ANANKELOGY 101
What in the World is Anankelogy? (And Why Should Anyone Care?)
When my circumstances got so wrong that I had to be right about understanding the needs
Q1: What are the chances for an asexual transperson to be placed onto the lifetime sex offender registry?
Q2: What are the chances for thousands of wrongly convicted innocent persons to be ignored by our adversarial judicial system?
Q3: What are the chances for our legal system to get things completely wrong and backwards?
Answer: The same as the chances for the legal system to smear the one person with the liberating insight we almost all crave. I’m living proof!
Understanding what’s needed in our imperfect world
It’s now easier for the falsely accused to humbly admit their imperfections than for police and prosecutors to humbly admit theirs. We don’t incentivize authorities to humbly admit their errors, so they understandably keep making them.
Our legal system runs on the low octane of adversarialism. One side trying to beat the other side down. Try to win at all costs. Try to get some relief from emotional pain.
But not me. Spirituality inspires me to endure pain. Maybe too much pain. Some like to project their pain onto me, when eager to rid themselves of excess discomfort. I press on without reacting, because I understand the needs.
Overcoming painful difficulties
I’m not going to talk about the 13 years taken from me, but instead to share with you how calamity brought out the best in me. After coming home, I finished my undergraduate degree. Then went on to earn two graduate degrees, one in public admin and the other in counseling.
I’m not going to waste time talking about being the first out trans student there and its challenges. I’d rather dive into the epiphanies that led to coming up with a new social science. My indigenous spirituality (i.e., I’m an enrolled Oneida of Wisconsin) inspired me to come up with anankelogy, the academic study of need.
I’m not going to spend time talking about setting up the first reentry program for trans ex-felons who leave prison with nowhere to go. Or how I helped Transgender Michigan with their first strategic plan as its cofounder started the Trans Day of Visibility. Instead, I will focus on how I wrote and self-published a book introducing anankelogy to the world.
Now I am here to focus on what you need. To help you understand your needs, like never before. Now I am working on a website to showcase this new social science: AnankelogyFoundation.org. And now I am here on Medium to spread the word. Almost every new thing must start humbly from somewhere.
Appreciating your every need as an objective fact
Émile Durkheim famously established sociology as a science by asserting “social facts” that exist independent of individuals. Which can then be subject to empirical observation and social science measures.
Likewise, anankelogy recognizes your needs as an objective fact.
Anankelogy is a science recognizing need as objective fact.
You objectively require water to function, for example, which you subjectively experience as thirst. You may choose how to get that water, but you can never choose to no longer require water. That requirement — that need — exists prior to, and independent of, your subjective experiences.
So think about it. When was the last time you chose to be thirsty? Or when you chose to require closeness with someone? Or when you decided you can only function if granted some privacy? Each of these needs occur prior to your subjective awareness of them. And that makes them open to scientific inquiry with the proper social science tools.
Anankelogy helps you understand your needs by distinguishing between your unchosen needs and your chosen responses to them. Many things we refer to as a need is actually, from an anankelogical point of view, merely a preference. I never actually need a “bottle” for water, but prefer a bottle over cupping my hands under the faucet. If I could pick something else, according to anankelogy, then it’s only a preference and not a need. If no room to choose, then anankelogically it’s an objective need.
Solving problems by resolving needs with anankelogy
Failing to distinguish between unchosen needs and chosen preferences fuel many of our problems. While Putin can decide to invade or not invade Eastern Ukraine, he cannot decide to ignore the risk to his and his people’s need for security. Not while NATO encroaches up to the Russian border. At least not without painfully compromising their unchosen requirement to fully function. And the Ukrainians cannot choose to ignore their affected security needs.
Both Palestinians and Israelis need security and self-determination in the place they call home. Neither can choose to not require security nor forgo self-determination. Any framing of the conflict failing this distinction risks making the problem worse. Which helps explain why it’s endured for many decades.
Student protestors can decide to encamp on the quad in protest. But they cannot elect to passively allow their tuition to pass into an endowment. Not if they find that helps fund violence they see killing thousands of children in violation of their integrity. Their beliefs shape how they experience their integrity, but not the need for integrity itself. Even if you oppose their actions, you can always affirm their unchosen needs behind those actions.
I can decry the bizarre wrongful conviction that derailed my life, while still affirming the unchosen needs of all those involved. I support the underserved needs of the police, of prosecutors, and even of the false accuser. Indeed, the more their needs find a path for proper resolution, the less likely to slip into error and crush others’ lives.
Anankelogy promises to provide answers to help solve many of today’s problems. From personal problems between friends to global problems threatening humanity. Follow along and see if your own problems can be solved by better understanding each other’s unmet needs. See how this new understanding of needs can shed more light and spread more love.
Together, let’s reignite our potential for love — of honoring the needs of others as our healthier selves would have them honor ours. Love must start from somewhere. So let my rejection serve your acceptance. Let’s affirm the unchosen needs in each other, whether there’s anything we can do about them or not. Let’s nurture and blossom our untapped love by better understanding and affirming our needs. After we understand each other’s needs like never before.
Thank you for reading, and for clapping. Engage this in the comments:
Debunk this notion of objective needs. Can you think of any exceptions?
If a need exists as an objective fact, what could that imply to you?
This begins a series of introducing anankelogy to you and to the world. I look forward to engaging anyone who appreciates this vision for improving our lives by better understanding our needs. More to come.
