B10 Basic Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

The way you experience a need in childhood is pretty much the same as you experience it now.

OR

The way you experience a need can change drastically as the means to resolve it changes.

Anankelogy

Every natural need compels you to do something to ensure you can continue to function. Your needs either resolve or you cannot function as well. The lower your capacity to function, the more pain as your body warns of the threat.

You either fully resolve a need or partially resolve a need or merely ease the pain of a need or suffer the mounting pain of a need.

1. The more you can fully resolve your needs, the closer you can reach peakfunction.

2. The more you partially ease your needs, the more you linger in symfunction.

3. The more you cope with pain of unresolved needs, the deeper you’re stifled in dysfunction.

4. The more you suffer too many unresolved needs, the further you slip into misfunction.

Some of your needs can fully resolve. The more you can access nutritious food and clean water, the healthier you can be.

Some of your needs only partially resolve. The more you must settle for shallow friends, the more you feel tolerably isolated.

Some of your needs can only be placated by pain coping mechanisms. The more repeated trauma weighs you down, the less you can function.

Sometimes you cannot do anything about a painful need. The longer you must suffer a critical need, the closer you fall into danger of long-term damage or death.

The more you adjust how you address such needs, the more your experience of such needs can change. They typically evolve to adjust to your real-life situations. And to accommodate your real-life limitations.

Consider how technology changes the way you experience your needs. Your recent ancestors had to wash all of their clothes by hand, and make time to prepare and cook food over a hot stove. They performed many difficult chores for each other. They also tended to enjoy greater family cohesion than you likely do now. Consider how a life full of comfort is a life not fully lived.

Need-response

Anankelogy cites the pattern of rising and falling ideologies that shape how we resolve many of our needs.

1. Dynamic phase. We discover a fresh way to address old problems. We resolve our needs in a dynamic new way. New ideas are welcomed.

2. Dogmatic phase. We settle on this new normal. We routinize this recently revised approach. We start to resist new ideas a threat to our new establishment.

3. Disillusion phase. We grow increasingly discontent with its shortcomings. We see it doesn’t fit some of our needs. We start seeking alternatives.

4. Distinction phase. We give up on most if not all of it. We either go back to previous ways or look for something new. Some of us even denounce the “new way”.

New ideas often get watered down to appeal to as many as possible. Contentious specifics get dropped to favor generalizations we all or most can agree upon. But overgeneralized answers overlook many specific situations, leaving many needs underserved. Discontent of the old plants seeds of something new, something else to later provoke our disgust.

Our needs evolve when there are sufficient resources accessible. To ensure such access, ideas often pop up as a “critical version” that remains aware of its limitations. For example, capitalism promises to incentivize production, but cannot promise its produced resources to everyone. Socialism promises to give access where needed, but cannot promise a robust supply.

The earlier carefully thought-out version tends to morph into later popularly generalized version, or ‘popgen’ for short. We find it easier to react to the pain instead of responding to our needs to remove cause for pain. We generalize for relief, trapping ourselves in pain.

Our experience of needs then evolves. Sometimes we develop improved ways to resolve them. Too often, we regress into reacting to the pain of our unresolved needs. We change in less healthy ways as our capacity to function declines. Then prioritize relief, sinking into dysfunction.

Reactive Problem

We “solved” many of our old problems with too much generalizing. We threw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. In the process, we frequently created new problems.

No, we don’t resolve our needs in the same way anymore. Sadly, we partially resolve far more of our needs than fully resolve them. Perhaps that is how it’s always been. We often trade one problem for another, stretching our capacities to comprehend and solve them. Modernity merely changes what kind of problems we suffer.

The rise of science dispelled the prevalence of superstition. Then the decline of religion came with the loss of our monocultural community. The rise of technology allows us to be more productive than ever. And to remain more disconnected than ever.

Anankelogy has a word for our routine of staying disconnected from each other: normative alienation. We now rely on impersonal rules and public policies to attend to our needs in ways they never can. Laws themselves can never address our specific needs. You have to go against the grain of law to fully resolve your needs.

Responsive Solution

Responsivism replaces normative alienation with dynamic engaging to resolve more needs. And replaces avoidant adversarialism with engaging mutuality. to resolve more needs. The more needs we resolve, the more problems we solve.

Political activism may inspire desirable policy changes, but usually falls tragically short of addressing the needs on all sides. Policy changes that serves the needs of some at the cost of respecting the needs of others naturally sets up the next political conflict.

Responsivism replaces this objectification of each other with a more mutually engaging climate. You recognize the needs of others are as important as your own needs. You encourage more love and less outrage or hate.

You recognize what you reactively resist you ultimately reinforce, as opposition to their unchosen need provokes their defenses. Just as their blind opposition provokes your defensiveness. Responsivism replaces this futile exercise with mutual respect for each other’s unchosen needs.

Responsivism encourages us to resolve needs fully and promptly without hindering others from fully and promptly resolving their needs. We turn from provoking conflicts to encouraging better understanding of each other’s needs. Along the way, we learn to love a lot more.

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:

• Certainly some needs, like breathing oxygen, never changes.

• I doubt if there ever was a time when someone could fully resolve all of their needs.

• I can imagine a scenario of regressive changes redirected by improved opportunities.

• It seems we can manage alright with less needs resolving as long as we can avoid the pain.

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.