I Want/I Need
Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D.
A few weeks ago I wrote a column on the meaning of electronic communication like cell phones, Twitter, and Facebook. I described how these tools are changing us as a culture and my mailbox was filled with comments from readers who applauded my observations of how teenagers are unaware of the meanings of their behaviors. This week I'd like to step on some adult toes.
One of the quirks about psychologists is that we often aren't as interested in an event as we are in the way people behave during the event. For example, at the scene of a car accident or burning building, I'm more apt to watch the crowd than I am to watch the action that everyone else is watching. Therefore, I can't help but pay more attention to the meaning of conversations as much as the issues being discussed.
If you follow the news at all, you have seen the way the debate over government involvement in healthcare is overshadowing everything else that is going on in the world. This is an important debate and there are valid issues on both sides of the argument. Whether we need government involvement or not isn't an issue I want to debate. I am more interested in the meaning of the words used in the discussion.
Politicians regularly use the word "need" as they
discuss the healthcare issue - an interesting choice of words.
The word "need" has meaning. A need is something that
you can't live without. If healthcare coverage really were a "need"
and if it is true that 40+ million people didn't have it, wouldn't
we see thousands of deaths each year due to untreated illness?
Yet I haven't seen any data that even comes close to demonstrating
that.
For centuries there was no such thing as health insurance and
people got along OK. Even in relatively recent history it wasn't
uncommon for people to have no insurance. While it was inconvenient,
it wasn't at all impossible to survive. It wasn't until the 1960's
that companies widely offered healthcare to their employees as
a perk and prior to that time, most Americans had no health insurance
at all.
I didn't have health insurance for several years after graduating from college in the early 1980's and my wife and I were without insurance of any kind during the first years of our marriage, but we made it. We paid cash for prescriptions and we paid cash at the doctor or dentist. If we didn't have the money up front we made payments as long as it took to pay our bills.
Thomas Sowell writes in a recent column that it is ironic that we will operate on credit for nearly everything, sometimes going into debt for decades, but when it comes to paying doctor bills, we think we "need" to pay at that moment or something is wrong with the system.*
It is amazing how quickly luxuries become necessities. I made it through my entire undergraduate and graduate career without the Internet. After I began teaching at Georgia State, one of my graduate students taught me how to use email, something I had never even heard of. Now I can't imagine a day without either. I could live without them, but I wouldn't want to.
Other common things that used to be "wants," but have become "needs" are second cars, televisions with cable/satellite, iPhones or Blackberries with cameras, text-messaging, and video, hi-speed Internet, Facebook, and home ownership. These perceived needs have gotten thousands of people into financial trouble because they pursued them when they couldn't afford them. They misinterpreted wants as needs.
Language defines us and has meaning in a cultural context. It evolves. Gay used to mean happy and although it still means happy, nobody uses it that way anymore. In public debate, if we really mean "want" or "prefer" then we should use those words instead of "need."
The point here isn't the pro or con of the healthcare debate. It is not so much the answer to the question that I'm interested in, but rather it is the question itself. Do we "need" government involvement in healthcare? If we are going to base a decision that has implications for generations to come on the meaning of a single word, it is important to ensure we understand the meaning of that word and use it correctly. Think about this next time your child says, "Mom, I need $20 to go to the movies with my friends."
(See "Fables for Adults," by Thomas Sowell at
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/09/15/fables_for_adults?page=full.)