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Properly resolving needs
- Steph Turner
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Love as honoring the needs of others as one's own
Which do you think is best?
We must regard laws as the highest standard for our behavior.
OR
Love serves as a higher standard for our behavior over mere law.
Anankelogy puts our needs under the microscope. And examines how we address our needs. Need-response as applied anankelogy looks at the results. It finds the motive of love more powerful and legitmizing than the lesser power of law.
How you address needs predicts wellness outcomes. Consider these seven options. The last unleashes our potential to love one another more, to honor the needs of others as our own.
You can address your painful needs by chiefly relieving your pain in ways that impose upon the needs of others. By "improperly", we mean antisocial.
If I attempt to relieve the pain of feeling insulted by you by hitting you in return, then I am "improperly relieving my pain". You may hit me back, which ensures I suffer more pain. Besides, my need to feel respected will persist unresolved.
You can address your painful needs by chiefly relieving your pain in ways that avoid imposing upon others. By "properly", we mean prosocial.
You could drink plenty of alcohol to numb your emotional pain, for example, but stay home alone instead of venturing out to drive. You "properly relieve your pain" by not risking the safety of others in the process. But your pain persists.
Whether improperly or properly relieving your pain, your wellness outcomes likely results in a level of dysfunction. You find you must prioritize relieving your pain of your unmet needs. You risk becoming addicted to "substitutes" that can only numb your pain. They do little to nothing to improve your wellbeing. Your ability to function remains compromised, leaving you trapped in perpetual pain. At least until you can resolve those needs.
You can seek to ease your needs in ways that in some way impose something on others. You partially resolve your needs, but in a way that impedes others from resolving their need. Fully resolving your needs could be out of reach for you.
You indulge in pornography, for example, to placate your burning desire for intimacy. You ignore the fact that the young women in the video was obviously coerced into performing acts for your viewing pleasure.
You seek to ease your needs in ways that does not impose on others. You partially resolve your need, but in a way that only negatively impacts yourself. Avoiding any harm to others is noble, but can trick you into rationalizing your doing alright.
You consume plenty of junk food, for example, when you cannot make enough time to prepare a healthy meal. You force yourself to fulfill all of your social commitments, despite your declining level of energy.
Whether improperly or properly easing your needs, your wellness outcomes likely results in a level of symfunction. You find you must prioritize easing your unmet needs. The more you rely on "alternatives" that partially eases your needs, the more you risk slipping into a symfunction trap. Which becomes for many a gateway into dysfunction.
You can try to resolve your needs fully in a way that hinders others from resolving their needs. You momentarily get to restore yourself to full functioning, but at the involuntary expense of others.
If I fully quench my thirst by stealing a bottle of water from you, then I am "improperly resolving my need" for water. Sure, I can get back to fully functioning. But at the cost of your ability to restore full wellness.
You can attempt to resolve your needs fully in a way that does not hinder others from resolving their needs. This serves as the best approach, the best way to address your needs.
If I fully resolve a need I am experiencing, and my actions or inactions does not harm you in any way, then I am "properly resolving my need". This can be broken down into four degrees, each characterized by a prized metal.
A. The bronze standard - Your actions to resolve your needs fully mildly inconveniences others. E.g., while at at a restaurant, you carefully select and purchase only the food your body requires, which forces some to wait a little longer in line.
B. The silver standard - Your actions to resolve your needs fully has no impact upon others. E.g., you invest your personal time staying in shape with healthy physical exercise.
C. The gold standard - Your actions to resolve your needs fully actually helps others. E.g., you promptly shovel snow from your sidewalk after a snow storm, which allows passersby to not risk slippin on ice as they must walk past your house.
D. The platinum standard - Your actions to resolve your needs fully helps everyone. E.g., you fully resolve your need for meaning in life when sacrificing it to save all life on earth from an impending diaster only you can stop.
Need-response asserts the higher standard of properly resolving needs. The more you can prioritize respecting the inflexible needs of others as your own, the more you can inspire others to respect your inflexible needs. Not always, of course. But with sufficient skill and grace, such "social love" takes us much farther than typical modes of privileged selfishness. Need-response encourages and incentivizes the development of such love in us all.
Whether improperly or properly resolving your needs fully, your wellness outcomes likely results in a level of peakfunction. You prioritize promptly resolving your needs fully. You enjoy access to "primary" resources that evolved to restore you to full functioning capacity. You do not need to be wealthy to reliably access such primary resources. But economic security correlates with sustainability of a peakfunction level.
Without such a love-centered commitment to honor the needs of others as our own, we easily fall back on reliance upon laws to tell us how to behave. Authority enforcing laws relies blindly on external motives. Love nurtures sustainable internal motives.
The internal motive of love can outlast the external motivation by laws or authority. Need-response nurtures our underutilized potential to be more loving to each other. The power of love transcends the supposed supremacy of law.
Need-response can complement efforts by law enforcement authorities to improve our responsiveness to each other's vulnerable needs. Or need-response can compete with legal authorities by outperforming their legalism. The more we can properly resolve needs with the power of love, the less we fall prey to legalistic tryanny.
Need-response holds us all accountable to honoring each other's inflexible needs, including legal authorities. Need-response asserts this as the higher standard of love. And dares to challenge the legitimacy of any authority whose imposing actions correlate with poor wellness outcomes, such as anxiety and depression.
Wherever law seeks to reign supreme, need-response challenges the results. And dares to assert the supremacy of love as a standard higher than law. Anankelogy asserts that there is no greater authority than resolving needs with love. Need-response lets our untapped love reign supreme.
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