WelcomeNeeds, wants and rights: What's right?
I argue that needs, wnats and rights are all functionally the same thing, and the difference is that needs and rights are performatiely distinct from wats in being wrapped in a veneer of ideological obfuscation.
Let us begin by agreeing what a want is. Isn't this intuitively obvious: "I want to fuck you." Or: "I want to eat a Dunkin donut." Or: "I want to play with my pet cat." Or whatever. A person seeks to attain a goal. What exactly is a person and what exactly a goal is, I think, we can suspend consideration for the present. Let us also put aside any "edge" cases and focusfirt on what is mos tfrequent in everyday peacetime life. Person "A" wants to attain objective "B".
Well, so what? If I can dso it all by myslf that's the end of the matter: I do it. I get what I want. "I want a beer from te refrigerator." I go get the beer form the refrigerator. End of story.
Lots of things and often very important thing sare not that wya: they wequire help feom others. If I tell you: "I want 'X' from you.", you may choose to respond: "Well, I dont wnat to do it, so thank you and goodbye." How can I get you to help me: "If you do 'A' for me, I'll do somethign you want, say 'B' for you." Oh, you want 'B'? It's a deal.
Now, suppose you don't want to help me and I cannot change your mind by rational negotiation. Well, Can I trig=ck you into doing what I want even though you don't? I proparse tha ther eis where "needs" an d"rights" come in. "I need 'X' from you." or: "I ha e aright to 'Y' from you" mean: give me what I want, "X" or "Y: or whatever, irrespective of whether you ant to give it me or not and epacially if we can't make a deal.
Persone asert they hav eneds and/or wnts to get wht the want without paing for it. How do they do this? I propose they genrealy do this by cashing in on other persons' childrearing. Most toddlrers are terrorized by aothcratic parent to do wah tthe parents want of bea bandoned to die (of couare it's not generally presented that way becaue the parents do not want(sic) to think of themselves as monters but as good guys). The child learns to do what the parents want h=not what he (she,wants) to get certain other thing she does want, such as not being abandoned to die. "Mommy needs you to ge haircut, Brad." "I don't want to." "Mommy will abandon you if you don't." "Yes, mommy."
Tne child grows up and maybe mommy dies. So the threateis gone. But not so: Mommy performed psychosurgery ion her child to implant herwill in his head: an introject. The introject lives on after the introjector hads gone. So if Isay to you: "I need 'z".", what I'm hoping for is that your mommy introject will threaten you with abandonment and you will do what ai want even though you don't awnaat o to not die. In fact you won't diw if you don't do what I want you to do even though you don't want to? Then you are smarter than a lot of persons. It works often enough.
I propose: Let's reove the veneer and always deal with the reality: wants. Why can't we have a social surround in which persons negotiate all their relations honestly? Obviously, because a lot pf persons will be disappointed bed=cause they want a feree lunch. And the kicker, of sourse, is the the present social order is so structured that they have mens of enforcing their will. If a stdent dos not want to do his hoework, the teacher flunks him and evventually he dies destitute and homeless as roadkill on I-666 (the highway to hell). If the boss tells you to jump and you tell him no, he fires you and ditto what happened to the student.Bu tTeachers and bosses don't always want to be seen as monsters so we have the veneer.
To sum up: Neds and Rights are wants. Wants are not just lumps like cinderblocks. they are Husserlean: they are intentions: Person "c" wantt "D" for reason "E". Why can't we hav a society where everybody just sorts it out. Negotiations all over the place. What's my (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) "angle" here? Instead of my parents and teachers telling me what to do as a child, they should have negotiated with me.
If, as th U.S. Declaration of Indepenc=dence says: "All men [this word being understoond in a gender neutral way] are created equal..." then how can it rationally be otherwise? Answer: People are not rational and some of htem have the corecive power to get away with it: "The peremptory discourse of petty power: 'Only if you want to.'...."
This is obviously not the whole story
The foregoing is obviously not the whole story. There are two kind of mental retardation: neurological from nature, and pedagogical from childrering. My parents and teachers mentally, emotionally, sexually and in what other ways retarded me. I could not know I was missing what my social surround did not show was was possible. Since I did not know bou Paree, they were able to keep me down on the farm, as the old song goes, reversed. Tradition, unless reduced to semiotic raw material for one's own self-accountable creative self-formation, is retardation: Your beliefs hold you back unless you can tread on them a stepping stones to climb up and over them.
For me, assinging blame is pointless: My father was clueless. My mother's onl7 connection to reality probaby was that she bled each month but tried to pretend she didn't. St. Paul's Illiberal Day Carcel for Pubescent Male Virgins except for omerta-sanitary-services-for-jocks, along with them — was somehow the culmination of 4 billions years of Darwinean evolution of life on earth. If I could live another lifetime and start over again knowing what I know now but given my social dependency on them, could I have meade it better?
As Vince Lombardi said: "Winning is not the only thing, but trying to win is." Q: What's the worst that can happen? A: just the worst. Had I known about my wants at least I could at lest have tried to get thm met. A bettter world can only arise from us making it out of the present material and semiotic mess.
