Yeah. To home in more specifically, I’m looking at “All of your needs are legit”. I’ve heard for a while “You have all these unconscious desires your optimizing for” and often followed with a “If only we could find a way to get rid of these desires.” The new thing for me has been the idea that behind each of those “petty”/”base” desires there is a real valid need that is okay to have.
That seems like a potentially very unhealthy thing when applied to “basic” desires such as food and sex… Unless yoloing your way through a life of hookers, coke (the sugary kind) and jelo seems appealing.
Our first order desires usually conflict with our long terms desires, and those are usually much better to aim for.
But maybe I’m getting something wrong here. Where did you get this idea from ?
The sentence “All your needs are legitimate” is pretty under-specified so I’ll try to flush out the picture.
This gets a bit closer, “All your needs are legitimate, but not all of your strategies to meet those needs are legitimate.” I can think there’s nothing wrong with wanting sex, but there are still plenty of ways to meet that need which I’d fine abhorrent. “All your needs are legit” is not me claiming that any action you think to take is morally okay as long as it’s an attempt to meet a need/desire. Another phrasing might be that I see a difference between, “I have a need for sporadic pleasurable experiences, and for consuming food so I don’t die” and “Right now I want to go get a burger and a milkshake”
Another thing that shapes my frame is the claim that a lot of our behavior, even some that looks like it’s just pursing “basic” things, sources from needs/desires like “needing to feel loved” “needing to feel like your aren’t useless” etc. This extends to the tentative claim: “If more people had most of their emotional needs met, lots of people would be far less inclined to engage it stereotypical “hedonistic debauchery’”
Now to your “Where did this idea come from?” I don’t remember when I first explicitly encountered this idea, but the most formative interaction might have been at CFAR a year ago. You mentioned “Our first order desires usually conflict with our long terms desires, and those are usually much better to aim for.” I was investigating a lot of my ‘long term desires’ and other top-down frameworks I had to value parts of my life, and began to see how they had been carefully crafted to meet certain “basic” desires, like not being in situations where people would yell at me and never having to beg for attention. Many of my long term desires were actually strategies to meet various basic emotional needs, and they were also strategies that were causing conflicts with other parts of my life. My prior tendency was to go, “I’ll just rebuke and disavow this strategy/desire (I didn’t see the difference) and not make the mistake I was making”
The actionable and useful thing that the “All your needs are legitimate” gave me was previously, if I found a behavior was causing some problems, and I determined I was likely engaging in this behavior so that people would like me, I’d decide “Ha, needing to be liked is base and weak. I’ll just axe this behavior.” This would often lead to either mysteriously unsuccessful behavior change, or more internal anguish. Now I go, “It is completely okay and legit to want to be liked. I do in fact want that. Is there some way I can meet that need, but not incur the negatives that this behavior was producing?”
All your needs are legitimate, but not all of your strategies to meet those needs are legitimate
Even in this form I don’t believe this sentence holds.
For example, I am a smoke (well, vaper, but you get the point, nicotine user). I can guarantee you I have a very real need for:
a) Nicotine’s effect on the brain
b) The throat hit nicotine gives
c) The physical “action” of smoking
Are those needs legitimate in the sense you seem to understand them ? Yes, they are pretty legitimate, or at least I can associate them to be on the same degree as other needs that most people would consider legitimate (e.g. need to take a piss, need to talk with a friend, w/e)
Must those needs stay legitimate ? No, actually, having taken breaks of up to half a year from the practice I can actually tell those needs get less relevant the longer you go without smoking
Should those needs stay legitimate ? Well, I’d currently argue “yes”, since otherwise I wouldn’t be vaping as I’m writing this. But, I’d equally argue that from a societal perspective the answer is “no”, indeed, for parts of my brain (the ones that don’t want to smoke), the answer is “no”.
1. Now, either smoking is a legitimate need
OR
2. Some needs that “seem” legitimate should actually be supressed
OR
3. Needs not only need to “feel/seem” legitimate, they also need to have some other stamp of approval, such as being natural
1 - is a bad perspective to hold all things considered, you wouldn’t teach your kid that you caught smoking that he should keep doing it because it’s a legitimate need now that he kinda likes it.
2 - seem to counter-act your point because we can now claim any legitimate need should actually be suppressed rather than indulged in some way.
3 - You get into a nurture vs nature debate… in which case, I’m on the “you can’t really tell” side for now and wouldn’t personally go any further in that direction.
Okay, I agree that for “All your needs are legitimate....” the “all” part doesn’t really seem to hold. Your example straightforwardly seems to address that. Stuff that’s closer to “biological stuff we decent understanding of” (drugs, food) doesn’t really fit the claim I was making.
I think you also helped me figure out a better way to express my sentiment. I was about to rephrase it as “All of your emotional needs are legit” but that feels like it’s a me going down the wrong path. I’ll try to explain why I wanted to phrase it that way in the first place.
I see the “standard view” as something like “Of course your emotions are important, but there are few unsavory feelings that just aren’t acceptable and you shouldn’t have them.” I think I reached to quickly for “There is no such thing as unacceptable feelings” rather than “Here is why this specific feeling you are calling unacceptable actually is acceptable.” I probably reached for that because it was easier.
Claim 1: The reasoning that proclaims a given emotional/social need is not legitimate is normally flawed.
(I could speak more to that, but it’s sort of what I was mentioning at the end of my last comment)
I think this thing you mentioned is relevant.
Must those needs stay legitimate ? No, actually, having taken breaks of up to half a year from the practice I can actually tell those needs get less relevant the longer you go without smoking
I totally agree that something like smoking can have this “re-normalization” mechanism. Now I wonder what happens if we swap out the need for smoking with the need to feel like someone cares about you?
Claim 2: Ignored emotional/social needs will not “re-normalize” and will be a recurring source of pain, suffering, and problems.
The second claim seems like it could lead to very tricky debate. High-school-me would have insisted that I could totally just ignore my desire to be liked by people without ill consequences, because look at me, I’m doing it right now and everything’s fine! I can currently see how this was causing me serious problems. So… if someone said to me that they can totally just ignore things that I’d call emotional/social needs with no ill affects, I don’t know how I’d separate it being true from it being the same as what I was going through.
Claim 1: The reasoning that proclaims a given emotional/social need is not legitimate is normally flawed.
Claim 2: Ignored emotional/social needs will not “re-normalize” and will be a recurring source of pain, suffering, and problems.
I can pretty much agree with these claims.
I think it’s worth breaking down emotional/social needs into lower-level entities than people usually do, e.g:
“I need to be in a sexual relationship with {X} even though they hate me”—is an emotional need that’s probably flawed
“I need to be in a sexual relationship”—is an emotional need that’s probably correct
***
“I need to be friends with {Y} even though they told me they don’t enjoy my company”—again, probably flawed
“I need to be friends with some of the people that I like”—most likely correct
But then you reach the problem of where exactly you should stop the breakdown, as in, if your need is “too” generic once you reach its core it might make it rather hard to act upon. If you don’t break them down at all you end up acting like a sitcom character without the laugh-track, wit and happy coincidences.
Also, whilst I disagree with your initial formulation:
All your needs are legitimate
I don’t particularly see anything against:
There is no such thing as unacceptable feelings
But it seems from your reply that you hold them to be one and the same ?
In both of those examples you give I agree with you judgment of the needs.
If you switch “All your needs are legit” to “All your social/emotional needs are legit”, then yeah, I was thinking of that and “There is no such things as unacceptable feelings” as the same thing. Though I can now see two distinct ideas that they could point to.
“All your S/E needs are legit” seems to say not only that it’s okay to have the need, it’s okay to do something to meet it. That’s a bit harder to handle than just “It’s okay to feel something.” And yeah, there probably is some scenario where you could have a need that there’s no way you could ethically meet, and that you can’t breakdown into a need that can be met.
Another thing that I noticed informed my initial phrasing is I think that there is a strong sour grapes pressure to go from “I have this need, and I don’t see anyway to get it met that I’m okay with” to “Well then this is a silly need and I don’t even really care about it.”
You’ve sparked many more thoughts from me on this, and I think those will come in a post sometime later. Thanks for prodding!
I think this has developed gradually. The idea of “behavior is based on unconscious desires” goes back as far as at least Freud, probably earlier.
Yeah. To home in more specifically, I’m looking at “All of your needs are legit”. I’ve heard for a while “You have all these unconscious desires your optimizing for” and often followed with a “If only we could find a way to get rid of these desires.” The new thing for me has been the idea that behind each of those “petty”/”base” desires there is a real valid need that is okay to have.
That seems like a potentially very unhealthy thing when applied to “basic” desires such as food and sex… Unless yoloing your way through a life of hookers, coke (the sugary kind) and jelo seems appealing.
Our first order desires usually conflict with our long terms desires, and those are usually much better to aim for.
But maybe I’m getting something wrong here. Where did you get this idea from ?
The sentence “All your needs are legitimate” is pretty under-specified so I’ll try to flush out the picture.
This gets a bit closer, “All your needs are legitimate, but not all of your strategies to meet those needs are legitimate.” I can think there’s nothing wrong with wanting sex, but there are still plenty of ways to meet that need which I’d fine abhorrent. “All your needs are legit” is not me claiming that any action you think to take is morally okay as long as it’s an attempt to meet a need/desire. Another phrasing might be that I see a difference between, “I have a need for sporadic pleasurable experiences, and for consuming food so I don’t die” and “Right now I want to go get a burger and a milkshake”
Another thing that shapes my frame is the claim that a lot of our behavior, even some that looks like it’s just pursing “basic” things, sources from needs/desires like “needing to feel loved” “needing to feel like your aren’t useless” etc. This extends to the tentative claim: “If more people had most of their emotional needs met, lots of people would be far less inclined to engage it stereotypical “hedonistic debauchery’”
Now to your “Where did this idea come from?” I don’t remember when I first explicitly encountered this idea, but the most formative interaction might have been at CFAR a year ago. You mentioned “Our first order desires usually conflict with our long terms desires, and those are usually much better to aim for.” I was investigating a lot of my ‘long term desires’ and other top-down frameworks I had to value parts of my life, and began to see how they had been carefully crafted to meet certain “basic” desires, like not being in situations where people would yell at me and never having to beg for attention. Many of my long term desires were actually strategies to meet various basic emotional needs, and they were also strategies that were causing conflicts with other parts of my life. My prior tendency was to go, “I’ll just rebuke and disavow this strategy/desire (I didn’t see the difference) and not make the mistake I was making”
The actionable and useful thing that the “All your needs are legitimate” gave me was previously, if I found a behavior was causing some problems, and I determined I was likely engaging in this behavior so that people would like me, I’d decide “Ha, needing to be liked is base and weak. I’ll just axe this behavior.” This would often lead to either mysteriously unsuccessful behavior change, or more internal anguish. Now I go, “It is completely okay and legit to want to be liked. I do in fact want that. Is there some way I can meet that need, but not incur the negatives that this behavior was producing?”
Even in this form I don’t believe this sentence holds.
For example, I am a smoke (well, vaper, but you get the point, nicotine user). I can guarantee you I have a very real need for:
a) Nicotine’s effect on the brain
b) The throat hit nicotine gives
c) The physical “action” of smoking
Are those needs legitimate in the sense you seem to understand them ? Yes, they are pretty legitimate, or at least I can associate them to be on the same degree as other needs that most people would consider legitimate (e.g. need to take a piss, need to talk with a friend, w/e)
Must those needs stay legitimate ? No, actually, having taken breaks of up to half a year from the practice I can actually tell those needs get less relevant the longer you go without smoking
Should those needs stay legitimate ? Well, I’d currently argue “yes”, since otherwise I wouldn’t be vaping as I’m writing this. But, I’d equally argue that from a societal perspective the answer is “no”, indeed, for parts of my brain (the ones that don’t want to smoke), the answer is “no”.
1. Now, either smoking is a legitimate need
OR
2. Some needs that “seem” legitimate should actually be supressed
OR
3. Needs not only need to “feel/seem” legitimate, they also need to have some other stamp of approval, such as being natural
1 - is a bad perspective to hold all things considered, you wouldn’t teach your kid that you caught smoking that he should keep doing it because it’s a legitimate need now that he kinda likes it.
2 - seem to counter-act your point because we can now claim any legitimate need should actually be suppressed rather than indulged in some way.
3 - You get into a nurture vs nature debate… in which case, I’m on the “you can’t really tell” side for now and wouldn’t personally go any further in that direction.
Okay, I agree that for “All your needs are legitimate....” the “all” part doesn’t really seem to hold. Your example straightforwardly seems to address that. Stuff that’s closer to “biological stuff we decent understanding of” (drugs, food) doesn’t really fit the claim I was making.
I think you also helped me figure out a better way to express my sentiment. I was about to rephrase it as “All of your emotional needs are legit” but that feels like it’s a me going down the wrong path. I’ll try to explain why I wanted to phrase it that way in the first place.
I see the “standard view” as something like “Of course your emotions are important, but there are few unsavory feelings that just aren’t acceptable and you shouldn’t have them.” I think I reached to quickly for “There is no such thing as unacceptable feelings” rather than “Here is why this specific feeling you are calling unacceptable actually is acceptable.” I probably reached for that because it was easier.
Claim 1: The reasoning that proclaims a given emotional/social need is not legitimate is normally flawed.
(I could speak more to that, but it’s sort of what I was mentioning at the end of my last comment)
I think this thing you mentioned is relevant.
I totally agree that something like smoking can have this “re-normalization” mechanism. Now I wonder what happens if we swap out the need for smoking with the need to feel like someone cares about you?
Claim 2: Ignored emotional/social needs will not “re-normalize” and will be a recurring source of pain, suffering, and problems.
The second claim seems like it could lead to very tricky debate. High-school-me would have insisted that I could totally just ignore my desire to be liked by people without ill consequences, because look at me, I’m doing it right now and everything’s fine! I can currently see how this was causing me serious problems. So… if someone said to me that they can totally just ignore things that I’d call emotional/social needs with no ill affects, I don’t know how I’d separate it being true from it being the same as what I was going through.
I can pretty much agree with these claims.
I think it’s worth breaking down emotional/social needs into lower-level entities than people usually do, e.g:
“I need to be in a sexual relationship with {X} even though they hate me”—is an emotional need that’s probably flawed
“I need to be in a sexual relationship”—is an emotional need that’s probably correct
***
“I need to be friends with {Y} even though they told me they don’t enjoy my company”—again, probably flawed
“I need to be friends with some of the people that I like”—most likely correct
But then you reach the problem of where exactly you should stop the breakdown, as in, if your need is “too” generic once you reach its core it might make it rather hard to act upon. If you don’t break them down at all you end up acting like a sitcom character without the laugh-track, wit and happy coincidences.
Also, whilst I disagree with your initial formulation:
I don’t particularly see anything against:
But it seems from your reply that you hold them to be one and the same ?
In both of those examples you give I agree with you judgment of the needs.
If you switch “All your needs are legit” to “All your social/emotional needs are legit”, then yeah, I was thinking of that and “There is no such things as unacceptable feelings” as the same thing. Though I can now see two distinct ideas that they could point to.
“All your S/E needs are legit” seems to say not only that it’s okay to have the need, it’s okay to do something to meet it. That’s a bit harder to handle than just “It’s okay to feel something.” And yeah, there probably is some scenario where you could have a need that there’s no way you could ethically meet, and that you can’t breakdown into a need that can be met.
Another thing that I noticed informed my initial phrasing is I think that there is a strong sour grapes pressure to go from “I have this need, and I don’t see anyway to get it met that I’m okay with” to “Well then this is a silly need and I don’t even really care about it.”
You’ve sparked many more thoughts from me on this, and I think those will come in a post sometime later. Thanks for prodding!