What do we mean by Infinite Need?
Needs can be viewed both in the Abstract and as Direct Experience.
For example: Everyone Needs to Eat, can be interpreted as 1 Need. This is the result of seeing Need as a Category.
This kind of thinking is embedded within Maslow’s Hierarchy. Where needs exist as tiers, which are built upon.
However there is an inherent fallacy in this framing. A Need once met, does not remain met. If you’re Hungry and you Eat, you do not remain permanently fed.
Max-Neef’s Fundamental Human Needs, whilst still addressing Need as Category, recognises Needs as Cyclical. Constantly shifting position.
Our Needs are best Viewed as a Frequency. Shifting between Met Need and Unmet Need. When a Need is met, we put our attention on other Needs. When it is Unmet it can dominate our attention, and cause us to struggle to think about anything else. (try having a conversation while you need to piss).
So when we talk about Infinite Need, it is viewing need through the Lens of these peaks and troughs of experience. A frequency of Needs.
When we talk about Infinite Need therefore we view each Unmet Need (and perhaps even each Met Need) as a separate Need that has to be fulfilled (after all it requires fresh resources to satisfy it).
So within a day perhaps you Need to Eat 7-8 times (including snacking). So Need for food over a course of a day is 7-8 (although better categorised as specific nutritional and calorific content rather than abstracted to “food” which masks a wealth of False Satisfiers or worse.
But this is still finite I hear some cry. Yes. Over the chronology of one day we can put finite bounds on it. Multiplied by 7+ Billion it becomes a challenge, but perhaps it can still be argued as Finite for those who would care to.
So to comprehend the Infinite Win we must now expand our concept of Needs in 2 critical directions. We must account for the Needs of the Beings, Infrastructures and Systems upon which we are dependant.
If we take the Need to Eat as an example, we must also account for the Needs of the Plant, the Needs of the System that moves and stores the plant, the Needs of every mission critical Being involved in the Meeting of that task. So now the Need to Eat, when we explore it on this Fractal scale is a much larger number. However again it could be argued for those so inclined to count, to be finite.
Finally we much address the boundaries by which we perceive Life. Do you perceive life as having Finite potential or Infinite Potential.
Up until now, Life has continued to expand and perpetuate itself, to increase the scales at which it can exist and the contexts in which it can thrive. Even if all life did was maintain a continued amount of biomass, if life continues in an infinity of time, then Need is infinite.
The idea that life might be Finite in potential rather than Infinite, implies an End to life. If we design our systems based on this assumption, then we orient ourselves towards making it a reality (we will likely not succeed as Life has Infinity as it’s playground).
Considering the above we therefore maintain that our collective Needs are Infinite, Even if this is not True (it’s both impossible to prove or disprove), from a practical perspective believing so causes us to expand our attention towards the Needs of all beings, rather than limit our perception and assume that we already know what is Needed.
The Infinite Win 