Need

[kiya]

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.

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?

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

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?

Buddhism certainly did. It's in the texts fairly clearly.

[kiya]

Now I'm pondering what the Buddha would have said to modern consumer culture.

Ow.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Now I'm pondering what the Buddha would have said to modern consumer culture.

There was a pretty developed consumer culture among the nobility in India.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

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;

YES. That. Exactly.

I need to take a moment I think, to figure out what that means, exactly, but you've pointed at something I hadn't seen before. And now I can see it.

::wanders off, muttering::

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I need to ponder this some more.

[kiya]

I asked teinedreugan to comment on this when I wrote it, and that's more or less exactly what he said. :}

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Yes... all this, yes. This is one of the primary reasons I still want to take a month off and go live in a monastary; denomination doesn't matter - what matters is to spend a while simply living, in meditation, prayer, simple activities, uncluttered... I want to find out what I'm like when I'm not surrounded by *waves arms and knocks things off shelves* all this stuff, all this noise. I want to find out what it's like to be truly quiet.

Yes.

[rosefox]

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.

I think of chemical anxiety and depression as effects looking for causes. "I'm anxious. Um. I don't know why. Why am I anxious? Aha, because someone I love might die unexpectedly!" and then we say we're anxious about someone we love dying unexpectedly, when all it really is is brain chemistry combined with the human desire for labels and reasons.

Now you've got me thinking of need as another effect looking for a cause, another feeling looking for a reason. And just as prolonged situational depression can cause chemical imbalances that lead to a chemical depression, I suspect prolonged artificial need can do the same. And now I want to go read up on post-Great Depression consumerism.

[urocyon-c.livejournal.com]

I think of chemical anxiety and depression as effects looking for causes. "I'm anxious. Um. I don't know why. Why am I anxious? Aha, because someone I love might die unexpectedly!"

Good point; I hadn't considered it in quite those terms before.

[redbird]

Those most basic survival needs--food, water, oxygen, a tolerable temperature range--seem to be built into the human (and other mammalian) organism.

Beyond that, yes, "necessary for what" is a question, like "good for what", that we don't ask as often as might be useful. It's hard to phrase that in ways that aren't self-referential or contradictory. The next step is to ask where purpose comes from. If you know that one, please tell me.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

whether or not it's necessary to have a life-partner

Some people do not feel the need for someone to always be there. We have a family friend who is now 46, has never married, and is now a Shinto Buddhist nun. I would say she doesn't feel the need for a life-partner, at least not in the physical sense. I can't speak for beyond that.

[ailbhe]

I get really peeved at people who declare that they *need* stuff I perceive as frivolous. Especially when I say "Oh, you want a Foo?" And they say "No, I *need* a Foo," when a Foo is something like an engraved mantel-ornament. I suspect that this lack of tolerance is directly related to the fact that I've been poor enough and hungry enough to limit "need" to food, water and shelter for survival; everything beyond that is a Want, for me.

I'm getting better at not telling people how frivolous they're being, especially as the less poor I get the more scared I am of being poor again and the more things I want to make me feel secure in my middle-class middle-incomeness.

Need-runes

[(Anonymous)]

Because this was just too good an opening to ignore.

Constraint gives scant choice;
a naked man is chilled by the frost.

Grief of the bond-maid
and state of oppression
and toilsome work.

Trouble is oppressive to the heart;
yet often it proves a source of help and salvation
to the children of men, to everyone who heeds it betimes.

(Old Norse, Icelandic, and Anglo-Saxon; spot the increasing influence of Christianity, which has this thread of pushing all peace into the next world, as well as a thread of making peace and books and feeding the poor.)

[elf]

Tangenting; ideas are bouncing funny this morning.

In our culture, most of our basic needs are met: we have food, shelter, clothing, social contact (more social contact than *anyone* really needs). Our homeless bums can get fat dumpster diving.

We have few needs today. Most of our basic physical (and even mental/social) needs are met.

It may be built into our psyches, built into our bodies, to need to need.

This may be why we have a cult of frivolous needism, a constant barrage of advertsing YOU NEED THIS--the real message might be "you need *something* and this could be it," or even, "you need to need something--why not this?"