The word ‘desire,’ with its sexual undertones, is best used to define a refinement of the term ‘want,’ i.e., ‘want’ is also a nuanced reference to need/suffering, focused upon a specific object/objective which promises to alleviate them.
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‘Want’ is best applied in reference to memetic contexts, just as need/suffering is best applied within genetic contexts. The application is not arbitrary, nor is it redundant. It is a tool – just as all semiotics are – used to differentiate manifestations of need/suffering within different contexts; a tool for understanding, by categorizing, enhancing discrimination, i.e., consciousness/awareness.
Through the use of different words/symbols, i.e., codes, is similar to the practice of using different tools to perform different specialized jobs – meant to construct nuanced modifications to tried & tested functions.
This examination is necessary in order to justify the use of different terms, conventionally used as synonyms – I did the same thing with the concept of identity by using ‘self’ and ‘ego’ to differentiate the subconscious, intuitive part of consciousness form the lucid conscious part. In this case the differentiation between needs/desires must be juxtaposed to manufactured products/services which often gratify both organic needs and libidinal desires – I chose the term ‘wants’ to represent these culturally determined, socioeconomic, products – products of technological advancements and industrialization. A ‘want’ may promise the satisfaction of a ‘need,’ or the gratification of a ‘desire,’ but it may also be void of content and fail to satisfy either expectation; used to manipulate and exploit human nature.
A brief explanation
Need: spontaneous sensation of lack – depletion of energies perceived as a pull – produced by the totality of cellular interactivities transmitted to the brain, via the nervous system, interpreted by the mind as sensations; cellular energy depletions are transmitted to the brain with increasing intensity, if left unsatisfied over time.
‘Suffering’ is the term used to describe the intensity of this sensation determined by the organism’s constitution, i.e., pain/suffering tolerance threshold, and by the particular organism’s metabolic rhythms. Through the process of appropriating energies to replenish organic need, an accumulation of excess energies could be the consequence of multiple successful, energy efficient, events – directed to self-maintenance and the ‘healing’ produced by temporal attrition.
These accumulative energy excesses, i.e., superfluity, can produce to the sensation of an inversion of need, i.e., the inversion of need from a product of lack to a product of excess, felt as a desire to purge excess – these excess energies – e.g., libidinal – may also be kept on stand-by – for the fight/flight mechanism to function effectively – producing the side-effect of stress – i.e., restlessness, agitation etc.; this evolves into the practice of heterosexual reproduction, viz., redirecting these libidinal energies towards a synthesis with those of another, circumventing the pre-existing method of cellular division, i.e., mitosis.
Desire: accumulated energies – impulsive reactions to need – begin to pressure the organism to be purges, thusly relieving the strain/stress of storing them – holding them on stand-by – experienced as a sense of agitation, and stress, with no focus. An organism has a limit of how much excess energy it can store, before it must purge itself from them, relieving itself from the energy of maintaining them as a reliable source of easily accessible and immediately available energies.
In less sophisticated organisms, e.g., plants, such excess energies are directed primarily towards growth; in more sophisticated organisms, i.e., mammals, they are directed towards growth & movement, but there is a limit to growth determined by the requirement of movement within a given environment – planetary environmental conditions, such as gravity, geography and climate, but also by the organisms evolved survival strategy imposing physical requirements of mas and size; unused libidinal energies can then be redirected towards procreative strategies – in higher sophisticated organisms these same libidinal energies may also be redirected towards the creation of art.
Libidinal energies, and their accumulating rhythms, is what man calls ‘desire’. The object/objective of his/her desire promising a purging of excess energies – experienced as pleasing relief.
Want: synthesis of needs/desires abstracted into ideas/ideals, referring to a naturally produced and/or artificially fabricated object/objective, promising satisfaction/gratification. ‘Wants’ can be placed in the present, as the sensation of accumulating ‘needs’ and projected ‘desires’; an expression of need/desire in the dynamic present.
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Needs/Wants/Desires, correspond to body/nervous system/mind.
Needs = body, physical; i.e., interacting within a fluctuating cosmos; Wants = synthesis of body/mind, reacting to the experience of existence by willfully trying to direct its energies effectively, i.e., wants, referring to human contrivances that gain control over this state of compulsive agitation; Desires = mind, projecting into future what the body accumulates in excess, i.e., focusing upon an idea/ideal.
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‘Need’ = product of a determined, immutable, past; ‘Desire’ = product of an undetermined, possible/probable future; ‘Want’ = synthesis of need/desire in the fluctuating, determining, dynamic present.
