2004-03-15
Need
In a thread on alt.callahans recently someone was posting about the question about whether or not it's necessary to have a life-partner. I nearly replied to the OP; eventually I made the comment that I would have made there elsewhere in the thread.
Needs have to come with purposes, reasons. There isn't 'need' in a vacuum. Food, water, oxygen, those aren't needs without survival as a goal.
And it occurs to me that this is one of the difficulties in the culture that I have to deal with; a lot of it is about cultivating need, about advertising, about making sure that people stay hungry. Hungry for? Doesn't matter, so long as they're hungry.
But need comes with purpose; need without a sense of why leads to people feeling rootless, cut off, purposeless, because there's something missing. For some it gets existential; others just settle in to 'the man who dies with the most toys, wins' mindsets and make need itself a purpose.
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teinedreugan made a comment the other day about how people tend to convert to new religions because their previous gods had failed them: abandoned them in time of need, failed to address their needs, failed to meaningfully exist. I'm now pondering the Cult of Need, that strange dissociation from purpose, established because if there were purpose, need could be fulfilled. I commented to rasfc earlier that proselytisers who want to be successful need to find failures in their witnessee's gods, or create a belief that those gods are deficient somehow.
How much of the growth of fundamentalism -- and, for that matter, modern paganism -- comes from those people who have found that Need has failed them?
Needs have to come with purposes, reasons. There isn't 'need' in a vacuum. Food, water, oxygen, those aren't needs without survival as a goal.
And it occurs to me that this is one of the difficulties in the culture that I have to deal with; a lot of it is about cultivating need, about advertising, about making sure that people stay hungry. Hungry for? Doesn't matter, so long as they're hungry.
But need comes with purpose; need without a sense of why leads to people feeling rootless, cut off, purposeless, because there's something missing. For some it gets existential; others just settle in to 'the man who dies with the most toys, wins' mindsets and make need itself a purpose.
teinedreugan made a comment the other day about how people tend to convert to new religions because their previous gods had failed them: abandoned them in time of need, failed to address their needs, failed to meaningfully exist. I'm now pondering the Cult of Need, that strange dissociation from purpose, established because if there were purpose, need could be fulfilled. I commented to rasfc earlier that proselytisers who want to be successful need to find failures in their witnessee's gods, or create a belief that those gods are deficient somehow.How much of the growth of fundamentalism -- and, for that matter, modern paganism -- comes from those people who have found that Need has failed them?