How do we distinguish what we want from what we need?
Shades of existential gray are evident in our pursuit of meaningful lives. How do we differentiate between necessity and luxury? How do we distinguish what we want from what we need? And are these distinctions important?
When I began the ongoing process of walking away from the omnicide of industrial civilization, I felt I had no choice. My inner voice overrode outer culture. I have subsequently come to realize that most people born into this set of living arrangements are literally and figuratively incapable of making a similar choice. Distinguishing between needs and wants, between necessity and luxury, is hardly clear.
Occasionally we turn to wise elders in our attempts infuse our lives with meaning. Kurt Vonnegut often wrote, in response to the question about meaning, that we’re here to fart around. His son Mark, between the loony bin and Harvard Medical School, responded to the question, “Why are we here?” with the following comment: “We are here to help each other through this, whatever this is.”
I love Mark Vonnegut’s response, but it fails to acknowledge that service to others is important and a trap. Service to others is no longer virtuous when the entrapment includes self-inflicted harm (including emotional or psychological suffering).
As the Buddha pointed out more than two millennia ago, life is suffering. Do we have an obligation to minimize suffering? Does that obligation extend to our individual selves, as well as to other humans? Does it extend to non-human species?
Arthur Schopenhauer famously defined happiness as the alleviation of suffering, implying a temporary condition. The pursuit of happiness — from Schopenhauer’s perspective, the alleviation of suffering — is a right guaranteed by the founding document of the United States, but I’ve no idea why it’s guaranteed or if it stops at the alleviation of suffering. If the alleviation of suffering qualifies as happiness, then it seems wearing shoes that are two sizes too small is a great strategy for producing happiness, if only at the end of the day when the shoes are removed from one’s feet.
If happiness goes beyond the alleviation of suffering, perhaps it includes joy. But the notion of such an idea drags into the discussion the notion of documentation, hence measurement. How do we measure joy? How do we know when we’ve stumbled upon it? And if joy is meritorious, even at the expense of suffering by another, how do we balance the existential books?
Consider, for example, a single example for the Abrahamic religions (aka patriarchy): marriage. Do we have an obligation to minimize the pain when a monogamous relationship becomes personally painful, or even a matter of indifference (i.e., lacking daily joy)? Contemporary culture suggests we muddle through, in sickness and health, until death. And then, the ultimate personal endpoint solves the problem of suffering.
–Photo: JorgeSantos72/Flickr
See Also:
Questioning Culture: The Long Littleness of Life
Addressing the absurdity of the suffering of monogamy; ugh, why do we ‘allow it/choose it’? We’ve heard about it, read about it, witnessed it and been warned of it, YET we signup for it and inevitably ‘find’ ourselves there! Are we not intelligent and creative enough creatures to outwit it? Can we not head it off at the pass, keep one step ahead or recreate it? Surely we’re not THAT lazy…there must be someone out of 7B of us to figure this out, yes?
Perhaps if we used the word “fulfilled” rather than “happiness”, then we can bring the discussion to a more earthy level. Simple pleasures can fulfill us, such as caring for a child or others in need. Doing a creative and new task can fulfill our desire to be creative and useful. I am not sure why you mentioned the example of marriage since the divorce rate in the Western world hovers around 50%, but, yes, marriage and other relationships can be fulfilling and enhancing of enjoyment of life and have humane and social bonding purposes that can make life fulfilling… Read more »
Tks again for the essay. I am enjoying that the ones in this series are short.
Happiness is overrated. It is an error that our western culture made us all believe and become obsessed with being happy as life’s main goal when in fact it might have been more useful to learn better how to live without it, as in my opinion most of us only are happy during brief intervals.
At this point it seems more pressing for us to stop producing ever more sources, and receptors, of pain than to put the ‘creation’ of happiness at the top of our global priority list, or on the bucket list of those who can afford the time and cash to pursue it as though it were some sort of trade-able commodity. After quelling the cascade of new pains, we might consider working on eliminating preexisting pain (assuming we don’t go extinct first). Realistically, this pursuit of existential anesthesia would go on endlessly (assuming the unlikely immortality of Homo sapiens sapiens). Pain… Read more »
“Do we have an obligation to minimize the pain when a monogamous relationship becomes personally painful, or even a matter of indifference (i.e., lacking daily joy)?” A loophole perhaps comes from the Serenity Prayer – the part about having the wisdom to change the things we can would indicate that if it is within your power to change your misery-inducing situation – in this instance being handcuffed to someone who is not fulfilling one’s needs – the only merciful thing for both parties would be be dissolve such a chain so that each can improve on their lot and grow… Read more »
The Buddha also said “Save yourself and you save the world”
So, you could take that as license to end your own suffering first.
Kinda like putting the oxygen mask on you first when on a crashing plane.
And then it appears to be true that many people find relief from their own pain by helping others, even if only to get their attention focused on something different than their own.
Also many spiritual centered people find fulfillment in giving of themselves, putting others before them.
Actually, the Buddha’s First Noble Truth is not “Life is suffering”, but more accurately “There is suffering”, or even more simply and succinctly “Suffering is”. The word in original Pali is “dukkha”, which translates as “incapable of satisfying” or “not capable of bearing anything”. It’s not so much a blanket definition of life itself, as a statement about a common psychological condition. And the way through and out is described in the Fourth Noble Truth and its Eightfold Path, for those interested. A similar misapprehension is probably at work with the notion of applying some metric to the experience of… Read more »