Satisfiers (PP27)
Here’s sequel 27 of my Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (from Chapter 4: SATISFIERS)
Satisfiers
You may not need a review of the preceding two sections (Needs and Desires), but I do:
- We have fundamental needs, including nutrition, oxygen, affection, sex, and sleep.
- We have the no-less important needs for shelter and safety, love and belonging, and respect.
- We have desires that by themselves are neither good nor bad. Rather, their “goodness” or “badness” is judged by the consequences of the method we choose to fulfill them.
Satisfaction of needs and desires is necessary for our quality of life, including our need to achieve our potential as healthy and self-reliant human beings.
We will define satisfier as:
Any agent capable of fulfilling a need or desire; the agent can be a material object, a situation, a service, a fantasy, an action or an event
We won’t distinguish between needs and desires in our exploration of satisfiers. Whether they are one or the other isn’t relevant for this discussion.
Remember the Epi-test in the Desires section, the “Are-You-Really-Sure-You-Want-to-Do-This” test with its three questions?
- What shall I gain by gratifying this desire?
- What shall I lose by suppressing it?
- Will indulging this desire cause pain and discomfort or anxiety for me or others?
None of us wants to apply Epicurus’s criteria to every decision we want to make. It would grow mighty tiresome to pull over to the side of the road so we can consider the effect of saturated fats on our arteries or the possibility of staining a nice shirt with a drip of Chunky Monkey if we occasionally want to satisfy a desire for ice cream on a hot day.
Likewise, even if you know you always wake up with a bad headache after drinking red wine, you may decide to throw caution to the wind and have a glass or two on a special occasion if your need for belonging overtakes your conscience. (I think I hear Epicurus saying, “Suit yourself, pal. At least you have aspirin. We never did.”)
To read my complete Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” go to http://stressfreedomguide.com/
The Pathway from Needs to Satisfiers:-)
I and my son have just produced my first (and probably last, with all the technical hassle:) video as an illustration of the difficulties everybody might encounter on their pathway if they want to find congruent satisfiers for their needs;-))
Starring our 8 months old cat: Buddy >>>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNUJmPcB1_Q
Satisfy Your Need for Subsistence by Following an Ancient Pathway Towards Stress-freedom
Did you know that unsatisfied needs cause stress and pain? Have you heard about a 2,300-year-old tried and true method for choosing happiness-boosting satisfiers instead of happiness-busters?
I define need as a condition requiring relief; anything that is necessary but lacking. To avoid stress and pain people must satisfy their needs. Fundamental needs are universal, that is, the same in all cultures throughout the ages. We all have the same fundamental needs for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, freedom and transcendence.
Need-satisfiers may vary among cultures and times, but one aspect is universal: The way in which we satisfy our needs can boost or bust our happiness. Oxygen, nutrition, shelter, clothing and sleep are satisfiers of the fundamental need for subsistence. What kind of nutrition, shelter or clothing we use to satisfy our need for subsistence varies largely from culture to culture and from individual to individual.
We all need the six major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins and water. What we eat, however, is largely determined by the perceived palatability of foods. A simple diet of water and bread, fruits and vegetables is easy and cheap to obtain. Stress results when we adopt ideas (prompted by our family, friends, authorities or the all-pervasive advertising industry) that only a certain kind of sweetened and carbonated beverage can quench our thirst or only expensive and sophisticated dishes satiate our hunger.
Working long hours and getting stressed by peers, supervisors and customers can be the result of a false belief in having to pay the mortgages for a house which is far bigger than needed for sheltering us from the frost or heat. And billions of dollars are made by another industry entirely based on our inappropriate estimation of our needs and our false belief that we may obtain happiness through status: the fashion industry.
Hundreds of scientific studies furnish thousands of proofs for the rightness of an ancient philosophical school whose members dedicated their lives to the pursuit of happiness: the happiness-school communities of the Epicureans that flourished for 800 years between 300 BC and 500 AD in the Greek-Roman world. Their recipe was simple: The good life is a simple life lead in the safe circle of like-minded friends, satisfying our natural needs in a simple and appropriate manner. Their pathway to happiness was to follow simple pleasures that cause no harm to themselves or others, carefully avoiding activities or even thoughts that might lead to pain or disturbance.
What they did to reach the state of simple happiness is something we all can do:
- ask whether our fundamental need for subsistence is met by the appropriate satisfiers, i.e., whether we are overfed, overclad or overhoused
- readjust the satisfiers to the need: Eat and drink simple food and beverages, wear simple clothes and live in houses that are not bigger and costlier than necessary.
The result will be an immediate and substantial decline of our stress level and at the same time an upsurge in our sense of control, stress-freedom and self-respect. In other words, an instant increase of our happiness.
Today scientific research endorses the tenets and the lifestyle of the ancient Epicurean happiness experts, and they can be safely copied for making individuals truly happy and saving our natural resources at the same time.
You can make a first step today on this ancient and proven pathway from pain to pleasure by aligning your need for subsistence with tried and true happiness-boosting satisfiers, like opting for appropriate housing, clothing and food. If you need support or additional resources for the next steps, just browse the Internet for the happiness-boosting Epicurean pathway from pain to pleasure, from stress to stress-freedom.
satisfiers that contribute to happiness through stress-freedom
After having understood the link between their needs and their desires the guidees learn to analyze the link between their fundamental needs and the satisfiers of these needs, as proposed by Max-Neef.
The main contribution that Max-Neef makes to the understanding of needs is the distinction made between needs and satisfiers. Human needs are seen as few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion that “wants” are infinite and insatiable). Not only this, they are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system – i.e. they are interrelated and interactive.
Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation (in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom.
Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: e.g. the arms race, while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; formal democracy, which is supposed to meet the need for participation often disempowers and alienates; commercial television, while used to satisfy the need for recreation, interferes with understanding, creativity and identity – the examples are everywhere.
Synergic satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; educational games.
The guidees are guided to develop their own synergic satisfiers: these are satisfiers that are congruent with their own individual value system and with their life-goals.
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