What Are Your True, Original Needs?
How does a seed grow to become the fruit? It does so by meeting its needs.
In this first episode of the Spring 2024 season of the A Wild New Work podcast, we’ll be discussing what our actual, original needs are, the extraneous needs put upon us by capitalism, why it’s so hard to meet our needs in this culture, and why we need fresh strategies for meeting the needs that will actually help us become who we deeply are.
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Megan: Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today. Hi friend and welcome, welcome to the spring season of the show, Spring 2024. I'm so glad to be here with you and really honored to share this space and time. The sun is now firmly in the sign of Aries. We are in the midst of eclipse season, which happens about twice a year when we have a little series of eclipses, lunar eclipses, solar eclipses, and I think it sort of heightens the transformational possibilities of this time.
And I want to look into that process a little more closely with you in this season by talking about what it takes for a small tiny, vulnerable, new being, or new idea, to grow into a sturdier someone or something. How does that happen? How does a seed become a fruiting plant or a tree? Well, it does that by meeting its needs.
It's the only way that anything can go from a tiny, vulnerable, new seed to a fruiting potential into a thing that we could see or feel or experience or taste is by meeting its needs. A fruiting plant needs sunlight, which is its food. It needs water, soil. It also needs the freedom and space in which to grow.
It also needs collaborators to come in and help it pollinate and exchange material with other fruiting plants. Nothing, us included, can become what it's meant to be without meeting its core needs. And this is something that we're going to explore over the next couple of months, all throughout the spring season, because it's one of the main lessons that's really up for me in this time, in the cycle of the year, is needs.
I look around me and I see a lot of people who are unsure of what their needs are, to begin with, and then having a really hard time meeting those needs. I look out a little further and I see animals who are having a really hard time meeting their needs, who don't question what their needs are, but don't have access to them because of their human destruction of their ecosystems.
I look around and I see plants. I see oak trees who are having a hard time meeting their needs because of climate change. And so, But even with all of that happening, there is still growth and blossoming and transformation happening this season. And I think it will do us a lot of good to look at that more closely, to understand what our needs actually are, how we can meet them, why they're so hard to meet in this current moment, and other ways that we can strategize and meet them, ways that we can meet our needs that are connective and sustainable, that don't wreak further havoc on the environments around us.
It is really hard to meet our needs. True, actual needs in this world, in this time, in this culture, but we have to, we, we are here, we want to survive, we want to live lives of meaning and connection and so to do so, I think we need to find better strategies to meet our needs and that is going to help us grow, not only individually, but also collectively, and I don't mean grow like the GDP grows or grow in a consumptive way like.
Like growing your square footage or the amount of stuff we have. And I don't mean growing in the direction of ambitions that aren't actually meaningful to us. You know, growing just to collect accolades or accomplishments that are more about external validation than anything else. That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about a plant, the way the plants grow, the way animals grow, becoming more fully who you are. who you were born as, just the essence of you growing into the gifts and medicine that you are meant to bring into your life and into your small corner of the world. And in order to do that, you have to have certain needs met.
That's just the truth of it. So, This season we're going to be talking about what our true needs really are, why it's so hard to meet them in this culture, in this work, in this economy, but also some new strategies for how to meet our needs. We're going to look at how plants meet their needs, how animals meet theirs, whether they're carnivores or herbivores or omnivores, how fungi meet their needs.
We're going to try to get some new ideas about how we can meet our needs in our daily lives today, in this moment. As things as they are, I want to keep things really close to the ground and real for you. Needs are so like primal, you know, and we love to think of ourselves as not animals. But at the end of the day we are and our needs are very real.
They're very felt. They're very close to the ground and they're very basic in many ways. We have a lot of Quote unquote needs now that are really just coping mechanisms for how to live in this very sick society But our true core needs are actually quite simple and that doesn't mean that they're not profound or sacred, but there's a lot of Extra stuff on top of this topic of needs and so that's what I want to talk about today is just Looking a little bit closely at what our needs really are And then some high level ideas about why it can be so hard to meet them inside of this economic structure and culture So before we dive into all of that, I want to share a couple of announcements and ways that you can go deeper in this work if you would like to.
The first is that for those of you in the Portland area, I am offering a rite of passage program for adults. And I'm doing this alongside two of my friends and previous podcast guests, Heather Dorfman and Megan Hain. And together we have created a process of four land based workshops that you can do as a series, an entire rite of passage process, or you can drop in individually to them if that works better for you.
And we're going to be following the life cycle from birth into adulthood and We did this because it feels like we're going to be talking about today. It feels really timely to be supporting people who want to step into a greater sturdiness, who want to meet their needs in ways that are sustainable and communal.
And in alignment with the seasons and the land. And so we wanted to offer a space where people could integrate more of their life and their gifts and their talents and where they've been and all of the grief that accumulates there and really step into a more stable. more life giving adulthood, where they can become people who are able to support themselves more, support others who can be sturdy, places of refuge, and create lives that are really deeply meaningful to them.
So, um, We're going to be starting that on April 21st. We'll be out on Sauvie Island for the first three workshops and then the last one is an overnight camping trip. And, um, I'd love to have you and you can learn more at the link in the show notes or at awildnewwork. com slash rise dash up dash rooted.
I also want to let you know that Eating Capitalism, my class on the origins of capitalism, is starting again on May 1st.
We're going to go five weeks together, five Wednesdays. We'll do this online, and this is going to be moving through Silvia Federici's book, Caliban and the Witch, about how capitalism emerged in the early Middle Ages and And then how it connects to the European witch hunts and colonization and slavery and what we know today as capitalism and how we all need to be working for a wage and that that's the only way that we can meet our needs.
And it wasn't always like that and it doesn't have to stay like that. And if you want to understand how that all came to be and how you can make some space for yourself to. transform into something different and see this environment, see this economic structure, structure differently. I would love to have you and you can learn about that at a wild new work. com as well.
The last thing I'll say is that I do always offer one on one work with folks. I move through an in depth process over six months to a year with people who are in the midst of pretty meaningful change in their working lives, whether changing their work identities or stepping into new pathways or just feeling super burnt out and unsure of where to go.
But knowing that they need to try something different. And so all of that can be found at a while new work. com as well. All right. I want to take us into our opening invocation and then we'll dive into the topic of needs. So wherever you are, just feeling your body and time and space. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet.
May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown. And may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
I think we have a handful of deeply true, again, primal, animal, original needs. And I've tried to sort of break these out cleanly or neatly, but of course they're not. Nothing is as neat as this, but just, I just want to give you a sense of sort of the main areas that I think. contribute to, or are necessary for, a human being to become who they are meant to be on this planet.
And the first one is closeness. If you think about a new baby, as soon as they're born, what do they need? They initially just need closeness. Sometimes they just want to be immediately on the mother's chest or on someone's chest. Very soon after that, of course, they will be looking for milk and nourishment, but the original need is closeness.
They came out of a body very close and inside of something, and now they need closeness again on the outside. And this never really leaves. It changes as we age, but Children need closeness, and we as adults need closeness, we need intimacy, we need to know that we have, when we reach out for encouragement, or strength, or relief, or intimacy, closeness, sharing, whatever words land for you, we want to know that there's someone there that can be in that with us, or provide that, or share that, or offer that to us.
And. We've gotten really used to talking about closeness in a way that is just about human to human closeness. But it's also really important to remember that we can have closeness, not just to our human kin, but to all of the beings that are around us. That we can have closeness to plants and animals, to the sky, to a place.
to um, a spiritual being or entity or a beloved dead one on the other side now. So closeness can be wide ranging and if you feel a little bit lost in terms of human community or relationships right, right now, or if you're feeling an ache of loneliness that is so endemic to our culture right now, I just want to encourage you to expand your concept of community or closeness or intimacy and bring in the closeness that is available to you just by living around other alive beings, whether it's the plants in your yard or right outside your window or the birds that fly by or this that you see in the sky, that that can be, that can be part of your community as well.
Closeness is an essential human need. I'm sure you've heard about. All sorts of studies that, you know, if an infant baby isn't held or picked up regularly, they can stop eating and die. That if humans aren't in relationship with others, it takes a devastating toll on our mental health. Isolation chambers are, you know, a form of torture and imprisonment in this country.
And so closeness is essential. And it not only meets our needs a biological need and a spiritual need, but it also can provide a sense of deep purpose and meaning when we feel seen, truly seen, for who we are. That is an amazing gift that is hard to come across in this culture and in this society and these families that we grew up in, but that is an essential need to feel seen for really who we are.
But it's also a deep source of purpose when we can, in turn, see others and care for others. You know, we want to be helpful members of our communities. It's a natural inclination. It doesn't feel good to constantly take in or absorb everyone's, you know, seeing or assistance or love. We want to give it back.
It has to be a reciprocal thing. It's a reciprocal closeness. In our own human communities, but also outside of that with the larger world is an essential true original need that when not met can really be a detriment to our growth and our personal and cultural evolution. The second need that I want to talk about is sustenance.
That which sustains us. Alright, so we need closeness. The baby needs that initial holding. Needs to be held and feel close. And then it needs milk. We need to eat. We need clean food. We need non parasitic, non hormone treated, healthfully grown, wild, healthy, sturdy food. We need clean air to breathe in. We need clean water to drink that has minerals, essential minerals in it.
We need sleep. We need rest. I think we're also sustained by the vitamins that we absorb through the sunlight. We need time outdoors to treat our circadian rhythms and give us, you know, the essential vitamins that we need. And so there are basic sustenance needs, of course, but this Long before in human history, this was done.
These needs were met in a connective way. At some point in your heritage, your ancestors didn't go to the grocery store to get their food. They were outside getting it. They were outside breathing in fresh air. They were using their bodies and moving to pick berries or pull roots or hunt deer. animal, which wasn't, didn't happen nearly as much as the hunting and, or the gathering, excuse me, but of course that was part of it. So they were outside getting sunlight, breathing in fresh air, um, breathing in the nutrients from the trees and the, uh, immune support chemicals that the trees give off. They were doing that together often. They were learning about the plants in their environment and talking to one another as they did that.
And so It's a big difference between that, you know, me going out with my children or my sisters to pick berries for a couple hours or pull roots in the fresh air, getting my hands in the soil and all of the benefits that that holds, that connection from skin to soil. There's a big difference between that and me going to the grocery store alone with a plastic basket in my hand, putting things wrapped in plastic in my plastic bag, not talking to anyone, trying to make painful chitchat at the checkout counter, and then leaving alone. That's, that's different, right? I think, I'm sure you can see the difference.
So, we still have needs for sustenance, of course, but not only are those needs not very well met because of our environmental realities right now in terms of clean air, water, healthy food, but also the way that we're accessing those needs has been really broken in a lot of ways.
But sustenance, of course, is a core need.
The third one I want to talk about is shelter. And again, this was once done in a connective way, where our shelters would have been quite permeable or temporary things. You know, it could have been made out of animal skins or, uh, wood and, uh, leaves or plant material or moss.
They might have been large shelters that housed us and many other family members or small shelters that were put into a circle to be, you know, in community with one another, uh, for much of human history, they would not have been these built up things. They would have been very small and modest. And the barrier between us and the outside environment was very thin. Now our shelters, most of us who live in homes or apartments, have become these kind of like fortresses or castles, these isolated chambers that feel very comfortable and comforting and very grateful for my home. But it is true that it keeps us very separate and isolated and that the The line between us and the outside environment, whether that's environment, the plants and animals and air, or just one another, that barrier is very thick and impermeable, and that has real effects on us.
And, you know, right now, much of the Human society and culture is very settled, and there's a long history of that, and you can trace, you know, the pathway of settlement and civilization and how it's brought us into capitalism and where we are today. But for a long time, humans were very nomadic. Humans, like animals, often need to migrate.
We need to move and, um, find other areas. areas and sources of sustenance. And so our shelters would have been things that we could carry on our backs or that we could have just build, you know, in an hour or two, once we've landed in a new place. And so settlement is a feature of our lives today, but it wasn't always this way.
And again, our shelters are absolutely a need. We need shelter of some kind and not enough people have access to meeting that need, which is really unjust. But also again, just like sustenance and closeness, the way that we're meeting those needs is unsustainable. All of the materials that we use to build these shelters, these fortresses, are taken, you know, in harmful ways to the earth.
We have much more than we need, and we're creating these fortresses that keep us apart and separate. And yes, they're very cozy and comfortable and warm, but that comes at a cost. A shelter should really be a home base From which you can access your other needs and a place within which you can access your needs.
But for a long time in human history, again, these shelters were very thin and, uh, we lived in nomadic ways where we weren't so settled and here and stagnant. And, um, I think that's a really interesting thing to remember and to hold close that the shelters that we have now, are a unique way of living as humans, and they have benefits and costs.
The last need that I want to talk about is freedom. So when a child is born, they need closeness, they need sustenance, they need shelter and warmth and barrier from the elements, but they also need the freedom to explore their world. They need the freedom to play and create and learn, and then as they grow, again, that need might change, but The essence of it is always still there.
We still need the freedom to explore, the freedom to migrate, the freedom to meet our needs in different ways, the freedom to play and make meaning in our lives. And this may turn into more meaningful work or purpose. I think these are closely related to freedom and kids need meaning too and it doesn't always look like just playing with Legos.
There's a good book called Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff about um, Indigenous, she sort of surveys I think for different Indigenous communities and how they parent today. And you can see the difference between Western children who are just, there's this like way kind of gross, overly done emphasis on play, like you need all these toys or not even toys, but like the job of a child is to play, which I understand.
But children also want to feel like they're contributing to the community. They want to help with the housework. They want to help fold the laundry. They want to feel like they have a role and a purpose in a family and in a society. And so We all need that from a young age and most of us were sort of You know, pushed aside, like, because, you know, when you're two, you can't fold the laundry as an adult would, and so we were taught to sort of just get away, and like, you go do your own thing, or you go play, and so I think from a very young age, we were taught to dismiss that desire and that need for meaning, and we weren't really given the freedom to To make meaning, to contribute, to be part of a community or a place, or we were forced to hold too much meaning or purpose in a community or a family.
So, freedom is essential. That's an essential human need. That is an original, primal need. Animals, birds, plants, humans, all of us need the freedom to be here. and to grow, to not take up more space or more resources than we need, but to access the core needs that we do have in a way that is sustainable for the ecosystem that we're in.
And all four of these needs, and there are many others I'm sure, but all four of them really play off of each other. There's not really, you know, I don't really believe in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It's more like a soup recipe or a perfume that needs to be very finely balanced and all of these elements need to come in together and we need some things more than others throughout our lives, and I'll talk about some different ways that, you know, certain needs are met in Um, and I do want to spend some time talking about the extraneous needs that we have in this culture, what we think we need or what we have come to need just by way of, you know, coping mechanisms.
And I've got eight of these listed that I want to go through. And again, I'm sure I'm missing some, but I want to highlight these because I think it's important to recognize. True needs and feed those and divert our energy in that direction and also recognize where we have needs that we don't have. That we think are, you know, original true primal needs, but that maybe should require less of our energy, or we need to just be honest about the fact that they are coping strategies for living inside of this mess.
So the first one I want to talk about is career success. This is a need that we think we have inside of this culture because we have been forced into you. wage labor. So you've been forced into needing a career, needing skills that will provide you an income. And through hundreds of years of indoctrination and, uh, really wonky cultural messaging, you have been taught that you can find a lot of meaning in having a successful career and the identities that come with that.
And this is a poor substitute for the deeper, really woven in meaning that most of us have lost. Because we don't live in communal settings, most of us have not been Truly, deeply seen by others that we make a life with. Um, many of us aren't able to meet our needs in a way that is intrinsic to who we are.
A lot of us, you know, want to make art or make music or care for others. And that's not paid. That's often not paid labor in this. society. And so we have to find other ways to meet our basic needs while also trying to meet that need for meaning and the freedom to make purpose in your life. And so, um, Career success can become this sort of temporary or substitute need that we think needs to be met, and it can provide meaning, of course, and purpose, and, you know, I, I do believe that our, the work that we do in the world is an essential part of our lives, if that's important to us, but let's just be honest about, you know, The fact that you having a very successful career, whatever that looks like to you, whether it's having a lot of power or accolades or making a lot of money or, you know, getting your Ph. D. or whatever it is for you, let's just be honest about the fact that a lot of that is a way to cope with the poverty, the lack of meaning that is. sort of, that was for a long time intrinsic to human beings and how they moved in the world because of how our society is set up now. So, career success can absolutely feel like something that you need or want, and I support you in that.
But again, we need to be honest about which needs are essential, and how deep they go, and what needs are more surface level or are substitutes for a need that is not so easily met in this culture. We also have a need in this culture for highly technical health care. I'm in the process, uh, my husband and I are in the process right now of needing to find a new health care plan, and we both work for ourselves, and I'm sure most of you can relate to the fact that That healthcare is absurdly expensive and meaningless and is often a source of further sickness for people, especially in this country of the U. S., but we have in these Cultures, in Western culture especially, a need for the very technical, very sterile healthcare system that we do to deal with the diseases that arise from not having access to clean air, clean water, good food, the freedom to move and meet our needs, intimacy and closeness, right?
the sickness that comes from living in this way. You know, anxiety and depression, loneliness, other mental illness, um, diabetes, all of these things that are a very natural and understandable reaction to having to live this way. We would not need the health care that we have. We probably wouldn't. I don't know if we do need it, honestly. I see so much harm coming from it, but I know some of it is is essential and really helpful to people, but we would not need all of this if we were living in ways that were very close to the earth, that were more, that were lighter, that were, you know, closer to the rhythms of the seasons, that were closer to, you know, eating wild, good, healthy food, and accessing clean water.
I also think one of the extra needs that come out of the, just the way that we live but aren't actually, isn't actually an original true need is the compulsory education that we have in this country. Our education system is, is here because capitalism is here. Of course, all human beings need to learn.
We're wired to learn. It's a beautiful thing. Learning happens naturally whether you try to or not. And the education system that we have in this country is here to provide child care for those who are currently working and to ready people for the workforce. We just need to be honest about that. And the way that we have education set up now, while I believe that it should be accessible to all and is a, is a need in this current iteration of human society, um, we wouldn't need to The education systems that we have now, again, if we were more able to meet these, you know, four major original needs that we have talked about, you know, you would not need to go to school and sit at a desk and learn math if you were, you know, you would If your grandparents and aunties and uncles and friends could just look after you as you were a kid and be out in the forest with you gathering food or out in the field, you know, planting things, you would be learning, you would still be learning as a child and as an adult, but you would be learning in different ways and you would have, still have access to that closeness and you would be learning through your sustenance, through your life making.
I also think that because of the way that we live, we have a need for highly sophisticated and detrimental means of growing and harvesting and distributing food because of the population growth that has come from settlement, human settlement and civilization, but also because of the destruction and disconnection from our food sources.
Now we need global food distribution systems that are highly. inequitable and problematic, and we saw the sort of fragility of them, I think, at the beginning of COVID, and we still see, you know, the price of food is increasing substantially, and we see the tenuousness of this way of meeting our basic food needs.
We have had to create that because we've been dead set on settling and our comfort and, you know, humans as animals have wanted to access food sources at any cost and we see the effects of that now. We also, most of us need a means of personal petroleum based transportation because everything is so far, our current art.
Our lived environments are so built up and far apart now, most of us have had to move away from our families or have chosen to move away because of jobs or work opportunities. You know, globally people have had to move away because of war or colonization, and that has required a lot of oil based transportation.
A lot of us also feel the need to travel and access education. Relief and comfort and joy in ways that, you know, require airplane transportation. But again, I don't know how much of that is a true original need. Yes, you absolutely need the freedom to explore your world, but would we need to fly across the world for a vacation in a plane?
If we lived in a way where some of these other needs were very deeply and beautifully met, I don't know. I think we also feel like we need a lot of stuff. We just need a lot of like material stuff to keep us kind of propped up and comfortable and pacified and, and to keep the economy going. I think a good example of this is something that I noticed as a parent, which is how much shit you have to get or feel like you have to get with a new baby. You need like a baby swing. You need bassinets. You need, uh, swaddles. You need something, you know, we did like a co sleeper mattress in the bed. You need all of this stuff. And a lot of that feels necessary now because there aren't aunties and grandmas around to hold the baby all the time.
You know, I'm alone, you know, in this house with this baby, and I have to have somewhere safe to put her. I don't have the closeness of community around me. I don't have other people raising her besides my spouse. Of course, family comes and visits, but that's not the same. Not only that, but like I, you know, the way that I work, You can't just strap a baby on and like be at a computer for eight hours.
That's not actually possible. And so we need, quote unquote, need a lot of stuff to make this life even possible, whether it's baby swings, because I don't have anyone to hold my baby, or again, like cars to drive us everywhere, or refrigerators to store our food and keep it cold, because we don't want to just go out into the environment and, and access what we need.
So again, all of this is just to keep in mind the difference between what our actual real needs are and what needs are more related to the sickness that we live in right now. Two others that I'll just mention quickly is that a lot of us feel a need for individual power over others, and that often comes through the work that we do.
Often we are looking for personal empowerment and influence and freedom, really, through having power over others, either as a manager, or as a director, or as a lead, like whatever hierarchical person. You know, form of employment might be available at the time. A lot of people are looking for that freedom of movement and power and influence and meaning making through having power over others around them.
I also think that therapy is a beautiful thing and I've been in therapy for like nine years and it's absolutely essential for me. I cannot imagine my life without my therapist Rachel's help. I don't know if I would need therapy if my needs were actually met in sustainable ways. Therapy is here to help us process and find our way inside of this mess.
And you know, life has always been messy. I'm not saying that humans long ago never had any stress or didn't have to deal with anything. Of course, like climate shifts, they were vulnerable in many ways, but we need to interrupt this line of thinking that is Like, the way things are right now is so good and we're at like the peak of human progress and like this is so wonderful.
We need to remember and see very clearly that there are many true needs that are not being met for people right now or are being met in ways that are at the end of the line very destructive to the planet or to others. And so. We just need to be honest about that. I know I've said that a couple of times already in this episode, but honesty is going to be a through line through this season of the podcast, because we have to be honest about what our needs are, how we're meeting them, why it's so hard to meet them, and other ways that we can do better for ourselves and for this planet and the communities that we're a part of.
We have been taught certain ways to meet our needs in this culture. So, setting aside for a moment the messiness around what our actual needs are versus what are coping mechanisms versus what are just things we want, but don't actually meet our needs.
Setting all of that aside for a moment, whatever the need is, we have been taught. To meet them in a certain way. So not only has culture taught us things about what our needs are, it has also taught us things about how to meet them. And in general, that way of meeting them has been through dominance and Power over others and power over the earth and extraction.
There is a long history of human warfare, uh, domination over the environment, individual heroism, patriarchy, racism. I know you know all of that. And that cultural, these cultural phenomenons and ways of meeting our needs has come down and lives in our family systems. So you learned to meet your needs in ways that suited you and the relationships that you had with your caregivers.
And for some of us, it wasn't okay to have needs, or it was okay to have some needs but not others. You know, yeah, you can have a good meal, but don't expect closeness, or you can have closeness, but I'm not gonna, you know, support your need to have enough rest, whatever it was. And so we might have learned to shut down our needs and not have them, or we might have found ways to manipulate our way into getting our needs met.
And I'm sure you have some sense of what that is for you and how it still shows up for you today as an adult. If you think about being in an intimate relationship with someone, and how you do or would meet your needs in that relationship, it can really clue you in to how you learned to meet those needs as a young person.
You know, whether it's, um, panicking and getting really worried that your needs won't be met, so sort of overdoing it, or shutting down and pretending like you have no needs, and so not asking for anything, or manipulating your way into having those needs met. None of it means that you're bad, or you know, not worthy of having your needs met, but again, we just want to know what those strategies were and see if they still have little tendrils or hooks in us still today, but in general, it's just all very messy.
Most of us were really impacted by this culture, this way of living that, you know, centuries and thousands of years of human civilization and dominance over the environment and all of its tools of violence. And maybe your caregivers came from generations of people who fled hunger or war or slavery or had experiences in which it was really hard and scary to try to meet those needs and survive.
Maybe you know people and have people who are going through that now. Of course, all of us globally are witnessing that in these different areas, like Gaza and the Congo and Sudan, and areas where people are not able to meet their needs right now, and that is, it's not, I don't want to equate it to like, it's traumatic for us, but it is a It does have an impact on us to see that, on a large scale, see all of these people suffering and unable to meet their needs.
And so whether these experiences happened long ago in your heritage or they're happening right now, there is something in your DNA and your family folklore, I'm sure, about needs. And whether it's safe to access resources, how you access resources, um, is it okay to have a need for closeness or connection, what does freedom look like in your family line, was it okay to have that need as a child, whatever it is.
And again, some needs may be easier for you to meet than others, but it's all very complicated. So there's all of this like messiness and complication. In us, individually, and in our families, and then we come into the workplace together and have this mess, or we live together, or we try to be activists together, or we try to start a business and have clients together, and it's all very complicated.
You know, we have to sort of parse through, like, what are my needs? Is it okay to have them? How can I meet them? When can I meet them? And with whom? There's a lot here. And I encourage you to investigate or sit with whatever rises to the surface to you for you about what you learned about needs as a young person and how that is still living inside of your adulthood today.
So I want to talk now about why it's so hard to meet our needs in this environment. Capitalism, in general, only wants you to have a handful of needs, only certain needs are acceptable, and you can only meet them in certain ways. It manipulates you, it manipulates your needs and your ability to meet those needs.
And I think the workplace is a specific location in which we see this really clearly. If you look at a traditional workplace, whether it's a It can be anywhere, even in a solo business, because so many of us have learned capitalism and we create these little bubbles for ourselves that are like workplaces.
But you can see in a workplace that only some of your needs are allowed. You're only allowed to meet them in certain ways, but also your needs are sort of manipulated. They manipulate your need for meaning or purpose or closeness to sort of get you in there and keep you there. And so, I want to talk through how capitalism sort of allows you to meet your needs in a very limited number of ways.
So let's talk about closeness first. So we all have an intrinsic need for closeness, whether it's human to human or us and the wider world, we need that sense of intimacy and relationship. And I won't go into this a lot, but I'm sure you can see that as humans have sort of built bumbled along into civilization and then into capitalism and what we have today, the amount of closeness we have access to has become more and more limited.
So we no longer live in communities of around 150 people or larger or smaller. We no longer live with extended family. Most of us, we no longer live in neighborhoods where we know everyone. Um, most of us, grew up in very small nuclear families, which again is a is by design inside of capitalism. It sort of becomes a, these little families become a replica of the state and a place where capitalism can just get regurgitated and reproduced.
You know, the parents go to work for a long time. Maybe the dad was, you know, only allowed to go to work, or mom had to find unpaid labor, or labor that was paid under the table, and the kids go to school and get inculturated inside of capitalism, and that was set up as sort of an ideal family model, and again, that was by design, you know.
But what does it look like to have, you know, queer families or large families or, you know, families where many people are helping to raise the children or we're in a more extended family network or we live inside of a larger neighborhood or community where the lines are, are blurry. Um, again, the closeness need has been, has been eaten away by civilization and capitalism.
And we also don't have a lot of access to closeness with the wider world. So our intimacy with place has been disrupted through, you know, movement because of jobs, um, forced movement, whether like through enslavement or colonization or, um, Indigenous communities that have been forcibly removed from their homelands, um, and so all over the world, our closeness has been sort of interrupted and attempted to be destroyed.
But capitalism also plays off of it because, you know, we know that we have this need for closeness, so it can become sort of privatized, whether it's through paid dating apps or cures for your loneliness or, you know, money that you might pay to be part of a community or part of a network, you know, and so it's manipulated in both directions essentially.
Sustenance. You have certain needs that need to be met in order for you to grow and become who you are. And inside of capitalism, you can almost only meet your sustenance needs. by paying money for them. So you have to earn money or access money in some way, and then pay for the food that you need with money.
You have to pay for your water. You, you know, might need to pay more for a house in an area that has clean air, and everything is privatized so that someone is making a profit off of the us meeting our very basic needs. So not only is it hard to meet them because we have to pay money for them, but someone else is making a profit and so that degrades the quality of those things that we're even paying for in the first place, right?
So not only do I have to pay for food instead of just going out and accessing it myself, but the quality of the food is Becoming degraded over and over again over time because profit has been made to be more important than, you know, sustainability or the quality of the food. Shelter. Again, this has to be paid for with money, and some people, by design, do not have access to enough money to pay for shelter.
It's a scarce resource in our societies, and on one hand it should be, because our homes, these shelters that we live in, are made up of precious resources, like wood and glass and metal. Those are resources. limited resources and we should not be using so much of them. So it, so there is scarcity here, like real environmental scarcity, but also.
Shelter is a human right and we have more homes than we actually need. A lot of people have many or there are empty places that should be made available to people who don't have homes. And we could live in homes that are easier on the earth and don't include so many materials that have to be extracted and pulled out or created through harmful, toxic processes.
And so shelter should absolutely be available to all people. But inside of capitalism, because it's something that you can only access with money, it's very limited and that need is there. is not met in a way that is just inequitable. Finally, the freedom to explore and make meaning. We have a pseudo freedom here in quote unquote democracy and capitalism.
You know, it's called the free market, right? It must be like anything goes. It's all good. We all have what we need. Do what you want. You know, you're free to state your opinions. You can post on social media. Um, you might have some choice about the job that you do or who you vote for. for, but our freedom, if you just pull a couple layers back, it's actually very limited, you know.
You could get shadow banned on social media, um, your choices of who to vote for are very, very limited. Your vote might not even really have an impact. Yes, you might have some choice about the job that you do, but you better have a fucking job, because you need money. You have to earn money. Most of us are not free to stop working, to stop earning any money.
Most of us are not free to just do what feels most meaningful each day, or pour our hearts into the care that we want to do, or cross borders and provide a safe haven to those who need it the most. There is not a lot of freedom in this life. And so you just got to be aware of how capitalism is going to manipulate that and tell you that you have so much freedom of choice.
Look at all these sweaters you can buy. That's freedom, you know, but, but it's not, that's not the true freedom, the original freedom that we really need. And so, you know, It's very hard to meet our needs here and we have to be honest about the fact that all the money and time that's poured into making all of this feel a little bit better is wasted energy.
It's just putting used bloody band aids on a huge problem. And I want to talk about the workplace specifically for a minute. With all respect in my heart, truly, I know a lot of people who do. a lot of good work inside of organizations, but the amount of effort that's going into manipulating employees so that their jobs feel better or look better or seem less oppressive is wrong.
It's manipulative and I know that a lot of people involved in that work have their hearts in the right place and there is of course value in working inside of a system to make it better, but That is only true if we're honest about what that system is and honest about the fact that we are only working inside of it to try to make it a little bit better.
You know, an organizational development consultant can do meaningful work to make an organization better, but unless they are calling out the fact that workplaces are just little versions of capitalism and that everyone is there by force, they are part of the problem. Everyone involved in human resources, organizational development, learning and development, DE& I, anything related to the workplace right now, All of these people should be learning about capitalism and unwinding it in themselves.
Otherwise, it's just too easy to become a part of the problem and become part of the recreation of oppression there and capitalism. And again, if you're part of that work, I'm not saying that you're bad at all. But let's call things as they are. Workplaces only improve because someone needs the workers to be more productive and less likely to leave.
That's what it is. So we can meet our needs, some of them, through work. Yes, and we have to, really. Most of us have to earn an income so that we can buy the shelter and food that we need. And yes, it can be meaningful the way that we do that. But the situation we're in, capitalism and all of its interlocking systems of oppression, does not want you to actually meet your needs.
And so we're really up against it. And we see the artifacts of that. We see the effects of it. Chronic disease, chronic sleeplessness, loneliness, chaos, disarray, disconnection and scarcity as we all are trying to meet our needs inside of an environment where we're not really allowed to do so in a good way.
So we really need some fresh approaches to that. And that's what the season of the show is going to be about. We're going to be I'm going to really try to tell the truth about all of this, and I want you to feel, I want to say really loudly now that you are not doing it wrong if it feels hard to meet your needs right now.
If you are struggling financially, it's not your fault because you're doing it wrong. That's, it's supposed to be this way, you know, not that it's like sanctioned or a good thing, but it's supposed to be very hard to meet our needs inside of this economic structure. It's not supposed to be hard for everyone, but it's supposed to be hard for most people because capitalism requires inequity and it requires a large set of people to be struggling and working very hard for a very little amount of money.
And so we're going to be looking at other ways in which you can meet your true original needs, how to do that inside of where we are, how to create some new possibilities for ourselves and for others, and also pulling in the wisdom of beings who are doing it in ways that are closer to their evolutionary heritage, like the plants, the fungi, and the animals who are still out there surviving despite everything that we keep throwing at them.
So, Those are the beings that I want to learn from, not another human who is as warped and fucked up inside of the system as I am, you know, who's been inculturated inside of civilization and domination and capitalism. I don't want to learn from us anymore. I want to learn from the beings out there who are very close to the ground or in the ground, meeting their needs in ways that are not wreaking havoc on the earth.
So, today, just a little invitation for today as we close out our time. I hope that you can just hold your heart and really feel your true, original needs today. Your need for closeness, your need for sustenance, for shelter, for freedom, and you might feel really far from some of those needs right now, and that, that's okay to be there.
I'm with you. All people inside of this are with you in some way and there is an opportunity here to really just start by honoring the grief that it's hard to meet our needs, that we have needs that are going unmet, or that the way we're meeting these needs feels yucky and toxic. You might see that some of your needs are actually more met or closer to being met than you thought.
Maybe you don't need career success, maybe you just need a deeper sense of relationship and meaning with your world. Maybe you don't need another thing to buy, but that you just need some cleaner water, you know. I don't want to be trite about it or make it seem simple, but there is a lot of power in coming back to these original needs and focusing more of our energy on them rather than on these needs that are sort of extraneous or that again are just about coping with a very sick system that we're part of.
So, I hope a part of you just recognizes that so much of what we think we need is really just noise and attempts to get us on board with this yucky way that humans are living right now. And so I hope you feel emboldened to just go into the roots of you and meet some of your actual life giving needs, not the needs that you're being sold, you know.
It can feel really lovely to focus on just accessing super healthy food or more rest or a shelter that feels less isolating to you or accessing the freedom to play or move in your life. Um, all of that can be really delicious and nourishing. I also want to encourage you to pay more attention now to how the beings around you are meeting their needs, human or otherwise.
You know, how are the squirrels feeding themselves? How is the passionflower vine growing so quickly? How in the world are the larger, wilder animals like the bears, the moose, or the wolves making it right now? Can we find solidarity with them in this moment in some way that makes sense to you, in your body, in your language?
I encourage you to really hold that or consider that and pay attention there.
Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you to all of you supporting the show financially. If this podcast is meaningful to you and you have the means, I would so appreciate you chipping in once or monthly, and you can do that at buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. I'll put the link for that in the show notes. There are lots of ways for us to work together this spring. If you would like to either in person with Rise Up Rooted, or if you're, you know, not in the Oregon area or don't want to come in to town for that, there are ways that we can work together virtually as well, either one on one or through eating capitalism or a tarot reading. So I encourage you to consider that if you need some extra support right now.
I will be with you next week to keep talking about our needs and new ways to meet them, and I'm really excited to move through this season with you. I hope you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.
Show Notes:
If you enjoyed this episode, please help get it to others by subscribing, rating the show, or sharing it with a friend! You can also pitch in to support the show once or monthly at: www.buymeacoffee.com/meganleatherman
Resources mentioned:
*Rise Up Rooted: Rite of Passage Program for Adults: awildnewwork.com/rise-up-rooted
*Eating Capitalism: awildnewwork.com/eating-capitalism
*One on One Work: awildnewwork.com/one-on-one-coaching