B09 Basic Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

All your behaviors result from rationally chosen decisions you make.

OR

All your behaviors ensure you continue to function and minimize pain.

Anankelogy

Everything you do aligns with your continuing existence. Otherwise you would cease to exist. Or would not exist well.

If you jump off a high cliff to certain death, you won’t be serving your needs anymore. Everything you do aligns with what your life requires to continue. You eat to continue existing. You avoid harmful accidents to continue existing. You seek necessary help from others to continue existing.

All your behaviors relate to what will help you continue functioning. You don’t even have to think about it. Your feelings tap into the memory of your experiences for how to ease each familiar need. Newer needs create new emotionally charged memories.

Your beliefs inform your feelings on how you experience each need. Your behaviors attempting to ease your needs shape your beliefs, as you note what helps or doesn’t help to ease your discomfort. For example, as you get defensive in an argument (behavior) to feeling threatened (belief), you unlikely empathize with the affected unchosen needs of those with whom you disagree.

The more you feel threatened, the more you feel you must act to protect yourself from harm or from pain. Any of your actions at odds with your wellbeing will likely result in pain.  All your actions go along with what you believe is good for your wellbeing.

Need-response

Need-response appreciates how your wellbeing can be no better than your behaviors serving your needs. If everything you require to function remains consistently accessible, you will do fine. Most of us are not that fortunate.

We all must act to ease our needs when resources are not readily available. Fair enough when what is needed soon becomes available. Unfortunately, we all too often become accustomed to situations where we cannot fully resolve our needs.

We develop behaviors that help us get by. We behave the best we can with what is at hand. We often form bad habits. We cope with the pain of our declining capacity to function.

Reactive Problem

The less you can access the means to resolve your needs, the more drawn to alternatives that can at least ease the discomfort. If too busy to sit down for a healthy meal, for example, you settle for some processed food. Or you feel accepted by social media “friends” for something you posted when you cannot find someone to talk to in person.

When such alternatives seem elusive, you likely opt for something that only eases the pain. You settle for a substitute that cannot resolve your need. For example, when you try to satisfy your hunger with junk food. Or you talk endlessly to yourself when desperate for conversation and feeling no one will listen to you.

Such experiences normalize your behavior away from fully resolving your needs. You get used to the idea of coping with the pain. Your addictive routines become so familiar that you cannot imagine your life without them. The less you can fully function because the fewer of your needs resolve, the more you react to the steady flow of pain.

Responsive Solution

Need-response incentivizes greater responsiveness to each other’s needs. Alienation gets replaced by engagement. Mutual defensiveness by mutual supports. Outrage by understanding.

We address the elephant in the room, which is avoidant adversarialism. We shift from the norms of avoiding the discomforts of vulnerably relating to each other to a new norm of engaging each other’s unchosen needs. We shift from the norms of adversarially trying to win over others to a new norm of mutuality that affirms each other’s unchosen needs.

Much of the ills plaguing society can be stripped down to this problem of avoidant adversarialism. We now accept as normal how isolated we’ve become from each other. Need-response cuts through this alienation to forge new connections with the power of love.

The more we can regrow our social connections, the easier to connect generosity with neediness. The better we can serve each other’s needs, the more our own needs can resolve. The more our needs can fully resolve, the more our behaviors will naturally take care of themselves. That’s how powerful love can truly be.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• What about rude behaviors, destructive behaviors, sadistic behaviors, even violent behaviors?

• What role can and does the law play in guiding our need-shaping behaviors?

• What if I violated someone’s presumed privacy to ask them what they specifically need of me?

• Sometimes not behaving as expected can be a problem, such as a sin of omission.

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.