I don’t really want to use a smartphone. I just turned it on there beside me to avoid having to think about the next word I wanted to write. I’m going to get up now and lock it away so that the next time I have the impulse I have to actually get up and go and get it rather than just act on it.

When I went there to put it in my locker I also shut it off. I need to shut it off so that I can think of it as unnecessary and inactive precisely when it is not serving me any active function—that is, as close as it comes to a single-use appliance.

What I want most of all to say is that I don’t own a smartphone. Failing that, what I want to say is that I don’t use a smartphone. Failing that, what I want to say is that, most of the time, or much of it, I don’t use a smartphone. But the most I can probably honestly say is that I don’t always use a smartphone.

The reader might opine one or more of the following:

1. There is no good reason not to use a smartphone, or at least, the positives overwhelmingly outweigh the negatives. Your ludditism vexes me.
2. Great… another larper telling everyone that smartphones aren’t necessary, and all the while he uses one himself. If you really don’t want it, just throw it in the river. No one’s forcing you.
3. I’m in the same boat. And the above two remarks are the same targeted, personal worries that come to me in the wee hours of the night, to which I have neither straightforward rebuff nor implementable solution.

Your ludditism vexes me #

1.1. Here are some things we need:

• Air.
• Food and water.
• Shelter.

1.2. ‘Need’ actually is a loaded word. There isn’t ’need’ without ’need for’. The above are things we need for survival. Maybe this is all that disambiguates ’need’ from ‘want’. I want [thing] because I need [thing] for [my desire].

1.3. The list (1) is fuzzy. I only need air with an oxygen concentration of about 10 percent (maybe I’m the poor guy from whom this infimum has been extracted). Maybe I don’t need protein or fat – just carbs with enough calories to keep me from the edge. Maybe it can be very, very dirty water. If the alternative is nothing then, yeah, I need it to survive a few days. If the alternative is what I have now, I can tell you I need it like a hole in the head.

1.4. Considerations such as these (ultimately, distinctions between kinds of need, and precisifications of lists of needs) might motivate Maslow’s famous hierarcy, the Unabomber’s manifesto, or Ligotti’s anti-natalism. They might lead to stoned depression and utilitarianism or religion. These will give a list of needs for a person or for persons. Maybe a correct list of needs is a super- or subset of this list or neither:

• Air with 23% oxygen concentration and no heavy metals or petrochemicals.
• Clean water with a few trace minerals; the daily allowance of macro- and micro-nutrients as recommended by some government.
• A comfortable home; a warm, dry bed with good back support; a space to commune; ample storage for both daily and emergency supplies.
• Friends and family.
• My friends and family.
• Something to be good at.
• Autonomy.
• A banking app.
• A way to get from A to B.

It doesn’t matter, for this discussion, what the list is or how it is determined. I mention the list only to sketch a picture of how needs, means, and ends relate (not straightforwardly!). I don’t wish to provide a procedure for determining what is a need.

1.5. Both means and ends can be kinds of need. Here is one line of thought you might have: “I need air to breathe. I need to breathe to live. I need to live to fulfil my self-actualisation needs. I need to fulfil my self-actualisation needs to be happy. What do I need to be happy for?” You might be worried about where this bottoms out, and, if it does bottom out, whether in the last analysis wants and needs are meaningless. You might call this nihilism.

1.6. In the same vein, there is another thought a person must have had, or something like it: " I need to fight the enemy (and win) to survive. To fight the enemy (and win), I need to create weapons." The person works on the weapons, and the enemy does not come. The person continues to work on the weapons for many years, and they get a feel for the tricks of it. Their society has many resources and time, and betwen meals and sleep and bureaucracy they have ample time to be bored and tunnel into the many niches of their craft with a singular devotion. There has been peace as long as can be remembered. And now the thought is: “I need to create beautiful weapons to be happy. What do I need to be happy for?” Consider ornamental weaponry used in the rituals of some (all?) peoples. Consider ‘gun nuts’. Consider classical mechanics and the application of the theory of gravitation to ballistics. Consider the war-drive.

1.7. The same thing can be said of many needs. When an object can be matched one-to-one to a need, it is harder to see the point of the thoughts in (1.5) and (1.6). To have the object is to know that each step of the thought is a paraphrase, rather than terms denoting separate things called means and ends.

1.8. Still this is slippery. I am talking about objects as we experience them. These may not correspond one-to-one with things in the real world, of course. Let me take it that ‘objects’ are defined by their ability to fulfil a need. This is the intuition behind functionalism, but I am not trying here to defend a thesis of metaphysics. Let what exists simpliciter be things; but let objects denote the kinds of things which we suppose to exist based on their ability to fulfil needs.

Then

9. Slippery too is the

2. No one’s forcing you #

3. I’m in the same boat #