I talk a lot to friends and in chats and online about wants vs needs. I don’t think I’ve ever put some of my ideas down in a blog post though, so here’s the start of what may be many discussions and thoughts over the years. I think the only place I’ve touched on this topic was here, where I discussed the luxury perception of needing a dishwasher.
Wants are socially acceptable.
Needs are not.
Needs make people uncomfortable. It makes them comfortable again to dismiss your needs as wants. “Oh, I didn’t really harm them, it wasn’t really a need, just a want.”
Needs also make systems and structures uncomfortable.
Systems and structures are happy when you have wants, as wants are something which are individual choice… and individual backing. It’s up to you to choose what you want, to take action, and to fund the want.
Needs require social harmony, inclusive approaches, and the responsibility of systems and structures to act effectively.
In my view, we live in a society that is obsessed with rigidity. The one correct way to do things. The one correct way to be.
Being disabled, neurodivergent, or chronically ill is incorrect to the systems and structures.
I think this incorrect way of being (to the systems and structures, in case that needs repeating), combined with the obsession with rigidity, is behind the government currently thinking they’re correct in cutting NDIS costs. They think they can make our bodies comply with the correct way by brute forcing us to become correct, by not indulging in our needs, because they have deemed our needs to be wants.
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