas you don’t need to!
The deeper and more complex the relationship between giving in to the wants, and putting off the fulfillment of the need the more we fall into the fallacy that we need the fries, or we need the coffee, or we need the cigarette, or fill in your addiction here. I dare dive full head into addictions because it is a huge want that drives us into a manufactured need. As I stated, the needs are often found to be attached to processes which stand on their own.
I will touch on the subject of addiction briefly, but there is so much more to be said. Anyone who has suffered through an addiction, its recovery, and the life after will have some major issues with the previous paragraph. However, you don’t need the drug -whatever your choice was/is. The body manufactures what you need, unless you suffer from a deficiency due to various factors, normal means no external additions. Abnormal begins when we introduce something that -to our detriment- the body needs to analyze as to whether it is a threat or not once it enters the body. Once the body does not reject the new substance due to it not seeing anything immediately harmful, then the problems begin. I don’t wish to discuss the science of the matter too much in order to retain reader attention, but there are various articles, journals, and papers that rigorously affirm the body as a sole entity needing very little from the outside except from a few essentials.
The manufactured need thus becomes the body producing less/more of something you need in order to assimilate something being introduced from outside forces, activating/deactivating systems in order to battle the detrimental nature of something introduced, or finally the withdrawal that comes from the effects of the outside source waning as it clashes with the body’s decision to stop/start production (or not at all) of substances regulated during the induced episode of internal distress.
All that turpitude was a result of the want to do something that was not needed. How then does this help to understand how want does not create need, it appears clear in the above that introduction of new substances, or the opposite from the end of the body, even to the extent of the body’s response to the absence of the stimuli seem to in fact create a later need. I agree. However, remove the former as to have the base with which we begun, then see that in the base there was no inherent need but a want that manufactured need.
It would be irresponsible not to ask, “but if that’s the case, wouldn’t everything be a manufactured need as you posit?” to which I have to say: “no”.
Every situation of every day has a singular beginning. It is not in fact attached to thousands of years of mistreatment, abuse, Civil War, or any other terrible thing that may come to mind. It was a singular event -in all instances- that was responsible for the event.
“So what you’re saying is that all those wars, years of war, deaths, and etcetera are all bull dung?”
Not at all. I dare not delve into the political side of the argument as it can be in its own very confusing. However, to address the stated questions, there are a multitude of questions one can ask:
- Is every day of a war a day in which peace, a cease, or other modicum of civility can be reached?
- In that every decision must be made from this very obscure top everyone mentions, where there are no higher powers to answer to, why not make a different decision? Civility for the sake of peace does not account for the monstrosities being committed by a genocide, or group of people forcibly attempting to hinder a cause for their own. Understood, however it is the exaggerated need for change that pushes humanity to atrocities. Exaggerated because there is abuse, mistreatment, or other things which are used to control. In other words, there is room from improvement, and there is no one person, group, or entity that has all the answers, but sometimes failure to listen at any point begets a response quite often overlooked because the proposed too is one-sided. At any point in any of these events there could have been an intermediary, but it is not until it is out of hand that preventing the perpetuation of this result, whatever it is civil unrest, marches, war, or other that action is sought.
- Are or were the two people who begun trouble wishing for resolution or just to further diminish the resulute of all individuals to push them into action, an action the inciting individual wants, not an action necessary for anyone?
- For instance, a Jihadist leader may use existing issues in order to gather attention. They may pray on others who are a bit more susceptible to manipulation due to their socioeconomic status, personal loss, loss of property, displacement, or other such criteria which makes one uneasy and more vulnerable. It is normal for a humans to want. No two people can want one thing in the same way or through the same reasons, and proof of that is the individuality that has brought the individual to that decision. Although similarities may exist in any one response, this can be due to lack of context in the chosen language of communication, the lack of descriptive factors which may push someone to say something similar to something else, and so on. What I just described is a bit hard to present. I’ll say this, where nepotism is concerned we -most of us- can agree that a carpenter should do carpenter work, and that a family member who is a carpenter can be sought before someone who is not family. The logic fits, I suppose. But would the same logic apply to a caste family, where the family-caste is wholly of weavers? It is also important to know that the need, being separate of the want cannot make decisions or choices as those are solely attributed to the person with the need who creates the want to be associated with that need.
- Are corrupt, bad, or tyrannous governments allowed to continue? Who is the judge? What can be done? Are the possible solutions worse than the current state of things?
- From the outside looking in is what people say. The most important question people fail to ask themselves is: “is context at all important?” Does wrong stop being wrong because of the context? “Sorry officer, I was sneezing, when my eyes opened again, I tried to swerve, but hit and killed your 5 year-old daughter as she came into the road to get her plush soccer ball.” Is context going to bring back the dead young girl? Is context going to deter death or help the family feel so much better? The only good context ever does is give the person using it an excuse for something else. Thus, from the outside looking in refers to context. “The President didn’t mean to kill all those people, but they shouldn’t have been protesting there” is an example of context. The action of killing, whether a known result of protesting there or not, can still be prevented as stated in number 1 and 2 above. As to what can be done, a lot of governments are democratic and in fact allow for the vote of the populace for decision-making. Sure, I agree that in that case it is the majority that dictates for everyone, however insensitive, wrong, or otherwise we may think they are, but it is in that inclusive process that one must -until it no longer works- count in. The same goes for different government types where the populace understand the rule of law and know that certain decisions carry certain penalties. In the same fashion, Geneva Conventions, the Constitution of any Country -where it exists-, or paper dictating the protection of rights of the individual are in fact the judge. What can be done is assertively scrutinize the existing document(s), direct that they are to be held to the power they bestow or express, and even extend a hand to allow for the exercise of the rights granted under said measures when procured.
As I stated, the political arena and the law surrounding it are quite complex and often are there for the protection of the individual parts that amount to the whole that is a country and its people. There should be little if any usurpation of existing articles that are inherent, apparent, and binding to a people. That does not mean that they should not change. The inclusion of new things in any atmosphere help shape that atmosphere into something else. As the else is what must be addressed, it is a fact that obsolescence is not just a word that smoothly leaves your lips and tongue, but something that will occur everywhere at all times. As such, obsolescence includes anything and everything that has been touched by change, will be affected by change in any form, perhaps something that has inherently the potential to induce change, and any other matter which will change the current status quo of any one thing at the time of the writing of the line. Review of practices is necessary. An example of how change must be allowed in the review of existing practices is as simple as allowing for manure, without further review and comparison, to be a key element in the so-called enrichment of soil or any other practice that will bring consumable products in contact with hormones, antibiotic, or other residue from the body of animals which may in fact get absorbed into the products we consume.
Let’s take a pause and go back to what you wanted, when the question was posed of: “what do you want”. It is not unusual for anyone to say things like: more money/a raise, peace in my life, better luck, or things along those lines. But why are those wants? What is the human necessity to want those things? None. There is no necessity. You may be saying, “well if you had my bills you’d think differently” to which you would be absolutely correct. You would be correct because we allow ourselves to be driven by our want in order to supplant what is necessary with something wanted, which often times just scratches the margin of what we can afford. I want a car. I buy a car according to my salary, not according to what I need. I want the car that everyone’s talking about, or the car I’ve dreamt of, of simply the car that really looks nice and you can afford. However, there are at any moment thousands of other cars to choose from, quite a lot of them more affordable, and manageable by your budget, vehicles that in the event we lost our jobs we wouldn’t lose the car and house with it too! But, giving in to the want is something we do so often that we do not think of it, we pay no mind or attention to the it which is our wants and how they take over us like an addiction.
I got off subject a bit by addressing the car example above. To say that there is no necessity is to say that we pick and choose the things we believe will fill the want. Nothing wrong there. What is wrong is that you have lived your own life. You have been there, in your own shoes or socks when something terrible struck, whether it was the death of a family member or loved one, loss of assets due to extenuating circumstances, fixing the home or vehicle, and much more. That is in your life. I am not saying, encouraging, or alluding to having to look backwards to move forward, no. What I am saying however is that, in a life where all situations are a guide to making decisions that at least will not get us in in the same trouble we know from experience, issue, or pain again, we tend to use those situations as stepping stones in order to mold our day or week, perhaps our lives. So, it is not about positive, negative, or any other adjective that would describe a person’s chosen way of making choices. What it entails is what happens during the time that choice is made, when the want takes over and the need completely disappears not because the want fulfills it, but because the want overpower it.
The measure of a good life depends on -like everything else in life- the eye of the person judging. A mathematician may pay some attention to a person who before dying or during their life pushed mathematics forward by allowing for redirection of old techniques into the current fold, thus aiding in the betterment of studies for generations onward. As such, the comparison could be made to almost anything. However, that is just one perspective. The measure of a good life for a child may be how many times a father, mother, or caretaker played with them. For a dancer, how people treated them after a performance, not as the dancer, but the wonderful person off the stage. The examples are endless. The need does not exist in that it is not inherent of a dead person to have any needs. However, it may be the want of a person perhaps looking for gratification in their own graceful endeavors to look upon someone comparable for a push in self-regard, or motivation, or anything else. It is in the extension of the need to other things that the want becomes exemplified by our measures towards an affair. To want is normal, to need is essential, and to act without thinking is a want in need of a need.
Belittle me no more for I know what I want, I understand what I need, and see no merit in either one.
