I need a holiday.
Or should I say, I want a holiday? The distinction between needs and wants is a slippery one. It’s tempting to think it’s clear: you only need what is necessary for survival and everything else is a want. But even this common sense disguises an assumed want. You need to eat and drink in order to survive, but you don’t need to survive, you want to (I hope).
Needs turn out always to be conditional on wants. You need x in order to do, have or be y, and either y is something you simply want or it is another thing you need in order to do, have or be something else, and so on. For example, you need a brush to paint the wall, you need to paint the wall because you don’t like the state it’s in and want it to be different. You need food to survive, and you want to survive because you simply do or because there are things in life you want to keep experiencing.
So when we say we “need” something, asking whether we really need it is misguided. A better question is whether our wants are important and reasonable enough to justify our sense of need. So, for example, if I were a contemporary of Picasso and I heard he “needed” paint, I would not reply by insisting he didn’t need it, he merely wanted it. Picasso being able to paint is valuable enough an outcome for me to treat his lack of materials as signifying a need.
Or consider someone who feels they “need” to know the truth about their partner’s suspected infidelity. Of course they won’t die if they never find out, but their desire to know is reasonable enough for us to treat it as a need.
This account denies the sharp distinction between needs and wants and instead sees needs as a matter of degree. Some needs are greater than others but just because a need isn’t urgent or vital it doesn’t mean it is inappropriate to call it a need at all. Children need loving care even though without it, they will grow up to live worthwhile lives.
So, to return to my own case, do I really need a holiday? I wouldn’t actually say so. Despite what I’ve argued about needs and wants, I think it is too easy to use the relativity of need to justify framing optional wants as immutable needs. If we want something, convincing ourselves we need it is the best way of justifying our desires to ourselves. For that reason, if I catch myself thinking that I “need” something, I make a presumption of self-serving bias until proven otherwise.
More generally, do any of us need holidays? Many, perhaps most of us, feel that we do, but most people in history never took one in their lives. It would seem to be an odd need that the vast majority of humankind has done without. But as Emrys Westacott pointed out in his thoughtful The Wisdom of Frugality, needs can be culturally relative. Most people really do need a mobile phone in order to participate fully in society, and wanting to do that is a reasonable aspiration in anyone’s book.
But how could holidays have become a need? Perhaps because modern life is so relentless, so full of routines. In pre-modern societies, variety was enforced on many by the cycle of the seasons. In agricultural societies, people made hay when the sun shone – which meant working really hard – and could do little else but hole up and survive during the winter. In hunter-gatherer societies, in contrast, it is widely believed people only worked 15-20 hours a week, so leisure was a quotidian pleasure, not a rare luxury.
That still leaves millions of humans whose lives have been toil and have never had holidays. Rather than showing holidays are not necessary, however, we could see this as tragic evidence that millions have been deprived of a real need. After all, millions have lived and still live in poverty, malnutrition, without education and sanitation. That does not prove nourishment, education and sanitation are not needs.
Let’s then accept that it is possible for a holiday to be a need and the question is not whether I need a holiday or not but how great my need really is. Whatever the answer, I think a holiday would be a fine idea. I’ll actually be going away for week in September but I’m going to give A Life Philosophic its summer vacation over August. After all, you may need a break from me.
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