Need and Neediness
Need is often seen as the basis of morality. This is in regards to the altruist ethic, where helping the needy is the primary moral issue. However, the term “need” is used in many contexts that may not be used to refer to the needy. A person needs a car or they need a drink. Here, the term “need” is used to refer to something that has to happen in order for something else to be satisfied. The person needs a car in order to get to work (but they don’t need it in terms of necessity, they need it out of convenience, since it would be too hard to walk or bike to work). These intermediary needs, even though they don’t constitute true neediness or suffering, are nonetheless given moral status as neediness; they become moral imperatives. From this, the purview of the concern for others propagates to include every minor thing that, in some way, can be termed as a need. This misuse of the word “need” coupled with assuming the government should care for our needs creates totalitarianism. Holding the ideas of need and neediness separate is necessary for proper morality and living.
Neediness is a person’s lack of the necessities of life. People place an enormous emphasis on it in morality, but what are “the necessities of life?” The necessities of life are food, water, and maybe shelter. People have lived on just necessities for millenia. Things like medicine may make a necessity. However, people have lived for a long time without modern medicine, and it isn’t something that is needed as consistently as food and water. People are in true need, neediness, when without a certain thing they will die. This is both a rare and mundane occurrence. Rare, because it is unlikely we will die, and mundane, because the things we need, as in neediness, are present and satisfied every day.
Need is a broad term that includes all necessity. The broadness of the term “need” is a key part of its propagation. For example, for me to get to an activity meeting, I need to drive my car (given certain time constraints). In this example, I have a need to drive my car, but it isn’t an example of neediness (the activity meeting isn’t important). Such needs pop up constantly throughout the day. In order for one thing to be completed, there’s often a series of needed steps in order for it to come to fruition. By this standard, we are all in serious need throughout the day. Each moment is a moment of need for future moments. If one were to conflate need with neediness, this would mean that a wealthy person who needs a jet to get to a meeting has neediness like a starving person, or many people who need a car outweigh the needy who need water. The meaning of “need” is broad, and there should be a distinction between it and “neediness,” which is much more specific.
This definitional confusion of need follows along with government action. Since people think the government is meant to take care of people’s needs, they support the government providing for every minor “need” (requirement) that comes up. For example, some in the US government are attempting to make birth control paid for by taxpayers (and birth control is a requirement of insurance policies in the Affordable Care Act). Something like birth control has alternatives, such as abstinence or keeping children, but, because people find such great convenience in it, it becomes a “need.” The fact that people can mark other conveniences as “needs” means that the government, which people presume is meant to care for people’s needs, has ever-expanding prerogatives. Like the overuse of the word “need” and as it is overused, the government propagates across all sectors of our lives in order to stamp out an ever-growing list of needs. This creates a clear recipe for totalitarianism. Our lives become a play of government permissions and solutions for things we could do ourselves, but, by the time our lives become so, we will see government involvement in everything we do as a need, itself.
Need and neediness are two different words. One refers to necessity in broad, while the other refers to an existential state of suffering. Not making a distinction between the two creates an odd world where needing to use a pencil for an exam is the same as needing food and water when one is starving, particularly when one assumes neediness’ definition in need. It creates a world of people desperately considering their daily actions as neediness in order to have a moral sanction. This is extended further as people assume government is meant to take care of our needs, which would create an ever-expanding, invasive, totalitarian entity. If helping others is one’s goal, then this distinction between neediness and need itself should help divert resources to where there’s more desperation, instead of acting like the mundane parts of our lives are acts of desperation.
Political and Professional Liars
Lying has been something of a norm for people. People lie on a consistent basis in order to “get by,” e.g. tax documents, resumes, police encounters, dates, etc. They lie to make people feel better. They lie to make people feel worse. Politicians lie regularly to keep appearances, and it isn’t much different for people in the professional world. Lying is a staple for dealing with other people. Why is it then that people are surprised when people who are placed in positions of power are corrupt? Lying is a response to danger. It assumes that we have something to lose if we were to tell the truth. Based on this, we can assume that people find other people to be of danger to them.
The professional world has its share of liars, and it is seen as normal to lie. One may hear stories where an applicant isn’t qualified for a position and wouldn’t know what to do in it, but they, nonetheless, lie that they are qualified for the position and know its functions, only to read up and train for the position before working there. This is seen as a “go-getter” attitude. The person was at a loss for the position, but, through cunning deception and self-education follow through, they become set for the work and get the position. Outright lies can work on resumes, and Ponzi schemes like Bernie Madoff’s can last for years. Donald Trump also engaged in unscrupulous business behavior, sometimes not paying people like he promised.
Politics is famously rife with lying. People often opine over the lack of follow through on politician’s campaign promises. The rhetoric of the campaign trail is laden with words to appease the base and placate moderates who may vote for the candidate in question, but it is often quickly set aside for the deals of establishment and interconnections in the political machinery of the government. It seems politicians will say anything to get pet programs through, like Obama saying you could keep your insurance if you like it with the passing of the Affordable Care Act. Lies in politics create a broad complacency among the populace, as the people in power engage in surreptitious deals with each other.
One can see that there is a unity between the lying of the professional and political worlds. It is especially clear that lies are used in order to gain a desired position in the first place (an interview in the professional world and the campaign trail in politics). Parallels can be seen in the dating world, as people will often lie in the beginning of a relationship, as the more contentious aspects of each person are saved for when there is already a closer relationship between the two. The ubiquitousness of lying points to lying as a systemic issue of our societies and not a chance offense or something isolated to politics.
Given the systemic and widespread quality of lying in our societies, it should not be surprising when we find corruption in people of power. There’s a frequent desire to make out politicians as the primary liars of our society, but this is probably an over abstraction to create a commonality between non-politicians, as though they don’t lie, themselves. If lying is common in a society, politicians would simply see it as par for the course that they, too, would lie. Indeed, it is the people in general that elect the politicians in the first place. Why would they not see the politicians as the liars they are and not simply posit a non-liar to be elected? It is likely that they simply don’t see the politician as a liar, since the politician lies as they themselves do (and their attempt to cover up their own lies fall in line with the politician’s) or they are besmitten by the politician’s lies (which could show certain psychological inadequacies of the person), or they think the lies that the politician makes are acceptable lies, either because they are “white lies” or because they think “you need to get dirty to win.” In any case, the normalization of lying in society isn’t just the politician’s fault but everyone else’s, too.
Lastly, it is important to note that lying is a response to danger. We lie because we think if we don’t there will be an imminent threat to our values. This presumes that we think that other people are of danger to us, so a society of liars is also a society of people who don’t trust each other not to harm one another. This places a hitch on our understanding of our society as one of cooperation. Instead, our society is one in which we deceive each other in a setting of hostility. Although it is fair to presume a person can be hostile to you. As a norm of dealing with people we are supposed to be continually working with, lying creates an environment of hostility where there ultimately shouldn’t be one. The truth is ultimately stronger than a lie.
Lying is currently a systemic issue that can’t be blamed on one group of people. The normalization of lying predicates further lying and corruption. Both professionals and politicians are prone to lying, and it is seen as acceptable in many cases. This lying creates an environment of hostility in societies, instead of cooperation.
Self Help Doesn’t Exclude Other Help
People take many actions every day. Those actions, more often than not, are intended to benefit one person or another. However, there’s a presumption that is often held that, if you were to benefit yourself, you could not benefit others. Doing something to help yourself is seen as exclusionary. Yet, doing something to help yourself, and to help others, is necessary for existence. Both must occur, often at the same time, else the members of a society would perish either for lack of their own care or the care of others that they depend on. Self help and other help aren’t antipodes, but, rather, they join together in cooperation.
Self help is our self care. If we don’t help ourselves, we die. It is us maintaining ourselves for continued existence. There’s a vast expanse of actions that this can encapsulate, e.g. eating, working, playing, sleeping, and it can occur in multiple environments, e.g. inside society, outside society. We can take care of ourselves alone in the wilderness, but it is more beneficial for us to take care of ourselves in society. Being in a society allows us to enjoy the labors and safety of others. The best way for you to help yourself is to live in a just, healthy society.
Other help is our care for others. It’s when we use ourselves to better another person’s life. The requirements for betterment are the same as for self help, except the requirements are from another person. The reasons for helping others are varied, e.g. some see it as an end in itself, some see it as a requirement for some other end. Other help needs at least two participants, the one helping and the one being helped, but it can involve enormous sums of people. Because other help has two sets of people, the helpers and helped, it requires that the helpers are in a state to be able to help.
Self help and other help can be concurrent, even if they’re not concurrent by necessity. For example, if someone needs me to hold a ladder, such that they can paint my house, it is both self help and other help to do so. I help the other person do their job, and I help myself by helping them do the job. There are many instances like this. The two come together in a whole where each party benefits. This creates the most productive society, as everyone’s needs are met in an efficient manner. Uniting the two at the same time creates a flowing cohesiveness, ideal for cooperation.
Self help and other help must coincide if there’s to be a functioning society. If there was only self help, people would live in isolation and wouldn’t get the benefit of other’s help. If there was only other help, people would not help themselves, and people would eventually be in such a poor state that they couldn’t help others, either. If the two couldn’t coincide, you would have to have a society where people switched off of helping themselves or helping others, never allowing the two to meet at any instance. This would, at best, create a wonky society where people are restricted to isolated moments to serve one purpose or another, never creating any cohesion.
Cohesion between self help and other help is possible and desirable. The two can exist at the same time in the same act, as a single act can benefit multiple people. This concurrent cohesion is ideal for the well-being of societies. Without it, societies would fall apart, as their members lack for either self help or other help.