Our Misbegotten Needs

The current culture seems to have hijacked quite a few words and given them very different meanings. What bothers me about it is, having been an English major, I became steeped in the richness of vocabulary, whether it was the common vernacular or a specialized one, sometimes called an argot — medicine, law and science have their own argots, as do many other disciplines.Actually, the word that disturbs me most in this regard might surprise you. It’s “needs.” A phrase that somehow popped up in the culture in the last decade or so is this idea that it’s important to “get our needs met.”Of course, in modern American culture, these so-called “needs” have nothing to do with Abraham Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy of Needs.” Maslow’s hierarchy is actually a psychological theory that outlines 5 levels of real human needs arranged in a pyramid format. So, what about these “needs” we’re trying to get met in modern parlance. Well, these recently-redefined needs are actually what one young associate of mine called “preferences.” He used the word preferences after having surrendered his life to a higher power as he understood it as part of his addiction recovery. He told me about his daily struggles to meet life on life’s terms, even though that often meant not receiving his “preferred” outcome. These preferences were not needs at all but wants, wishes, hopes, desired outcomes. They’re actually what we think we want.