What People Want.

WHAT, do you WANT?!?!?!  No seriously, what do you want?

There is a range of wants (see definitions section).  At one end are those that are primarily biological (needs) and at the other are those that are taught (desires).  The biological needs are those that are include eating, sleeping, living, emotional, etc.  As one starts crossing the spectrum toward learning, there are sexual wants, and that progresses to cultural and then to various abstract wants.  These abstract needs could be a need for power, money, style, learning, etc.  I call these desires.  Many desires are  just derivatives of the physical needs.  The extent they are rooted to needs varies.  

Okay, so you have to sources of wanting something.  We have the needs and desires.  One of these is usually dominant.  Most needs directly pleasure the brain no matter what.  So you can some good food, or have fun with friends, or have some good sex, and that feels good.  You don't really have to learn that it does.  There is some social effects on all these areas of course.  For example, the preferences of the previous examples, like if you prefer the taste of a hamburger to fried beetles, are partially dependent on the culture one grows up in.  But for the most part, many of these needs are natural and completely genetically derived.  

Okay, what about the desires?  The want that you are taught.  Those are important as well.  But the truth is.  Really look at these desires, and understand what they come from.  Why does someone want that SUV?  Probably because he was convinced that it is a cool car, and that will make him feel powerful and maybe more popular.  Those areas tap into your needs.  Feeling powerful taps into feeling and can lead to being more popular with opposite sex.  Being popular eventually leads to meeting more people and eventually getting better limbic regulation.  Both these areas are directly leading into expressing themselves as needs.

So what unifies needs and desires?  The answer is that both are used as guides to help us find out what makes us happy.  Happiness being a state of contentment or pleasure.  This is where everything is in relative balance.  So then the goal of wants to tell you want makes you happy.

What does this mean?

All our wants are geared to guide us to happiness.  So were does this definition of happiness come from.  Desires are derived from needs.   Needs are biological directives of what we want.  Well if it's biological, then we have to look at the brain. 

This is because it's the brain that in charge of making us feel pleasurable.  The brain runs on biological processes So, want you find pleasurable must eventually manifest itself in some biological form.  It's the brain that must interpret want you do in the outside world as pleasurable experiences.  This depends on the brains neural networks.

The structure of the brain is neural networks.  Once again, there are two sources of these neural networks.  The genetic and environmental.  The genetic part derives from how the neural network was structured (from the point of your conception) and how it grows.  This is dependent on our your DNA.  How it encodes proteins, how those proteins affect your mind.  For example, say there is a person whose DNA controls their body to release endorphins only in high risk situations.  Well, in order to have to biological pleasure of those endorphins, this person will probably develop a need to engage in risky behavior to get that endorphin rush.  This could manifest in our world by through the choice of careers or hobbies or other behaviors.  In present American society, that would be like anything from CIA Agent to bank thief.  Or the person might like to skydive. 

The first part of the example showed the genetic source of the want.  The second part showed the environmental source.  That person will equate that job, or hobby (or whatever source he has for that endorphin rush ) with happiness.  Over time, his neural networks might encode that anything relating to those desires will instill the happiness in that person. 

This is like a person who grows up in a abnormal household and has abnormal relationships and experiences happiness in them.  That persons neural networks will, over time, equate similar abnormality with happiness.  Whenever the person finds similar cues of it in the rest of the world. 

So, desires are a result of neural networks.  And neural networks are a result of your DNA and environment.  Which is more important varies from person to person.  It is a complex interplay.  But, I do propose that DNA is more important, because DNA is still the signal most important source in guiding your processes.  Everything for how sensitive you are to pain when you are born, to how quickly you can retain information.  Also, many of the structures of the brain are built according to the genetic specifications without much external effect.  Therefore DNA is VERY important in understanding the source of our wants.  

Now think about that question again.  What do you want?  Then ask yourself, why do you want it.  In the end, you find that it is a result of your neural networks.  So, to understand what you want, and what is important to you, you have to know your neural networks.  And to understand your neural networks, you need to know about your DNA programming and your past environment.  Because everyone's DNA and environment are different, everyone will have different wants.  But, because DNA is a big influence on the building or our biological structures, and most people's DNA is very similar (more than 99% the same) many people will have general needs that are similar.  These will be need for socializing, food, sex, etc.