Becoming the Stability of the Earth: Part 2
Focusing on Our Four Original Needs
Image via Wonder Portals by Marika Moffitt
Just like everyone around you—human or otherwise—unless you can meet your needs, you will not be able to live nor will you be able to give life to the visions living within your blooming heart.
Capitalism and its older cousin, civilization, have so effectively eroded our connection to the wild ways of meeting our needs that many of us aren’t even in touch with what our actual needs really are, much less how to meet them in natural ways. This entire series could consist solely of all the ways that civilization and capitalism have broken, manipulated, reconfigured, co-opted, and profited off of the needs that we possess. One of the hallmarks of capitalism in particular is that it interrupts our ability to meet our needs in a natural way and then sells us things and ideas that are supposed to meet those needs but don’t.
One night at dinner, my husband Chris and I were talking about our desire for more and better friendship in our lives. We haven’t quite cracked the code of having regular, supportive, mutual companionship in the midst of raising two children, working for ourselves, and living in our single family home. Because of the way capitalist culture shapes our lives, particularly through its demands that we work a lot and have limited time for community or leisure, our need for friendship can feel unsatisfyingly met. As we were talking about this, Chris told me about an app that you can download (and pay for) that will match you with people in the area who would also like to have more friendships.
This is just one small example of how capitalist culture has interrupted our very natural desire for regular contact and life-making with other people and then has come back to sell us a technological solution. This “solution” is an unsatisfactory one because even if we’re matched with the best friends of our dreams, the demands of work and sustaining a family in nuclear isolation make it very difficult to foster deep and meaningful friendships with new people. Whether it’s access to healthy food, fresh water, sustainable housing, or a sense of agency in your life, almost every need you have has been penetrated, dismantled, re-packaged, and sold back to you by a culture obsessed with profit.
In addition to interrupting our ability to meet our original needs, capitalist culture also creates interlocking and extraneous needs from which to profit. In keeping with our example on friendship, because our need for companionship is so often unmet, we’re more susceptible to stories that tell us that we need to purchase more things in order to feel better or be someone that people will like, and we also need to pay to see a therapist or procure medication to manage our loneliness. There are thousands of examples like this. Because of the industrialized food system and environmental pollution, we’re becoming more sick and in need of expensive medical care. Because most of us live outside of community and are forced to work for a wage, those of us with child or elder dependents are in need of paid caregivers who can do what we would naturally do ourselves, alongside our kin. There are hundreds of needs spinning off of other needs because we’re compensating for so much loss inside of this culture: the loss of habitat, of intimacy, of the village or family group, the loss of ancestral knowledge, on and on.
In truth, human beings don’t need very much. We can see among other animals and people who still live close to the Earth that our innate needs are deep, but minimal. When we sink into our primal human nature, which is the nature of the Earth, we can see what it is that we actually need in order to thrive. The four primary categories of needs that I see in our human experience are: closeness, sustenance, shelter, and freedom. We need to feel our intimate connections to one another and to all of life, we need fresh food and water, a safe place to find relief from the elements, and the freedom to be who we are, as we are, throughout our lives. We can see that Indigenous communities around the world and throughout time have found life-giving ways to meet these needs–strategies that actually allow for more of their needs to be met rather than strategies that deplete themselves and other beings around them.
In some ways, we need much less than what most of us have; in our hearts, we can see how unnecessary and soul-deadening our shopping centers, storage units, and streaming services are. In other ways, we need much more than we have at this time, with so many of us starving for a hearty serving of self-knowledge, clarity of purpose, and a place in the village. Having inherited this upside-down way of navigating what our needs are and how we can be deeply fed, our ideas about what it means to be stable, abundant, and resilient need to be recalibrated. Capitalism offers us a colorful buffet of foods that taste delicious but make us sick. As we heap spoonfuls of this bright and enticing food onto our plates, in awe of how much we have, we’re cast into a spell that makes us forget what our true hunger is for and how to feed ourselves in ways that don’t kill us and the Earth.
If what we truly need is closeness, sustenance, shelter, and freedom, then we can reclaim some of the energy we spend on procuring things we don’t actually need and shift it toward feeding us at these four roots instead.
So rather than spending money on an app that can help me meet new people, I might first spend some of my energy on cultivating closeness with my deeper self, or with the plants and insects I live with, or with the people already in my life. Then, with that cup more full, I can decide more clearly whether or not to engage in an explicitly capitalist mode of cultivating social connection.
So many of us are exhausted and unsure of how to be well in this world right now, but there is power in turning toward intimacy, clean food and water, a safe home, and the freedom to be who we are. You might drop in for a moment and imagine what you would be like if each of these four needs were deeply, abundantly met. What dreams could come alive through you if these needs were met? Envisioning yourself in that state can give you a taste of the bounty and the beauty available in this middle Spring period.