How To Tell The Difference Between Real Desire And Social Programming

We take on a listener question that sounds simple but changes everything: do we choose our desires, or are our desires shaped by need, fear, and social conditioning. We sort needs from wants, use quick tests to spot programming, and point back to self-knowledge as the clearest path to real motivation.
• defining needs vs wants vs desires so we can communicate clearly
• noticing how comfort seeking hides inside “small” cravings
• separating higher mind desires from socially guided desires
• using the deathbed regret test to clarify what matters
• using the “because” filter to reveal conditioning
• revisiting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a motivation map
• questioning whether belonging has become the modern base need
• stepping away from politics and blame to focus on inner change
• leaving open questions about internal vs external desire origins

Transcript

Cold Day Small Talk

SPEAKER_03 0:10

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

It's a little bit overcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

Tiz.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

This is probably the last cold day. Yes. Some people are are suffering in snow today. We're not. Which is good news. But the tide is high, but I'm holding on.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

I'm not the kind of girl that gives up just like that.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Yeah, I wasn't gonna say anything, but my bad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, the water's way up. Water's way up. Wind is blowing in. Sky is gray, but it is spring. So yeah. Let's move on to the topic.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

We don't even want to look outside. Yeah, so we were sent a podcast topic a couple weeks ago, and we're getting around to it now, from our good friend and team member Brian. And he was asking well, he said, I was having a conversation with someone who said we don't choose our desires. We don't choose our desires. And I would love to hear that discussed. My initial take is that we would have programming that influences desires. But maybe it's soothing. And our souls would also have desires. If I am free to choose, does that include my desires? Or are my deep desires the filter for how I make choices? And is desire the same as passion? Does our soul choose our passion or desire? And do we manufacture desires for ourselves? What do you think?

Needs Wants And Word Meanings

SPEAKER_00 2:11

I don't know. Well, it's it's huge, isn't it? It's like just the hugest topic. We'll probably talk about this for days. Just trying to break it down into its pieces, into random pieces. Just let us examine it, I guess, really. I'm always inclined to talk about words and remember that we're communicating, and communicating is completely reliant on us having commonality in our interpretation of words, these noises that we make that are symbols of symbols. It's a noise that symbolizes a word that symbolizes something, something in our experience. And what are the desires that are a distraction and will actually interfere? And what is motivation, right? Where does our motivation come from? These are to me, just we're just scratching the surface now, but you know, what do we mean? You know, like I think of desires, and I I think of the word the uh I think of a category of words that I think of that refer to need. You know, there's things that we need and we have no choice, right? I need water, yeah, right? I need air. These are physical requirements of life, and then there are the things I desire. Coffee. Coffee. It all comes back to coffee, doesn't it? It does. Always so uh to to have effective communication, I think, is it is to do a bit of this word play. We talk about needs, we talk about wants, we talk about desires, we talk about attachments, we talk about programs, which are often much more about how we express what comes naturally to us. I don't think that any human being at the earliest stages of their life wants to just sit and be left alone. So from there, where do you go? Right? I don't want to sit here, I don't want to be left alone. What's my motivation? What are my motivations? Where do desires fit into that idea?

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Yeah. I think they fit in. Well, the first one that comes to my mind is a sense of community, belonging. In my mind, they're sort of interchangeable, those two. Well, you meant you mentioned the body mind. Like what does the body desire? You know, the body desires that bag of chips, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Well, you know, the body desires the bag of chips, but is that bodily bodily desire of that bag of chips? It's really not about the chips. Chips is just a cultural, defined, typical snack that works. But what does it work to do? Well, it works to comfort, makes me feel better.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Maybe it'll take the edge off my hunger, probably not, because I'll eat the whole bag. So it's unlikely that it's just there for the purposes of my needs for nutrition.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah.

Comfort Food And Hidden Motives

Higher Desires Versus Programs

SPEAKER_00 6:17

So it becomes this complex, where I think this is what really Brian's question is driving at. What aspect of our desires is that what we might call genuine, and where might it come from? And what aspect of our desires comes from programming, conditioning, yeah, social rules. And I suppose that like to just come back to it, I suppose the value of the question to me is that it makes us aware of where our behaviors come from. It makes us aware of our motivations, and it invites the opportunity that a higher aspect of ourselves, one that is here seeking something we might call meaning, has its own aspirations, separate from day-to-day survival. You know, and I talked about this the other day when I was talking about phone addiction. But it comes back, you know, some of the first people to really dig into, scientifically dig into the question of motivation, right? Behavior and motivation are the humanists, the psychologists from the 50s and 60s and 70s when they did their work. And everybody has heard, maybe not understood, but has heard about Abraham Maslow and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is just it, you know, it's it's stuck around for 75 years. People still refer to it, people still relate to it, you know. And although I I don't think in our modern society it's a good descriptor of what's really going on anymore, but it makes sense of our mind. You know, we talk about body mind, we talk about higher mind. These are artificial divisions. I mean, we are we are a higher mind integrated into a body mind, having an experience. And and, you know, there's probably half the people listening just automatically now just disagree with that statement. So we're back to this idea of words and rules, and how do we communicate this? If you had to distinguish between a higher desire and maybe a human program desire, how would you distinguish them?

SPEAKER_03 8:52

Well, I'll I'll give you what I do, and then I really liked what you mentioned earlier, which I hope you do come back to. But what I do, that is basically what you had mentioned in a different roundabout way, is I know this is a little morbid, but I think about, you know, deathbed scenario, looking back at my life, and I feel like my higher mind desires are those ones that I would look back and go, my gosh, I wish I did that. I do regret not doing that. And human desires, eh, maybe I don't regret, or I yeah, I don't regret not doing that.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

I wish I'd eaten more potato chips.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

We would only mean that symbolically.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how I sort of come around to okay, what do I genuinely feel I want to move towards? And then of course I have to overcome the body resistance to those higher mind desires, I think. You know, the pushback that says, you know, you're gonna you're not good enough to do that, you're not a you're not a writer, you're not of this, you're not of that. Who do you think you are? And that's not my higher mind.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Well, you know, that that's helpful just to think about, you know, to to give yourself the ability to differentiate now. Like desires is a great big word, and we can throw a lot of stuff into that basket. But now we can take some of the stuff out of that basket and start to distinguish between higher and lower desires. And maybe now we can, you know, start to develop a lexicon that's gonna help us identify that and communicate about it. So let's just, yeah, let's let's start there. There's human desires and there's higher mind desires. Let's start there. You said you wanted me to talk more about something.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

You mentioned something before we started the podcast about like human desires are when we say, I want this because or something.

The Deathbed Regret Test

The Simple Because Filter

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Well, it was just an idea that that came to me as a gift. You know, if we're looking for a fast way to differentiate between what is a human desire, a physical desire, a temporary cultural desire, and a higher desire. If you can say, you know, I desire potato chips because I'm hungry, I desire a Ferrari because I think it's really cool and I want to be cool. I desire a big house because all the best people have big houses. When you can when you can describe because, it's a pretty good read could pretty good indicator that there's programming there, there's cultural social guidance. Let's let's use a kind word. Programming is kind of harsh, but there's guidance, right? Yeah, you know, I was talking about this with a friend at the gym, and we were talking about how now at a certain age we look back on what we thought we were supposed to do, what we were supposed to have, what we were supposed to, you know, desire and aspire to. It all seems pretty concocted and not terribly worthwhile. And, you know, we were talking about how it's funny how when you live in a society and what we call the the dream starts to become a nightmare. It starts to become not accessible to a lot of people. You start to see it as a program and you start to question it. And as soon as you see alternatives, your mind expands into other possibilities. And sometimes those other possibilities are the result of frustration and inhibition. And sometimes they are the result of creativity, you know, being creative. Creative, you know, what necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. So when we are in a place where we need something and we can't come up with it, that's where our creativity will kick in. But we're running off on a on a tangent there. So, you know, if you're saying to yourself, I need a new car because, and it's all very much about physical things and human things and and practical things, that's that's certainly not going to be a higher mind desire. A higher mind desire when you say, Well, why do you want that?

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Yeah, you often hear people say, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I just feel and I and I think that's an important part for us. What you just said is an important part for us to remember for later. I just feel. I think that when we get to really understanding, when we start talking about an understanding of desires and that genuine need to act on our desire, that higher need, that abstracted need, right? There's a lot of feelings attached to that. There's a lot of emotional stimulus, there's a whole world of emotional guidance moving us towards things, inspiration and impulse, right? The the things that push us in directions that we might not otherwise go. So, yeah, how do you differentiate between need and desire? And some people might say desires are just the degree in which you need. I want can become I need when it's mandatory. But I'd rather see them as categories rather than degrees. I'm not so sure that that you can have degrees of higher desires. See, now our language gets so abstracted, Hillary's looking at me like, What?

SPEAKER_03 15:32

No, I I think I get it. Like your higher, you what you're correct me if I'm off base here, but like what you're kind of getting at is that your higher mind, your soul will say, in relation to Brian's tax. It's are you saying that it's like it doesn't want as a soul, we don't want something more than another thing. It's sort of a long, it's a everything's the same up there, around there, whatever. Out there. Like here, what the images that are coming to me is that in the material world, I'm a material girl.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

And sorry, songs today.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

So, like the the the Ferrari is better than the toothbrush, you know, like uh one, you know what I mean? Uh but to the soul mind, we are, you know, what we want to do at the soul level, there there's no hierarchy. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Well, I think that what you just used as an example is a really good way to begin differentiation, right? Toothbrush, I've come to believe that brushing my teeth multiple times a day provides me with maximum oral care. Yeah, and everybody should be doing it, notice the should. Everybody does it, notice the program, and I need a toothbrush to facilitate that program. And that's very physical, that's very cultural, that's very developed, and it's very specific here and now. And so to use the word desire for that, I don't know that that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

No, yeah, right.

Maslow And Human Motivation

SPEAKER_00 17:30

And contrast that against, you know, I want to climb Mount Everest, right? Which a lot of people would just say, Well, that's nuts. That's just that's just craziness, right? And other people would say, No, I just I feel the need to do it. So here we are using words, right? So let's let's go back to Maslow just for a minute, because I think it's a context that we could start with. You know, Maslow, you know, the humanists were very much interested in motivation and behavior. They wanted to explain why we behave the way we behave, they wanted to explain how and why we were motivated to behave the way we behave. And their basic thesis was needs. Human beings have needs. And I think, at least in the physical world, that makes a lot of sense, right? And so Maslow talked about a hierarchy of needs, that you moved up a ladder, that there were higher needs and there were lower needs, and that the lower needs, the base needs, were primary and they happened all the time, right away, needed to be addressed. And he called those physiological needs, right? The need for food, the need for water, right? The need to avoid pain, the need for shelter, the need for those basic things of survival. And physiological needs were at the bottom of his pyramid. There was a lot, they were at the bottom of a pyramid because there was lots of them. They were constant, they were everyday, they never really went away, and they were a really big part of our behavior because when a person is starving or when a person is in pain, they're going to be highly motivated to act, and they're going to respond to those needs. And all of their behaviors were a response to those needs at that level when they were experiencing those needs. And so, you know, we we seek to survive, we go out, get some food, get some water, right? Hide ourselves from the world. And that sort of leads us into our security needs. If I got through the last five minutes, what about the next five minutes? And what about tomorrow? And that's when we started to move towards the next level of needs, security needs, safety needs, right? And that's when we would build a house because it would be durable, and we would plant a garden because it would be durable, right? We would start to now consider tomorrow once today was being taken care of. So now our our needs are at another level, that that larger protection, that larger ongoing future. And so we would move into security needs. So our hierarchy gets bigger. Security needs are fewer, but they're they're very important. And it's once we become safe today and safe tomorrow that we can now allow ourselves to consider others. Right? Now others aren't just something to be afraid of. Now others are part of us. And the thing of it is, is and this is where I always point out you know, that the higher level needs help solve the lower level needs. And the lower level needs need to be met before the higher level needs can be addressed. And so you can see how creating a garden is now going to take care of your physiological needs into the future. And so your security needs are now sort of long-term physiological needs. And then the next level of needs becomes that belonging, that sense of being part of the whole. You know, the word we use a lot today is the word tribe, and I think that that has a lot of meaning because it's not just it's not just randomly belonging, it's about belonging to people like us, similarities, commonalities uh in so many dimensions.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Yeah.

Why Belonging Runs Modern Life

SPEAKER_00 21:43

But once we are sort of safe physically, we reach out to others. We're a social, social animal, right? We want to interact. We want to be accepted, right? Belonging is that. Sort of first level of acceptance. If we can be accepted by others, then maybe we can accept ourselves. But that sense of belonging is huge and drives most of us. You know, when you think about social programming, right? You know, the things that we do daily in our grooming and our you know, dress, choosing what to wear. Think of a poor teenager trying to choose what to wear and how much they feel is at stake in the choice of what they wear and how they put on their makeup and whether or not they have this kind of shoes or that kind of shoes, right? That sense of belonging as they become old enough to go out into the world and want to belong, because they've already belonged to a family. That's safe, that's warm, that's nice. But now I got to belong to a social milieu, for lack of a better phrase. And so now belonging, the things I need, I need to belong, and there are things I need to be able to belong. And there's behaviors I need to be able to belong, to be accepted, right? If I'm kind of wacky and I'm kind of weird, right? People don't want me around. And you know, all of a sudden it's like, well, what's going on? But if I really fit in and I really, you know, belong, that's when I can start to feel good about myself. And that's the next level needs. Esteem needs, right? Self-esteem. I feel good about me. When I really belong, and it's really interesting, right? Like I think that this is really meaningful stuff to examine because when we belong, that's when we can start to feel good about ourselves as an individual. And we're not able to move into that individuality until we've really got a strong sense that we belong. Or I think there's other conditions when we can't belong, we're almost forced into our self-esteem. But we'll that that's an aside. The point I'm trying to make is that as we go up this ladder from physiological needs to security needs to belonging needs to self-esteem needs, we can see how it's sort of natural that as when the lower level needs are taken care of, now there's room, now there's opportunity to move into that next level need. And then finally, at the top of this pyramid is sort of self-actualization, the idea that I am becoming who I'm meant to be, that I can aspire, that I can desire, that I can move into that. And we can certainly see the truth of that, right? Like if I'm hungry, there's not, I'm not making plans on climbing Mount Everest, right? If I am, if I'm homeless, you know, I'm not really thinking about, you know, writing a book, right? The things that I might want to do to self-actualize, to become truly everything I am and what I aspire to. In fact, I'm not sure that you can even know what you aspire to if these lower level needs aren't met. So this is a fast and dirty explanation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And then the question becomes well, where does desire fit in this, in this hierarchy? And I think when we're really, really hungry, we don't care what we eat, right? And it's only when we're moving up into a sense of self and a sense of belonging that we start to want our share of the pie, right? I want I want the bake piece of the pie because you know I feel good about me and I help bake the pie. And I got a million reasons to say I am belonging and am entitled to more than just belong. Anyway, what I'm driving at here is that this is just uh in the last 75 years, just a really foundational view of human behavior and human motivation. And it's really worth taking a look at because I think there's a lot of insights there. And I also think it's evolved. Our society has evolved. So, you know, I I think about what it means to be human in the world today, and I think of things like demographics, right? I think about how it was just 50 years ago that we were celebrating, that there was now 3 billion people on the planet, right? And in the last 50 years, we've added five billion people. The world has changed dramatically there. And I think that since the Second World War, our commercial systems have really taken over the way we take care of ourselves. Right? They, you know, would we love our farmers because now they're actually kind of rare. I mean, there was a time not long ago when everybody was a farmer of some sort. That the urban people were the ones really dependent on the rural living people. And so what's happened, I think, and this is just my goofy theory, is belonging has now become our base need. It's no longer physiological needs, although they are primary. We satisfy our physiological needs by belonging. We satisfy our security needs by belonging. You know, we will compromise our sense of self to belong, because that's how we survive. We don't survive in this world because we go out and we can grow food and make clothes and build shelter. Those are not skills the average person has. The skills the average person has is social skills, how to get along with others, how to be the cool kid, how to be the one that gets accepted and admired, and that's how you get the big piece of the pie. So it's it's really become primarily in a very advanced society, since people don't know how to plant a seed, and most people don't know how to bake bread, and most people don't have a clue on how to make a pair of shoes or what's necessary to be able to do it. Belonging has now sort of jumped to the way we satisfy those baser needs. And so I think that Maslow's theory, as much as it makes a lot of sense to us as humans, I'm not sure that it applies to a modern society. And if that's the case, if what we are every day is absolutely afraid we don't belong, absolutely afraid we're not doing it right, absolutely afraid that we could be rejected, absolutely afraid that we're not gonna make enough money, we're not gonna get the right job so that we can survive. I think that puts human beings in a pretty constant state of fear, and it puts us at the whim of others. Yeah, it gives rise to phenomena like bullying, right? Yeah, pecking orders, social orders. It changes then what we aspire to, what we desire, and it pushes us into facing those things before we've really even filled our bellies. I just babbled away, and you're just cloudy-eyed now.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

No, I was thinking, you know, we're we're not gonna go down this road, but it's a side note that I saw recently. Someone asked on a reel, I think it was on TikTok or something, you know, what would you do if you had universal basic income? And the feedback was enormous, they weren't expecting that kind of feedback, but everything was these desires that seemed reading through, seemed very higher mind desire. You know, creativity flourishing, you know. Anyway, what I find with that is that, yeah, like you said, our desires will change I think based on our our needs, you know, and if our basic needs aren't really met, then our higher mind desires are sort of like put on the back burner, you know, I can't I can't do that. I need to desire this or I need to desire that, or I need to do this. And then on top of that, I know I've got something going on in my brain here, but like on top of that, in your in your face all the time is you should desire this, right? And those I think then get in front of because of that sense of community, is before self-actualization. And the self-actualization is sort of part of the the higher mind desires, then we spend our time investing in those created desires for us so that we feel like we're part of a community.

Dodging Politics And Turning Inward

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Yeah, we can really dive into like it's really easy at this point, you know, just starting with our understanding so far. It's really easy to dive into social criticism, right? To dive into how our world works and doesn't work. I think what's more valuable right now is taking the insight from that and asking ourselves, how might I alleviate some of that pressure, some of that pain? How might I understand myself better? I think that's that's what's critical. What's critical is understanding yourself, understanding your mind. And there are so many ways to look at the concept of desires, and we're we're just scratching the surface at this point. I I find it very easy to run off on social criticism and political talk, but I believe that that is a red herring, and this is why. I believe it is a way of dividing people. I believe that social commentary, social thought, politics in that very general sense has become a tool that divides us, and we're being tricked into thinking it's a tool that will resolve the problems. If everybody would just think like me, the world would be fine. If everybody would just do what I tell you, we would be fine. And then it slides into blame. If it wasn't for those people, everything would be better, everything would be fine. I think if we pause and we just say, yeah, you know, the way things have evolved and where we are today is not working. And pause there. I don't need to blame anybody. I don't need to take sides, and I'm not going to engage this game of politics, which is really just the game of who gets to control who, right? Who gets to control our systems, who gets to use our systems. To see that as, you know, there's a gravity there, right? There's a there's a magnetism there. We're drawn into that because it's everywhere in our social mind. It's everywhere today. You can't get around the way people are politicizing everything. And our external world is so filled with conflict and conflict based in political ideas. And it's just a sucker punch for most of us because we fall into it quickly, and we want to pick sides, and we want to feel righteousness. And I believe in my heart that that's our need to belong.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Oh, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

That's our need to not feel alone.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Yeah.

Open Questions And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 34:50

That's our need to be able to feel good about ourselves because I belong to this group now, and this group, we're right, and we're righteous, and we're right-minded, and we have all the solutions, and everybody else is the problem. It's really great to project out of yourself that those people are the problem. And for me, it's about nobody's the problem, and nobody is the solution. And you need to understand what's going on for you inside your mind. To what degree have you been programmed, and to what degree do you have sort of innate characteristics? And I think that our conversation about desire can head in that direction. And and that's where the discovery, I think, the discovery for people to say, okay, well, let's let's start to recognize that I have base human needs and that the system itself has really taken me in a direction where that's that's difficult. And now I ask myself, and we've been given this one for a while now, you know, what do I want? What do I want in a society? What do I want society to look like? How do I want the world to operate? What's what's what's missing? What do we need more of, right? And then you then you turn internally and you say, okay, how do I generate that in me? You know, I I think that you know, we have ideas out there that matter to us, you know, be the change you want to see in the world, right? I think that's a neat idea, right? I think a neat idea is there can be no peace on the planet if there's no peace in the mind. It is the unpeacefulness in my mind that guides me to unpeaceful behaviors and expressions. So I think, you know, as we look at this topic and want to dig deeper, I think that the the value is understanding yourself. The value is looking at the programs that you don't have to have, understanding the difference between the needs and desires you have that are programmed into you and your actual needs and desires. And that starts to reveal what do I want in a more genuine way.

SPEAKER_03 37:27

No, I think it's a good start. And yeah, I think looking at it like what do I want really shines light on what maybe the higher mind wants, your soul mind, higher soul mind and what the body mind wants. So there was a couple questions in the chat, but I think we can get to them tomorrow. Are our desires internal or external? Or should I ask, do they originate or internally, or are they driven from external factors? And we'll address those tomorrow, but thank you for them. Everyone have a beautiful day. Thank you. Chat says, have a simply marvelous day. I love that. Thank you very much. Thanks for hanging out, and we will see you in later.