Wants x Needs

You always want things you don’t have and disregard those same things when you do have them. This is the paradox of desire, but also the arbiter of need.

You don’t need anything other than food, water, and some proper housing. Needs are a means of survival. Everything else (technology, cars, even love) is just extra. What makes them necessary is conformity, which ironically, makes them essential to survival. If you don’t have an email account, do you even exist?

The non-essential becomes essential through social utility. No one wants to be left out. Feeling needed (and heard) may be the biggest desire of mankind.