alias: wants
Almost any operations are sanctioned if they help to serve up a “normal” product. It is difficult to behave sufficiently “normally” to get by, without using some such tricks. If one gives them up and still can’t get out of the social system that is largely built upon them, is perpetuated by them, and generates and perpetuates them in turn, one may still have to lie on a bed of nails. Difficult to pretend to enjoy it, once one has realized that it is not a bed of roses.
– The politics of family by R.D. Laing p. 32
Over the last while I’ve been tracking that “want” etymologically refers to a “lack” of something—same root as “wane“. So I’ve considered trying out other phrases, though none of them flow quite as well. “I desire” is too long and too connotated for something so basic and fundamental. A friend of mine, inspired by some psychology terminology, uses “like“; the shift from “I want” to “I would like” does something kind of interesting in terms of shifting to a sort of conditional conjugation—”if I had X, I would like it”. But it’s also cumbersome. Hmm.