Manufactured Needs
I’ve been thinking about needs and where they come from, of late.
In particular, how needs and wants differ, but also how that distinction doesn’t necessarily take us as far as it might in terms of helping us determine what actually matters to us.
There’s an Austrian philosopher named Ivan Illich who wrote about this subject back in the 1970s in a pair of books entitled Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis, both of which propose that we’re taught that we need certain things, and those learned needs are eventually perceived to be actual needs. This, in turn, influences our sense of importance and priority.
A contemporary thinker named Michael Sacasas—whose work I enjoy, and who often writes about Illich—had this to say about the matter in a recent piece published in The Convivial Society:
“In the opening of Deschooling Society, Illich claims that the “hidden curriculum” of schooling is dependency on the institution of the school. “The pupil,” Illich writes, “is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.” The student’s imagination, Illich continued, “is ‘schooled’ to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.”
He goes on to say:
Interestingly, for our purposes, Illich goes on to write about how this process of degradation is “accelerated when nonmaterial needs are transformed into demands for commodities; when health, education, personal mobility, welfare, or psychological healing are defined as the result of services or ‘treatments.’”
What he seems to be arguing is that institutions present us with boxes labeled “learning” and “health,” and confines of those boxes come to represent everything related to these concepts, societally, despite there being plenty to explore beyond what those boxes contain.
We thus eventually replace our own sense of blurry, intangible needs like safety and happiness and health with products and services.
Security is about more than policing, but we adopt a mental model in which the two are conflated, just as happiness is about more than having a drink with a friend—a specific, highly marketed activity in which we might engage—but over time the two concepts merge.
Think about work, about school, about our relationships, our clothing, our gadgets, our homes: many of our biases and preferences related to these aspects of our lives are not inherent or as personal as we think. They’re provided to us by entities that recognize it’s in their best financial interest to frame these facets of life so that we believe our needs will only be sated by what they have to offer.
Importantly, I’m not saying we shouldn’t seek out healthcare from professionals, go to school, buy clothes, or have a drink with a friend. We should not ignore the advice of doctors, keep ourselves ignorant, or avoid products or activities just because they’re embedded within a larger, consumption-oriented system—that system is impossible to completely avoid at this moment in time, even if we wanted to.
I am saying, however, that we might benefit from being more aware of where our perception of our needs originates and what that means for how we perceive and respond to those needs.
We are capable of learning anything we want, all day, every day, throughout the course of our lives. And there are countless ways to learn beyond sitting in a classroom (or logging in to a digital classroom), taking tests, and turning in papers.
That learning is so strongly associated with a single framework and setting, then, is massively limiting. We can make use of the default, societal solution to the problem of ignorance, then, but we can also address the issue in countless other ways—some of which may be more custom-fitted for us and our specific, non-inherited needs.
The same is true of how we approach our health, our hobbies and social activities, what we buy, what we consume, how we think about ourselves and how we spend our time.
We can, in other words, adopt prefabricated definitions and solutions for our needs when it makes sense to do so—and it often will—but we are also capable of defining our needs so that they’re more expansive, flexible, and ethical, according to our unique, personal standards for each.
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Inspired by all the cool/awkward-spectrum photos y’all sent me after last week’s newsletter (they were amazing, thanks for sharing them), I’ve embedded another pair in this edition, starting with perhaps the most awkward Valentine’s Day card a person can make.
Projects
This week on Brain Lenses I published an essay about Received Knowledge and a podcast episode about the Ostrich Effect.
This week’s episode of Let’s Know Things is about The FinCEN Files.
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things:
The Big and the Small(I love Wait Buy Why so much)
Brendel Plays Schubert(some beautiful piano music)
Live Jellyfish Cam(from the Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Free, Weekly Comic-Making Workshops(learn to make comics from pros!)
Astronomy Photography of the Year(lovely and awe-inspiring)
Science Museum Group Gallery(a bunch of interesting, random things)
Tickling Rats(for science and happiness)
For more interesting things of this kind, pop over to Curiosity Gadget.
In contrast, this is me at perhaps my most stylish and liberated—I suspect this outfit was a requirement if I wanted to play with my older sister (seen in the background) who had to wait another six-or-so years after I was born to finally get a sister of her own.
Please do share your own “me at my coolest, me at my most awkward” photos by responding to this newsletter, if you’re so inclined. I’d love to see them :)
Outro
After way too long, I finally got back into baking bread this past week, starting with a 75% whole wheat boule, using the other half of the batch for healthy-ish pizza dough.
It feels good to be cooking again and to actually be able to eat substantial food (though still in a limited way, and only on one side of my mouth) post-surgery.
It’s been over three months since I’ve been able to chew normally, so progress is progress, and I couldn’t be happier to be moving in the right direction in terms of my dietary capabilities and culinary habits.
What’s been going on in your neck of the woods? Making any plans? Trying anything new? Looking forward to any upcoming milestones or changes?
How’re you feeling overall?
I respond to every email I receive, so consider dropping me a message and telling me what’s up, what you’re working on, concerns and ambitions, and anything else you might want to share with a friendly and non-judgmental stranger from the internet.
Also know that things are weird and difficult right now, and if you’re struggling or simply not functioning at maximum-capacity, you’re not alone. You’re doing great just by doing what you’re doing, even if it doesn’t always seem like it in the moment.
Say hi by responding to this newsletter or emailing colin@exilelifestyle.com.
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I’m also available via the usual social mechanisms: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and wildly waving colorful flags.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work by becoming a patron of my writing or Let’s Know Things, buying one of my books, or subscribing to Brain Lenses. You can also keep it simple and buy me a coffee.