I see need as weakness. What drives the opposite of weakness, strength? Need. And what is need based on? Perceived weakness. If it is not weakness, then tell me what the need is based on? You talk about goals, so why does one have to make goals in the first place?
You can have to same goal and different means. Why does one choose to work for money, and the other to steal it. I say, same goal, different means. You’ll probably say different means because of different goals. (I think you are seeing presence of additional goals too, which determine means).
Well, I don’t think of the second part as a “goal”, but simply as one of the means excluded in reaching the first goal. I don’t think most people have conscious hierarchy of goals in that sense. For instance, if a person’s goal is to have some money and stealing it is one possible way to get it, is the only thing that would stop him from stealing a conscious presence of a higher goal? I suppose you might say that a thief does not have a superseding goal that tells him to respect other persons earnings, making it okay to steal his money, and making stealing his functioning highest goal.
So, to bring it back, basically I see that we may be saying the same thing, except you’re also, for some reason, adding supplemental goals to the decision making process. For me, the means give a clue to the goals, usually. However, even deciphering goals through means is not always so simple because you can have the same means and different goals, too. For instance, Al Capone, the famous gangster, is known to have founded the first soup kitchens during the Great Depression in 1930s. What was his highest goal, or his primary drive, improving his own image or helping the unemployed? (same with rich giving to charities) youtube.com/watch?v=yCMEzxJpQTs
You can say that need is based on a perceived negative consequence (e.g. death.) We need to do certain things (e.g. eat food) in order to avoid perceived negative consequences (e.g. starving to death.) You can say that a need is a perceived weakness in the sense that perceiving a negative consequence means perceiving that we cannot prevent the perceived negative consequence without taking some sort of action. What you’re comparing here is your potential against the kind of potential that is required in order to prevent the perceived negative consequence without taking some sort of action. As a consequence, you call yourself weak because your potential is below the required potential.
However, saying that every need is based on some perceived negative consequence is strange. Consider that needs are usually organized in a hierarchy. There is a need that is at the top of the hierarchy, the master need, and there are all other needs that are somewhere below it on the hierarchy. Hunger, for example, is subservient to survival. We need to eat because we need to survive (i.e. prevent perceived death at some future point in time.) We agree that we eat because we perceive that we are weak but would you agree that we want to survive because we are weak?
On a more fundamental level, yes, it would be the same thing. I could say that, temporally speaking, we are constantly falling behind. An organism has to eat again and again, to sustain itself, until the day it eventually can do so no longer and it dies. The desire to survive, I mean, just to be, comes from having one’s being/existence constantly challenged by ever changing environment. It’s a forced reaction and also part of its fundamental process, its nature. I think it is this sense of weakness or falling behind (temporally speaking) that is the motivating factor. Usually it would be expressed through instinct of fear, or aversion behavior (in lower species). Of course, we also want leverage and we can make it easier for us, to the point where we even feel “strong” (temporarily), but even so, we cannot completely escape it because we evolved as part of this process, or as reactionary process (negative entropy) that has to keep up.
What happened is that you obtained one goal (e.g. you had sex with a hot lesbian) but failed to obtain another (e.g. you did not prevent your death at some future point in time.) The pleasure that you feel as a consequence of your success in relation to the first goal is overshadowed by the pain that you feel as a consequence of your failure in relation to the second goal.
It’s similar to how men often think that getting rich will solve all of their problems (i.e. help them attain all of their goals.) So when they get rich and realize that money isn’t enough they get depressed. Despite their enormous success (getting rich, you have to admit, is a huge success.)
Physical needs such as food and water are not weaknesses but necessities because without them one would simply die
The needs that would qualify as weak would be psychological for some of them are not actually necessary for survival
It is a more positive form of strength with regard to actively pursuing goals that give purpose or meaning to ones life
The need to have purpose or meaning is psychological rather than physical but is still a need that it is better to have
I agree that our potential/ability varies through time. It goes down (e.g. when we run out of nutrients) and it goes up (e.g. when we replenish these missing nutrients.) And I agree that it ultimately disappears completely. We all die in the end and death is a very low degree of potential/ability – you can do very little when you’re dead.
But . . . need does not always coincide with weakness. When you’re very hungry, you feel weak and you are weak. Your potential drops. But not every need is accompanied by low potential. Not all degeneration is a gradual process. Some degeneration is abrupt. And not only that, some degeneration is merely expected to happen in the future rather than actively happening in the now.
Suppose that we predict that the Earth will be hit by an asteriod at some relatively close point in future. What happens? You feel the need to do something about it. You are not weak at the time of feeling this need. You are as strong as you usually are. You are merely predicting that you will be weak – in fact, that you will be dead – if you don’t do something about it. Furthermore, it is your current potential that determines how much you can do in order to prevent the undesirable from happening. If you’re weak, you won’t be able to do much about it. If you’re strong, on the other hand, it might be just a routine to you.
What sense does it make to say that you’re weak if you can prevent the negative event from happening? In fact, that’s precisely the manner in which strength is demonstrated. By successful defensive action. Simply being passive, which is what it means to be free of needs, is not a good strategy.
Who are you asking? And the query “why” has two forms; “for what purpose” and “by what cause”.
In general, life seeks anentropic harmony (surrounding itself with what is compatible to itself) yet is limited, thus ends up having the qualities it has; growing, multiplying, and perpetuating.
I’m looking at it from a continuous temporal sense, as a continuous process. The word strong is not a good term because it does not apply to all situations equally. I could could come up with many examples where the word strong would not apply, especially if example also involves the use of technology. (Maybe capable is a more appropriate word here).
Why did man develop tools and technology, the same one that he uses to achieve goals, like stopping an asteroid in your example? Was it not because he is weak? And I’m speaking on a more fundamental level here. And does technology, then, make a man strong because he can do more things? No, I say nothing has changed in any fundamental way. If anything, I would say that a man, unawares, is becoming weaker as he’s becoming even more dependent on his technology (while thinking he’s stronger).
It was a follow up open question. My view is that it was life’s “incapability” (or weakness if you will) to keep up with the entropy that forced it into sexual reproduction. Death of all individual life forms is another evidence of this. As a process, life struggles to keep up, on genetic, or molecular level, and has to continuously “update” itself. In that sense, life is not some willfull independent force, standing on its own, as some may perceive it, but quite dependent reactionary phenomenon.
I wouldn’t even say it seeks, but reacts.
Would life exist if there was no entropy?
Could you agree that if it causes good, then it wasn’t evil?
In the same sense (although merely semantics), if it causes strength, it wasn’t a weakness.
Why didn’t the Buddhists develop technology? They perceived no need for it. Their capabilities and success was their weakness. Those who were incapable and suffering developed technology to overcome not merely their suffering, but a great deal more.
If not for the “weaknesses” in the European peoples, their current strengths would never have developed. So were they really weaknesses or deceptive strengths? If you were in a position to change their abilities, would have them be like the Buddhists or more incapable such that they developed?
Over-mothering denies a child the ability to develop by providing for too much success (it also creates spoiled whiners). The strength of having a protector mother can be a more serious weakness (the same with governments).
And if there was no entropy, the entire universe wouldn’t exist. Entropy is required for stability, harmony, and anentropy. There must be something to motivate and/or pursue.
Entropy increases over time until a system can no longer perform any more work as there is no more available energy to do
so. When the Universe reaches maximum entropy heat death shall occur. And one can think of biological entropy in humans
and animals increasing over time until they can no longer perform any more work and so that is the point at which they die
That part is just a fairy tale. The universe can never run out of energy.
I wouldn’t call that entropy as much as over-developing complexity. The animal body uses up its resources in its attempt to find anentropic harmony after which it can no longer reconfigure or defend itself against ambient entropic forces. Animals are overcome by their environment. Through offspring, they “try, try again”.
He developed tools and technology in order to achieve his goals e.g. to prevent undesirable consequences, such as death, from taking place. He developed them because he was capable and not because he was incapable. If man had been incapable he wouldn’t have developed tools and technology, and so, he wouldn’t have attained his goals.
It is often said that man invented gun because he couldn’t fight with his own body. And this might be true. What is certainly true is that people who are physically weak can benefit immensely from such an invention. However, none of that alters the fact that technological inventions are a sign of capability.
If you create a monster and that monster devours you is that a sign of capability or a sign of incapability? It is both, right? The act of creating a living monster demonstrates an extraordinary ability. The unwanted consequence, however, demonstrates a lack of predictive ability. You didn’t predict how dangerous would be to create a living monster, so you didn’t take any precautionary measures.
My point is that goals can be subordinated to any kind of higher goal we can think of. You are insisting that goals must serve to avoid a state of weakness. Whatever an organism does it does it in order to avoid weakness. My point is that an organism can do things for any reason at all. It does not have to pursue strength. It can pursue weakness, for example. Your organisms want to avoid weakness. I tell you, there can be, and there are, organisms that want to avoid strength.
My point goes further than that. My point is that goals do not have to be subordinated to some higher goal. Some actions that we perform we perform for their own sake. By asking “why does one have to make goals in the first place?” you are insisting that every goal must be subordinated to some other goal. That’s not true. That’s merely a human ideal, i.e. something that humans want, not reality itself.
Continuity, in general, is something that humans want. Reality isn’t necessarily continuous/repetitive.
“Where does the light go when you turn the switch off?” a child asks.
How do you answer?