Ramblings 12: Want & Need

I believe the field of Psychology gave us a great disservice when it went and tied itself to marketing.

Through psychology the marketing system was able to shift our preception of WANT in to NEED.

Humans need only a few things to survive, water, food, shelter and as a species sex. You can also add that we need contact with others, this is tied to our mental health. A baby will die if it is not touched, it does not matter if you feed it and shelter it.

Today people believe they need a new car, a new house, new shoes, a new game and new hairstyle or something immaterial.

People drive themselves crazy for things they believe they need, but only in fact want.

People no longer look to themselves to fulfill their needs. So many look without to define themselves. Like somehow a new car will make you loved by all and accepted.

I'm not saying I am immune to this. I'm not saying we do not need money.

In fact today we need money, we can't get food, water or shelter without it. But using money to buy things so that you can be loved or to better define yourself...

You look at magazines, at TV, at what your neighbor does and compare. Will you be liked if you buy that handbag? Get that new iPod, will you be hip and accepted?

Well yes, but not for you, just that empty shell that is composed entirely of the material.

I think it is sad that our selves are defined not by us but by what we own, the country we are from, the job we have, and the neighborhood we are from.

We are defined now by Society. Many have lost their central selves, and let others tell them what to be.

You are told you can not be a leader, you can not come up with a better way of doing something, that you will get no where, that you are defined by what you own.

What are you when everything is stripped away?

Shouldn't we be more than the sum of our material possessions?

How often have you thought "someone else will do it". How often do you shift responsibility on to another and not take action? Do you not take action because you believe from the very start that you cannot succeed?

I think a lot of our world is a lot of talking and very little action. We seem to be puppets to the ones that do.

It is funny in writing, the biggest point is to SHOW, not tell. Don't tell me, SHOW me.

And yeah, I am also a person that has talked and not put what I said into action. Things I should have, because I believed someone else could do it better. That what I do would have no effect.

But really, everything you do impacts something else.

Don't tell me, show me.



***See this is ramblings, I started with talking about want and need and somehow started talking about taking up action in what you believe in. Go figure! It was fun to write though!

Ramblings 2: Rivers and Barriers

It was mentioned to me that emotion acts as a reward, that it is necessary to find out about the self. That some people, through traumatic or trying experiences, learn to control emotions, not suppress control but control.

I have a different viewpoint. Best probable described by an analogy... though I am still working on this...

Imagine a river. There is a boulder in the river. Slowly the river can wear down this boulder, sometimes the river rages and breaks off chunks. The river can be seen as reshaping the boulder, refining it, uncovering different facets.

Think of the river as emotion. The boulder as your SELF. I think how ever the end result is that the river will wear down the boulder until it is a pebble. Shaping the boulder into something into something else. A boulder, to a rock to a pebble to a grain of sand... scattered across miles.

You can say that this is good we aren't meant to be the same always we need to grow.

So the analogy doesn't work so great... maybe... here is a little more.

I don't believe the Self is meant to be scattered, to become fragmented and spread out. The self is supposed to be a Centre, the thing in you that defines you and is your core and that shapes everything else about you.

I think that instead of a boulder we should be a..... permeable "barrier", like a net (not meant for catching) for lack of another description.

We should let emotion run through us, revel in it, feel it, but the Self is not altered by the emotion.

The Self sees, feels, or whatever you wish to say the emotion. Understands it, appreciates it and learns from it but still remains the self...

You either bend or break.