The Nature of Wants

Think of your “ wants.”

You want to breathe/ survive
You want to eat
You want to love and be loved
You want to provide for your family
You want to be secure
You want clothes and a roof over your head
You want to do something significant with your life
You want to have fun
Etc.

Having these desires, you experience the lack of fulfilling them with various degrees of pain, depending upon the depth and intensity of the “want.” Of course, you can also suffer when, for example, you seek to satiate your need for food by eating 2 pizzas and downing 2 pictures of beer.

Interestingly, suffering is often the only avenue for satiating some of your wants. You see this in toiling for food, sacrificing today’s wants for more important future wants, and so forth. There is no way around this kind of suffering. You sacrifice for the want or you fail to meet the need. And herein lies the rub for many people, especially for those people that think suffering is an unnatural state of affairs for us humans.

Tragically, many of our politicians seek to persuade their constituents that they can magically provide for their wants with no chocolate mess. “You need not suffer! We shall provide for all of your wants,” by which they mean that they will cause others to suffer loss (via confiscatory taxes) for the sake of the “needy.”

The problem these politicians are seeking to solve is inequality.

The fact is that some people do better at providing for their wants than others. While this is often because of education, intellectual and psychological capacities, willingness to take risks, and hard work, it also is often due to good fortune, such as being reared in a stable home where you are loved. The question is what do we do about the inequalities? Some people think that it is the government’s responsibility to do away with inequalities. The problem, however, is that, historically, when governments intervene, they end up causing more inequality. Sadly, I believe that our government does not think in terms of helping to create more and more prosperity, but only to see to it that everyone suffers equally.

I don’t think there is anyway around suffering. It is obvious that God has decided this is the way of life for us humans. Why God did this is a conundrum that theologians and philosophers have been wrestling with since people had time to think. Whatever your particular belief is here as to the “why” of suffering, the fact remains that it is a part of all human experience.

From the Judeo-Christian perspective, after the Fall of Man, it is said that, from then on, we humans would toil by the sweat of our brow. Eating (providing for our wants) requires sweat, which, to some degree, is synonymous with suffering. The question then becomes what is the best way (the most just way) for the greatest amount of people to provide for their wants? The history of the United States and the astounding wealth it has created tells us that the answer is the free market economy. The history of fascist or socialist economies also bears this out. Or so I believe …

There is still another problem we must face as we grapple with the nature of wants, and that is how unique they are to each individual.

Consider the human stomach. We all need to eat. However, the diet of a man in southern Sudan would send me to the hospital! Moreover, the woman in France who loves eating snails looks down on what I consider to be fine dining. Go figure. So, age, sex, climate, and culture lead us to meet our needs for food—and most every other need—in differing ways.

Moreover, not only do we experience our needs in unique ways, we also experience a progression of our needs and wants. For example, the food that once satisfied, no longer does the trick. I don’t want to survive on a diet of Sugar Smacks and PB&Js, thank-you-very-much. Once I am aware of the diversity of foods available to me, I want more than what I enjoyed earlier.

The man who drives a Chevy wants a Beemer

The woman who carries a Tignanello wants a Coach purse

The child who loved McDonald’s hamburgers now will only eat at Five Guys

The Kenyan who lives in a hut wants a brick house with a tin roof

And so forth.

It is because of the nature of ever-progressing wants, that we humans are constantly creating, designing, and marketing better and different products for consumption. Of course, the competition to fulfill these wants continually drives the cost downward. Cool, eh?

Yesterday’s computer is too slow.

Today’s automobile has an A/C that is not cold enough, the seats make me sweat, and I want Run Flat Tires!

I don’t want to limit my enjoyment of music to car and house; I want to take it with me wherever I go.

Contrary to those who are telling us that such desires are a manifestation of a greedy consumerism that has destroyed not only our economy but also the lives of those who are at the bottom of the food chain, I say NOT SO FAST! The soul-killer we should fear most is not the individual wants of private citizens but the overreaching power of governments that insist on telling these citizens what they should want, as well as what they will be permitted to have.

Yes, I believe that greed and consumerism corrupts. However, I do not believe it is the place of political governments to play Jiminy Cricket, High Priest, or Mommy. Other than keeping force and fraud out of the market place, it should stand-down, leaving individual citizens free to seek to meet their wants as they each think best.

Once the government begins managing the economy – deciding which wants are permissible and which are not – far more people will be left “wanting” than existed in a free market economy, where each person is free to pursue his or her own happiness.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009