now the next part or aspect of my understanding lies
in the concept of needs and desires……
for example, we act from our needs and desires…
motion is from either needing or desire…
I say, I need food, and I actually need food,
wanting food isn’t a desire, a choice, I must have
food or I will die…
but I might say, I need a couch… needing a couch isn’t really a need,
it is a choice…I need a couch really means, I desire a couch…
it is a choice… I don’t need a couch to survive… it is a choice
much of our actions come from this need or desire…
but we have confused need and desire…
one might say, I need sex… but the fact is, you desire sex…
it is a choice and thus is optional…you won’t die if you don’t get sex…
most everything single thing a human does is based on either
need or desire…in fact, need or desire drives everything we do…
but we can’t tell the difference between a need and a desire…
hence, therein lies the problem, perhaps the major problem of
humanity…our inability to see the difference between need
and desire…
earlier in our existence, up to perhaps the first world war…
we could see the difference between need and desire…
see this difference between need and desire in the
document of the “declaration of independence”
“we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are
created equal”
is that a need or is that a desire?
“that they are endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
life is certainly a need…no choice… but liberty and the pursuit of
happiness? these are certainly not, not needs, for we can live without
liberty or the pursuit of happiness…so, this idea that we “need”
liberty or the pursuit of happiness is false… they are desires…
nothing more…we can continue existence without liberty or without
happiness… we have a choice…but we have no choice in our need
for life…
for that need is hardwire into us by evolution… we cannot escape
our need for continued existence, life…
so where does that leave the other two desires, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness?
I would argue that liberty or as we moderns might say, freedom,
is a necessary part of process of becoming…to go from
being to becoming requires freedom…we have choice in
who we become… we have no choice in the operation of
entropy which takes us from order to disorder……
we can fight entropy, that is a need, again hardwire into us
by evolution…existence requires energy… that is a basic
component of existence, energy…and to become “who I am”
requires energy… I must devote resources to becoming “who I am”…
and becoming is about us fulfilling our possibilities……
the stage of self-actualization is a choice, not a need……
the stage of bodily needs, the lowest level of Maslow
pyramid, is the primary need of human beings… we must
have food, water, shelter, education, health care to survive…
we have a need for love, but it isn’t a bodily need, but we
have a need for esteem and safety/security and love, but those “needs”
are emotional, psychological needs… which to a human being is
as important as any bodily need…
to reach my full potential as a human being, I must have love,
I must have esteem, I must have safety/security…
to achieve my self-actualization level, I must fulfill my lower needs,
be it bodily or psychological…
so, the Buddha is wrong… we can have desires as long as we
can tell the difference between our desires and our needs…
I desire information, that is a desire, not a need, but
much of what I do is driven by my desire for information…
and I must have love, that is a basic psychological need of human
needs… that is not just a desire… but a emotional need which
is just as necessary as any need for food or water or shelter…
the goal is to become self-actualized… which means I attempt
to fulfill my possibilities, to fulfill my potential as a human being…
desires and needs are engaged with to reach my final goal of
self-actualization… I desire to become self-actualized…
which is a worthy goal and a worthy destination…
so needs and desires are just steps along the way to reach what
we really should be reaching which is to become self-actualized……
so, we can desire and we can have needs as long as we put them into
context as steps to the final/ultimate goal of self-actualization…
I don’t need to negate or extinguish my needs or my desires…
I can use them as steps to the real goal…
as long as I can tell the difference between my needs
and my desires, I should be ok… but I have to
keep myself in check or perhaps better said,
I must keep aware of my needs and what are my desires…
these ongoing battle between needs and desires, has lasted
the entire human existence… what do I need as oppose to
what do I desire? individually as well as collectively, we must
become aware of the difference between our needs and our
desires…do we really need to invade Iraq? or do we really need
to have troops in countries like Afghanistan?
no, we don’t need it at all, but we desire it… to
maintain our desire for power and wealth and
fame… but to survive, to survive as a need, do
we need troops in Iraq or Afghanistan?
NO, no we do not…
this need to excise power is really desire and ego,
not a bodily need like food or water or shelter…
we can better understand more of what we do if, if we
can better keep track of our actions in terms of ego/desire
and needs……
war is ego/desire… we don’t need to invade others to allow us to
physically survive… we do so from ego/desire…
peace is a choice and done so from need… we need peace to
be able to achieve our goals of self-actualization, both individually
and collectively…
can we survive without peace? as we can see from history, take the
Greek Peloponnesian war for example, that war so weakened
Athens that it fell… war continued is an recipe for disaster for
any city/state/nation… because it weakens a country to the point
where the country/state/city can no longer function…
if we want to achieve our needs, not ego/desire of war, but
our needs for bodily and emotional needs, we must make choices
of peace… not war……
the goal becomes self-actualization, not to achieve “life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness”…
and this new goal forces us to reevaluate what it means to be human,
forces us to reevaluate what it means to be an American…
we are and we must become…….
we have needs and we have desires……
let us reevaluate what both mean…given our goals…
Kropotkin