This is a continuation of our consideration of ‘Of needs and wants‘. When one thinks of one’s needs one may typically take one of several reductionist approaches. From these approaches one could come to the basics as presumed from the economic standpoint, including air, food & water, clothing and shelter. Yet instead of leaving it at just this let us take a couple of approaches that lead to similar but not so similar conclusions in order to perhaps gain a deeper insight and perception of what one’s needs truly are.

One may be survalistic whereby one takes one’s perspective of the typical individual and progressively removes items and privilages in their lives until such an activity comes to the point where any further reduction would potentially threaten the very survival of such an individual, being no longer of self-sustainance. When it comes down to the crunch one essentially needs only a relatively meager diet of food & water and of course a reasonably good air quality to breath. All else is less essential.

One may also be functionalist whereby one takes one’s perspective of the essential functions that impact upon the well-being of an individual and again use the reductionist approach within each such area until any further reduction from any of the areas would potentially threaten the collapse of that function pertaining to the hypothetical individual concerned.

A couple of further approaches could be based upon these just mentioned with the difference of an altered and more relative set of criteria. Such would seem like a very sensible approach (considering the economic rule of diminishing returns where, in the process of consuming multiple units of a single item, each subsequent unit consumed provides less ’satisfaction’ than the previous unit. You may try this out with a number of bars of your favourite brand of chocolate ^_~) and the criteria would set a greater leeway to the hypothetical individual concerned.

Hence, through the exercise of several complimentary perceptions, one would be able to distinguish between the (hypothetical) individual’s absolute needs and the individual’s relative needs, the former interested in the minimum for survival and the latter interested in the minimum to avoid misery.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is filed under A matter of perspective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.