Of Need

I agree, that’s a good point.
If people are unaware of their real needs, they may be trying to fill that hole with all sorts of other things, which may only temporarily satisfy them, at best, and that’s how addiction can start.
Understanding what our real needs are, like the need to be healthy, to not feel ill all the time, or to have people around you who you care for, can relate to, and they you, may be what you really need, and realizing that, and being able to fulfill that, may help you give up whatever you’re addicted to.
Sometimes we have what we need, or most of it, and we’re just not aware, because we get stuck in this habit of always wanting more, always thinking about what we don’t have, and it’s important to break such harmful habits. Sometimes I think we can just be, and not constantly think about what we don’t have, being anxious for the future, mournful of the past, and just be peaceful and content with living and being in the present.

Intelligence is just one out of many other competences I could have used as an example.

My point is that whenever you remove an organism from its habitat and force it into an environment that is alien to it, its competences become obsolete, unable to be practiced within that new environment, which the organism then experiences as suffering, and yes, as dying.

Intelligence, of any sort, isn’t that necessary for survival. Insects have little to none of it and they are pretty much the masters of survival.

Eusocial organisms, in general, are individually weak, capable of only performing simple, highly specialized, tasks. Their power is collective . . . as a group of highly specialized organisms they are brilliant.

The function of the alpha male, of the king, of any group of termites is nothing but to . . . reproduce. A laughable concept compared to that which applies to humans where by king we mean someone who governs an entire nation whether he reproduces or not.

I suppose, then, that according to your logic, which places survival above everything else, we should strive to be . . . insects?

Magnus Anderson

That answer would depend on who you are asking.
A soldier fighting in a war or a child living in a gang or drug infested neighborhood might have a different life experience than we do.

Are you asking for one’s quality of life or the state of existing?

Like attempting to gather the oceans in a little cup.

Obviously, they are a part of what some consider to be needed in life.
Their removal is what we call “dying to self” - which is a form of death and which letting go prepares us for the Big Death.

Excesses are a compensation for what is felt to be missing. They only die when something good has come to replace them.

I wasn’t trying to say only survival matters, just that there’s a hierarchy of needs, the physical needs being almost always primary, psychological needs secondary and desires tertiary.
All of them are more/less important, just that generally speaking, the former shouldn’t be sacrificed for the latter, nor should we sacrifice all of nature, or much of it, for the sake of our desires, we should repress some of them, many of them, or find ways of satisfying them or diverting them that aren’t as harmful to our health as individuals, as a society, and to life itself.

As for the social insects, I don’t think their way of socializing is any better than ours.
Insects are only as social as they are, because all members of their colony are biological sisters, and brothers.
Human beings in a society aren’t as related to one another, or as specialized, and there’s good and bad in that, as we can still function independently as individuals when need be, and we have the benefit of adding our individuality to the collective, helping it to evolve, rather than stagnate.

Procreation has, pros, and cons, if there’s not enough resources to go around, it can be bad.
The idea is not to have as many offspring as possible, but not to exceed the environmental carrying capacity.
Also, the more offspring, the less you can give them special attention, animals that tend to have lots of offspring, tend not to care for them, and so the vast majority of them die off, sometimes they all die off.

I’m not sure if insects are more successful than mammals, or if any particular species of insect, is more successful than human beings, from a survival standpoint.
You can’t compare insects or say ants as a whole to humans, because that’s comparing an entire class or order to a single species, the correct comparison would be a species of insect, like a particular kind of ant, like a fire ant, to human beings.
Even if there’s trillions of fire ants and only billions of human beings, ants are a lot smaller, in order to determine who’s more successful from a more objective standpoint, I would compare the total weight of fire ants to human beings.
Success is fleeting thou, I wouldn’t be surprised if humans offed themselves sooner than later.

From a survival standpoint governing a whole society isn’t necessarily successful, or from an offspring standpoint, Alexander the great died young without an heir, but then some dictators have harems and hundreds of children, so it depends.
Polygamy has advantages and disadvantages too, the less wives there are to go around, the more civil unrest, and in any case, how many rich and powerful men today have harems?
From both a survival standpoint, and a happiness or health standpoint, it makes little difference, whether you’re a CEO, president/prime minister, or middle class person, even from an influence standpoint, a president isn’t responsible for all that much, and can easily be replaced, in many cases they’re just figureheads or puppets, so much is decided by the thousands of men who’re ‘under’ them, and support them, as well as legal precedents, corporations and so on.

What I"m trying to say really is just that great wealth and power, fame and fortune are totally unnecessary, yet our society worships them, as many others have.
What really matters is that you and those who you’re responsible have their needs, especially physical, but psychological too, met, and you need to be very wealthy to do this, everything else is superfluous, and can sometimes do a lot more harm to us as individuals and as a whole.
Everything has a cost, what can be done without shouldn’t be risked for what can.
I think we’d most of us might be better off if we adopted more ascetic or minimalist values.

There is a hierarchy of needs, yes, but what is not there is a single structure of needs that applies to everyone.

There is a multiplicity of traditions.

The best life, from an individual’s perspective, is that which is lived in accordance with the natural evolution of one’s tradition.

The problem of modern age is the fact that people no longer have any customs.

Every individual and culture is different, and has different needs, but every individual and culture is also the same, and has the same needs, it can be seen either way.
There’s a lot of things we have in common, and there’s some things we don’t.
No system is perfect, but a good one would have few or at least fewer exceptions to its rules.
We need to improvise, but sometimes systems are necessary, because systems take the whole, past, present and future into account, not merely the immediate.
Our traditions had a lot of flaws, but they worked well enough for centuries, now we’ve abandoned them, and replaced them with nothing in some cases, or self help, pop philosophy, psychology/psychiatry and secular right/left politics in others.
The contemporary systems we have are constantly upgrading themselves, and are somewhat atraditional, but I believe there is a foundation to them that never changes, and unfortunately for moderns that foundation has been built upon sand, it’s only a matter of time before the edifice completely collapses.

All needs are means to a desired end, all desired ends are wants. Nobody needs to live, in fact, everyone does “need” to die, as in order for life to exist, life must die. There are no needs, only wants, only desires.

Nihilistically incorrect. Life does not require death, although death obviously requires life.

Satanic lustful propaganda. One could just as easily say, “There are no wants or desires, only motions.”

The most fundamental need, often ignored yet one cannot live without for even a moment: A place to be.
… just ask the homeless.

Yeah, the material body dies, but the subtle body, the consciousness does not. Hells for some, heavens for others, and back here for most. Figure out how many times though JSS, would ya please. One life repeats, many lives repeat, blah, blah.

In the infA^6 universe, all that is ever alive, is always alive … somewhere.

There’s some differences between the physical and psychological needs, and physical and psychological desires.
I tried to explain these differences in my OP and subsequent posts.
Here’s an example -

Take the need for steak and potatoes vs the desire for a diet coke.
Let’s put aside the notion diet coke can help fat people lose weight for a moment, which I believe is largely unproven at any rate.
What they have in common is they’re both substances we like to consume, and they can be very pleasurable, but that’s where the similarities end.
One is food, and the other is at best a nonfood, and at worst, a poison, depending on what studies you’re looking at.
Food helps us survive in optimal physical and mental condition, nonfoods don’t, and poisons hinder our survival.
Nonfood can hinder our survival to, if we turn to it instead of real foods.

Now, you may not want to survive, but virtually everyone does (so long as they’re not totally miserable, and feeling there’s little-no chance of improving their condition, practically no one has ever committed suicide out of happiness), not only so they can go on enjoying life, but because life and its propagation are valuable for nearly all of us.
So both steak and potatoes on the one hand, and diet coke on the other hand are pleasurable, but the former is going to help us attain things practically everyone value, to survive, to be in good health, and when we’re in good health, we not only feel better, but we function better, and are able to acquire more of what we both need and want, both for ourselves and others we care about, and, the latter, especially if its taken to an extreme, where most of your diet consists of junk food, is going to significantly hinder all of these things.

And so, one is objectively, or as near as can be, more valuable, and very different in its nature than the other, for these reasons, because it aids us in getting other things everyone else wants, in their right mind.
One are substances we evolved side by side with, if we evolved the way mainline science says we did, and are biologically adapted to consume, the others are not, there’s major differences between them, and these differences arguably warrant different words to classify them, and we ought to think and feel very differently about them.

What is the infA^6 universe, another entertainment vehicle like #42?

All biological bodies are flawed. If you can, you make the best with what you were given by making healthier choices to ensure continued existence, physically, psychologically, and spiritually while you live out your allotted time in your material body. None of the three categories can be significantly shortchanged without eventual consequences and I mean eventual as in destined for regret.

A life of sheer hedonism is fleeting, where as a life of substantive hedonism, enjoying things that improve our health and the health of others, could potentially go on forever, living for something that could potentially go on forever, or at least last a lot longer, with few-no repercussions, is objectively better than living for something fleeting, because, it’s objective, because, it exists, and can go on existing, where as the other is temporal, which is close to not existing at all.
Now I’m not saying we can or even should be 100% objective in our tastes or preferences, but it’s something to think about, we should at least be weary of the distinction.

In what sense does life require death?
James is right when he says death obviously requires life, nonliving things can’t die.
I can think of a couple of things you might be referring to.

The old need to die to make way for the new, for the next generation.

The prospect of death and nonlife animates life, gives it meaning, purpose and direction, to avert the former, death, and to make use of the latter, nonlife, to have something to consume, room to grow and propagate itself.
Or to put it more succinctly, nonlife and death makes life live.

Interesting things to ponder, I’ll get back to you on them shortly.

If everything was alive, would we even have the words/concepts life/nonlife?
Are they mutually dependent?
Do things or qualities exist now we have no words for, and cannot think, because they don’t have an opposite?

I’m not sure if consciousness survives death, I tend to think that it does not.
As the brain shrivels up and dies, the mind appears to die with it, like when people get alzheimers or dementia, and that’s just one example of how brain and consciousness appear to be totally intertwined, to be the same thing, merely viewed from different vantage points.
There are near death experiences, but are they just the dreams of the dying?
But then are the dreams of the living a sort of reality, is life itself a dream?

I think he means infinite universe.
If we live in an infinite universe, especially either an infinitely varied one, or one that repeats things across infinite and eternal space and time that’re practically the same as our point in space and time, than while we may die, something exactly like us, or very similar, might be born elsewhere, there could be trillions upon trillions of versions of you and I, an endless number.
I’m not sure if the universe is infinite myself, while I think it can be fun to speculate on such things, I don’t think they’re very practical, nor do I think we can have a definite answer to such questions.

The material organ of the brain is a simple relay station for the incorporeal mind/consciousness. The brain coordinates the sensory body to the subtle body.

Yea, agreed, and that’s one of, if not the major difference between needs and healthy desires, and unhealthy desires, the former two tend to have prosequences, the latter one consequences, the former two are more sustainable, the latter one, unsustainable, especially when taken to an extreme/long term.
It’s important to keep that in mind, it doesn’t mean we cannot or even should not ever indulge in meaningless pleasures from time to time.

That may be true, thou I’ve yet to see any hard evidence for it.
There are many reports of ghosts, past life and near death experiences and so on, I guess that’s a kind of soft evidence that may be sufficient for some to believe.
I think it’s an interesting subject.
“There are more things in heaven and earth…”