Saturday, February 20, 2010

Needless Wants

For the past two academic years, we've been grilled about how marketing is all about converting human 'needs' into 'wants'. Apparently there reside, deep in the recesses of our mind, unstated needs that promotions prod us to acknowledge, want and satisfy. I beg to differ.

The human mind, to me, is too complex, irrational and in a constant state of confusion to know what we really need. But it wants everything. Wants are the essence of our character, behaviour and purpose. Needless as they might be, they explain lucidly a life wasted, and define our aspirations that we continue to foster after repeated let downs. So much for Pavlov's Classical Conditioning theory too. Seriously, the man used a dog to explain what I might do at the repeated ringing of a bell. WTF?

Anyhow, what I intend to describe is the futility of seeking reason to one's behaviour. There is a dense bright ball of madness that drives our mental faculty at any point. It wants us to break systems that cannot be broken, to walk the longer road home, to ceaselessly call out to that one person who wont turn back and because there is no need for it. To let that song playing randomly on shuffle to affect your mood and turn an erstwhile well structured blog post into meaningless babble. Yet, we refuse to learn.

Lesson: We're all mad. Admit it.