When one speaks of wants and needs one often finds the self finding difficulty in distinguishing between the two, typically faltering when one tries to classify items that one considers to be integral to one’s life, the items that one cannot readily imagine living without.
However like many other concepts one’s wants and needs can be categorized and distinguished from each other upon different criteria. To seek to do so is also to seek to take one step closer to understanding the relationship of humans with the finite resources extractable from the natural environment around them, but such shall be dealt with in more detail in other fragments.
For the moment let us take a brief look at how a persons needs and wants associate with each other. Taken simply one’s needs represent ‘things’ that are essential to human survival and hence one would not be able to live without. On the other hand one’s wants represents virtually anything deemed to be beyond necessity.
So how does this relate to the individual? How do one’s needs and wants effect the self? Conceptually-speaking one’s essential needs represent the minimum requirements to sustain a basic existence and if such were to be graphically superimposed upon the self then it would be to the individual as one’s clothing are to the self, close-fitting and shaped to suite one’s needs. On the other hand one’s wants, ones desires, represent pretty much anything beyond this to forge far beyond the inner threshold of one’s needs and out to the stretch of one’s conceivable imagination. In terms of superimposition, if needs are to the self as clothes are to the self then one’s wants could be relative as a house to the self, a country to the self or a universe to the self.
The divide is clearly etched but shall be expanded upon in good time. ^_^
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