The Human Want Principle

The Human Want Principle

What are human wants? Let’s look at human wants as they relate to fixed properties. Human wants or desires are inherent to all human beings and relate to what we want or desire. Our desires can be exponentially greater than our needs. Why is this so? To understand the significance of human wants, we must closely examine the nature of the question. A human want can be as simple as wanting a nice car to as complex as wanting to go to the moon. Essentially, human wants are things that we all crave but have no set boundaries. For example, wants are different from needs. Wanting a nice car is different from buying a car or driving a car for the purpose of not walking. If we want a Porsche, a car that is well-known and prestigious, we desire to have a car for the reason that it is a luxury car and not just meant for driving. Essentially, our want is greater than our need since wanting a Porsche is a desire that exists irrespective of the fact that we own a Porsche or not.

I can desire many women or one woman but if I desire all women and marry just one woman, perhaps, my need is only as great as wanting one woman but not all women. Hence, the want principle is greater than its need. I can marry one woman but marrying all women may be impossible simply because it is not physically possible. That means if I like women, I can only marry one but wanting all women is still a paradigm of the want principle as it applies to all men. To resist wanting all women is to accept that I can only marry one woman and be faithful to just that person. If I am hungry, I may be hungry all the time and not so only when I have eaten. To be hungry or to crave food, is a natural human obsession that is linked to the want principle. While a meal satisfies us, it may not satiate our infinite desire for food that is not temporal. But a humble meal may be just as satisfactory as all meals combined since our appreciation for that one meal is subjunctive to our widespread desire for food. Thus, the want principle seems to fall in line with the fixed properties.

Let’s look at it another way. I might desire to be a lawyer but if I became a lawyer the universal desire to be a lawyer is not negated by the fact that I have become a lawyer. My want is greater than my need. My desire to be a lawyer exists irrespective of the fact that I am a lawyer but practicing the law in an honest and virtuous way does justify the want to be a lawyer universally. Thus, when are talking about the want principle, we must recognize it in correlation to fixed properties of time. When fixed properties of time are considered, we realize that fixed portions of time allotted things are necessary to balance out our lives. The doughnut hole is filled by the batter. When we appreciate the direct correlation such as having a nice car makes me feel good, having some money and not being the most richest man is sufficient, or marrying a decent woman, are all factors of humility and judgment within ourselves. We must always pay homage or as they say not take life for granted.

The want principle exists it seems only to make us respect the limitations of our human capacity to achieve those wants as they are universally but to have appreciation for those wants individually as a matter of transcendental love. When we have transcendental love, we can accept our limited wants as commensurate to our unlimited desires that bisect each other. Simply, because God gives us free will he also removes the possibility of wanting everything if only to make us fitted for the immortality of the soul. To live as an individual is essentially different from supernatural wants, thus interwoven in the grand scheme of things that enable the immortality of the soul. To desire or want something more greatly than what we can ever have, is an anomaly that can only be explained by our willingness to accept our gains as much as our losses and be satisfied somewhere in between. Thus, the human want principle is inextricably linked to the fixed properties.