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%NEEDS VS DESIRES 841214
We are often taught what we need. Businessmen teach
us to need their products. Service providers teach us to
need their services. Religious leaders teach us to need
their powerful connections with God. Mobsters teach us to
need their protection. Politicians teach us to need their
leadership. Entertainers teach us to need their
diversions. Pleasure peddlers teach us to need their
services. How are we to know what-we-desire-because-we-
have-been-taught-to-desire-it; and what-is-essential-to-us
as-unique-creatures-to-be-with-integrity? To what extent
do our desires get created to fulfill other people's
desires which they also have been taught to have? What
genuine needs are neglected in the process of creating and
fulfilling artificial desires? What difference does it
make?
A community disintegrates when essential needs are
not met because its members are too busy creating and
fulling desires. People are too distracted to prudently
take time and resources to the meeting of genuine human
needs for: food, clothing, shelter, affection,
dialogue, health and integrity maintenance, etc.
Desires which generate disintegration are not genuine
needs, no matter how strongly felt and agreed upon. It
is not easy, however, to sort out which desires generate
disintegration. Some people desire that others conform
to proper behavior. Others desire to be creative.
Conflict between the two desires often leads to
disintegration. Whose desires are disintegrative? It is
not clear to the participants, especially if they do not
have integrative values and ideals. The fault lies in not
having integrative values and ideals, rather than in
affirming the other less essential values and ideals.
The fanatic affirmation of ideals to the extent of
alienation---is not an integrative affirmation and so
leads to disintegration. Disintegrative desires lack
the integrative power of a profound dedication to seeking
ways to facilitate open and honest dialogue which
builds communities by unification through mutual
awareness. Without unification a community lacks unity
and is not with-unity, not a community. When people are
not open and honest with each other they are not a true
community. A fearful collection of people is not a
community. Desires which generate fear---disintegrate
communities. The desire of some people to control the
behavior and desires of other people---generates fear on
the part of those who fear they will become the victims
of such manipulative and coercive controls.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty
(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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