What are needs?

Essay by removedastarsCollege, UndergraduateB+, December 2006

download word file, 3 pages 3.0

Downloaded 24 times

People often confuse the words want and need and their definitions. We often mistake things that we want, as part of our needs. Needs are defined as a requirement, a necessity arising from the circumstances of a situation or case. To address the initial question, "what are needs?", needs are what are necessary or a requirement for our survival. Every human needs food, water, and shelter to survive. For survival in our modern society one requires clothing and transportation. Just about anything beyond this could be considered a want rather than a need.

Needs can fall under two categories, physical and emotional needs. Physical needs would include those listed in the above paragraph; food, water, and shelter, and the possible inclusion of clothing and transportation. Food is necessary for survival because it provides our bodies with nourishment and energy. Water is the same way; all living things require water even more than food.

Shelter provides protection from the weather, predators, and disease. These three are necessities that humans have found to be needs for centuries, since the caveman. Now in our modern society, we could add two more needs to that list. These needs would be clothing and transportation. I consider clothing to be a need in modern society because it's unacceptable to leave your house (shelter) without being clothed. While clothing is a need, an excess in amount and cost could then push clothing into being a want. In the present day, transportation has been moved to the status of a necessity. That has happened because everything we need is no longer right outside our front door. We no longer grow our own food in our backyards or collect water from a well. Thus we need transportation to take us to places where we can buy these things. But...