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.