by Martin Butler
What do people want? Not such a simple question as it seems. Tom Turcich, the guy who recently walked around the world passing through 38 countries over seven years, claimed that from what he had experienced people just want to make a little money and hang out with their families, which sounds like a fairly hopeful conclusion, though we mustn’t forget that this was clearly not enough for Tom himself. If true, this simple answer leads on to other important questions. If most people have such modest wants, why would they care about the big political and ethical questions that philosophers agonise about? Might it be the case that equality, human rights, democratic representation and so on are pretty much beside the point for the majority? Why would those with a good enough life need to bother with such wider issues? We need to remember here that, historically, political ideals took off as real issues only when they entered people’s everyday lives rather than as abstract ideals debated by the intellectual few. The important struggles of the past – and present – have been prompted when people, or at least significant groups of them, were unable to enjoy an adequately resourced and secure life with their families which was not dependent on the whim of those in positions of power. So there certainly is a very clear connection between the modest wants that Tom Turcich identifies and the big political questions. He draws the conclusion that while people are on the whole good, he can’t say the same for the systems they often live under.
With the advent of mass media and the internet in particular our whole landscape has changed dramatically. For most of history the vast majority of people lived essentially local lives with little or no knowledge of a wider world picture. Now we can know of the sufferings of people on the other side of the world as easily as we can the goings on in the next street or village, in fact often more easily. We can gain a sophisticated grasp of the latest scientific information on climate breakdown and the many other negative effects of humanity on the environment. The distinction between our own personal concerns and those issues which might be regarded as more remote and abstract becomes increasingly blurred.
News and media stoke fears, some legitimate, others fictional, and these become a part of our everyday life whether we like it or not. Social media is awash with people who are very angry about things that seem to have next to no effect on or relevance to their own lives. In fact it often seems that those whose personal circumstances are in good shape are the one’s getting most angry, perhaps because they actually have the time to invest emotional energy in more remote issues. Knowing more, we fear more, and believing something is a threat to your own security or ‘way of life’ is enough to trigger negative emotional reactions that can run ahead of themselves even without any direct, non-media related evidence. The growth in conspiracy theories is part of this phenomenon. Such theories are toned down versions of the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis so beloved by philosophers – an outlandish and very alarming idea that has absolutely no impact on ordinary life.
The problem is not just about fears and threats, but about our self-perception. It has always been true that we assess the adequacy of our own personal circumstances and abilities against the norms of our social group. If I live in a village in which most people own three cows and I own two I am likely to feel hard done by, even if for those in the village down the road two cows is the norm. But when we have direct access to a social group that can stretch across the globe, this tendency becomes acute, and consumer capitalism amplifies it further, depending as it does on convincing us that modest lives are the last thing we want. Without bigger and better consumer durables and conforming to some artificial consumerist ideal, we are but pale images of our real selves. And with all this as a backdrop to our lives, it’s easy to reach a point where we just don’t know what a sane normality looks like.
The upside of this is that this wider and more immediate knowledge of goings on in the wider world has shown that people mostly do care about the suffering of others and major threats to the environment, even when there is no direct impact on their own lives. After all, charities rely on the kindness of strangers. The cynical “I’m alright Jack” view of humanity, it seems, is not actually the norm. But even here there’s the danger of overwhelm. In the context of the problems the world presents us with, individual lives can seem paltry; giving to charity, local activism, adapting to a more green life style, everything can seem pointless, more about making us feel better than actually solving the problem. The more our global knowledge increases, it seems, the more depression and mental health problems flourish.
One solution might be to make a conscious effort to erect filters, if not outright barriers, to these external influences, and for some, such barriers might well be necessary to preserve mental health. Here the “I’m alright Jack” attitude might come in handy, not because it means ignoring the needs of others but for the sake of sanity in the face of things we can do little about. It’s easy to see why people want to keep their heads down and count such blessing as they have. It’s a matter of balance, and this is a delicate thing for there are real threats and sufferings that we ought to care about and trying to isolate ourselves completely in our bubble involves its own kind of delusional thinking, which authoritarian regimes are more than happy to exploit. Such regimes sell the idea that what people want is security and a roof over their heads, not fancy political and ethical ideals. If anything they tend to stoke fears but claim that the regime itself is a bulwark against the threat.
At the centre of all this is the simple truth that what we want is intimately connected to what we believe. Of course there are basic wants that seem to be independent of beliefs. If I’m hungry, I’ll want food. If I’m cold I’ll want to get warm. This will be true whatever I happen to believe, though even here beliefs can counter wants – believing that I need to lose weight or that a cold shower is good for me. What I will is to be distinguished from what I want. I will not to eat or to stay in the cold shower, even though the fact remains that I still want food or to get warm. But when we look at less basic human wants, the role of belief becomes more important. I want political leader X because I believe he or she will create more opportunities for my children, or I want Y item of clothing because I believe it will make me more attractive.
Unlike wants, which we tend to think of as out of our control (I cannot decide not to be hungry), beliefs are cognitive and can be either justified or unjustified. So if what we want depends on what we believe, it is of course important that our beliefs are justified. Given that the internet and mass media in general, showers us with apparently good reasons to hold a whole plethora of beliefs, how do we pick through them to separate wheat from chaff, particularly as it’s not always clear what some beliefs actually involve. I’m sure many who voted for Brexit in the UK didn’t anticipate waiting for hours at passport control at Dover before they can cross the channel. Not only this, but how do we resist being drawn into what we might describe as illusory wants, because it’s quite possible to think you want something without actually wanting it. This may well be because other people have this want, perhaps people you admire, and you have a desire to be like them and so kid yourself that you must have the same want. How many have enthusiastically purchased some electronic gismo that ended up untouched in a cupboard a couple of months later? Only in the cold light of day, when the want is apparently satisfied, does its illusory nature becomes clear, and even then, if we have invested considerable effort into satisfying this want, it might be difficult to admit the truth. Knowing yourself isn’t at all easy. And this point can be applied to political wants and as much as our desire for consumer durables.
So where does all this leave Tom Turcich’s insight about what people want?
Well clearly it’s more complicated than he implies. However, there is an important insight that I think we can draw from his suggestion, which applies particularly to this age of the internet and mass communication. Although we think of ourselves as clever, super sophisticated beings it might benefit us to remember that our wants and needs are not that different from the human beings who walked the earth thousands of years ago. It might not be a bad idea to reflect on this, and to strip away as many of the phony wants and beliefs that we inevitably gather in a modern technological environment and try to identify exactly what is really important to us. And then to build us from there. A bit like Descartes’ method of doubt.