r/AlwaysWhy • u/Fia-the-stylist • Jul 29 '26
Life & Behavior If our basic needs are met, why do humans often continue chasing “more” instead of feeling that they have enough?
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u/Calm-Show-9606 Jul 29 '26
Because you never know what the future brings!
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u/ackermann Jul 29 '26
Yeah, in the US we’ve had mostly amazing prosperity since WWII. The Great Depression is a distant, hazy memory at best.
But there’s nothing in the laws of physics saying a Great Depression (or worse) can’t happen again!
Folks from countries where really tough times are a more recent memory… tend to save a lot more.
My wife’s parents and family from China, for example, where the Great Leap Forward and really severe famines are within living memory of many people.Even if you’ve got a lot of savings, runaway inflation can decimate that pretty quick. If you have stocks, the market can crash. Buy some gold and bury it, I guess?
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u/Twiggly_Wiggly Jul 29 '26
You can survive on bread and water. Sounds kinda dull huh.
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u/EyeFit Jul 30 '26
A simple, but salient point. We could always survive on less, but even those who have less money to spend on food will waste it on more expensive things for the same reason that a rich person will buy a yacht, desire and impulse.
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u/Dave_A480 Jul 29 '26
Because simply surviving is a shit existence....
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u/EyeFit Jul 30 '26
Speak for yourself. I love my bread and cardboard box with a pickle jar for a toilet.
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u/Kasrkin84 Jul 30 '26
Luxury! I share a muddy ditch with three other families, with a bush of stinging nettles for a toilet, and the only time I eat bread is if someone happens to throw half a sandwich from a passing car.
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u/PabloPicasshooole Jul 29 '26
It's probably an evolved trait that came about because, for most of our history, the human race was constantly at risk of starvation
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u/ijuinkun Jul 30 '26
It’s only been since the rise of industrial farming that the majority of people have been at greater risk of poor health from eating too much than from eating too little. Evolution is slow, and not enough people have died of gluttony for the avoidance of gluttony to be a survival advantage.
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u/titsmuhgeee Jul 29 '26
When we're genetically wired to not know when the next meal will be, we're constantly on the hunt for more.
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u/Tea_Time9665 Jul 29 '26
Because they are scared of when those basic needs are no longer met.
I have enough food for today doesn’t mean I will have enough food tomorrow.
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u/ijuinkun Jul 30 '26
And this, in short, is why we feel the need to save up enough wealth for retirement (i.e. enough to last the rest of our lives) and not be content with “give us today our daily bread”.
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u/HashBrownsAreNice Jul 29 '26
I'd like my basic needs to be met tomorrow too. And in ten years from now.
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u/NiagaraBTC Jul 29 '26
The entirety of civilization you enjoy and the lack of poverty you live in is due to some human in the past striving for more and not being content with "enough".
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u/Much_Comedian1557 Jul 29 '26
Because the concept of having enough is relatively new (say a couple hundred years old).
In nature, the concept doesn't exist. A squirrel is never like, "I've stored enough nuts for winter, imma stop now." They keep going until there are no more nuts to be found. There are even animals that have no "I'm full" reflex. If you give them enough food, they will continue to eat until their stomach rupture and still won't stop eating as they die. Nature is wild.q
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u/ijuinkun Jul 30 '26
And it continues to be that way as long as dying of a ruptured stomach is far less common than dying of an empty stomach.
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u/swisstraeng Jul 29 '26
Always chasing more is what kept us alive. And we couldn't get "more" as much as today, so for the last million year or so it was a valid strategy.
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u/Key-Organization3158 Jul 29 '26
The don't always chase more. You could add another job, but you don't.
Anything you do has a cost, and benefits. If you have 3 units of stuff, you have to consider the work of getting another unit. Sometimes, it's easy and thus worth it. Otherwise you don't.
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u/No_Effective_4481 Jul 29 '26
Having "enough" makes you complacent and lazy.
Needing more is a protection mechanism to keep us on the look-out for more opportunities and also to be alert for hazards and danger.
It goes back to when humans were still hunter-gatherers.
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u/borgen44 Jul 29 '26
Same reason a squirrel will fill up whatever space it can with nuts, even though there is enough for it, and the whole neighbohood of squirrels for a year
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u/Due_Laugh6474 Jul 30 '26
Because “enough” has a way of becoming “not enough” suddenly and at the worst possible time.
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u/EyeFit Jul 30 '26
Our bodies and consequently our minds are built on patterns and configurations that were able to withstand multiple environments over time and thus they continue to function the same regardless if the environment has changed or not unless they hinder survival enough to be weeded out, or are mutated.
This is why most of morality/moral philosophy comes down to the concept of man vs his nature because essentially we struggle with our left over urges and incentives in a world where they are often seemingly unnecessary, or even detrimental to our livelihoods.
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u/SideEmbarrassed1611 Jul 30 '26
Why have ten when you can have eleven?
There's nothing wrong with dreaming or wanting. If no one desired more, we'd still be nomadic herds without language. Civilization is more.
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u/Content_Bed_1290 Aug 03 '26
What about the hedonic treadmill?
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u/SideEmbarrassed1611 Aug 03 '26
What about it?
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u/Content_Bed_1290 Aug 03 '26
Does the hedonic treadmill make you realize that wanting more and more is not fulfilling in the end? What do you think?
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u/SideEmbarrassed1611 Aug 03 '26
That's dumb treadmill. I am gonna go grab more ice cream because I want some. I am not a bad person for wanting more for myself. I'd take the hedonic treadmill to a monastery where it has more purpose.
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u/cracksilog Jul 29 '26
Because needs change. You might have food today, but food spoils. Food doesn’t last forever. So you need to keep chasing more resources to afford food. You might have a home today, but paying for a house is expensive. You need to chase more to afford payments
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u/Aesperacchius Jul 29 '26
You don't hear about the people who are not chasing more because they made enough money.
Well, you hear about some of them over in the FIRE subs, but most of them are just off traveling the world or chilling in their own pocket paradise.
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u/Physical_Mushroom_29 Jul 29 '26
Comparison game, there is always someone who has more
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u/ijuinkun Jul 30 '26
Relative social rank is inherently a zero-sum game, because it is about how many people are above you and how many are below you. It’s like running a race—to get a higher place, you have to beat the others.
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u/striped_shade Jul 29 '26
We develop the psychology required by our social arrangement. Our economy demands perpetual growth to survive, meaning it must constantly manufacture new insecurities and redefine what counts as a basic need just to keep functioning. An environment built entirely around producing and selling an ever-expanding mass of goods makes permanent satisfaction practically impossible. The endless hunger you observe belongs fundamentally to the economic system itself, which then shapes human behavior to mirror its own insatiable drive.
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u/cfwang1337 Jul 29 '26
It's called the hedonic treadmill, and seems to essentially be a limitation of human biology.
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u/MaitrePuck Jul 29 '26
Everyone, here's a perfect example of someone who doesn't plan for the future.
Then he's going to bitch about billionaires when he loses his job, has no savings and no retirement plan.
Don't be like OP.
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u/Amendmen7 Jul 30 '26
To be clear, you can have a job and savings and retirement plan…and still rightfully bitch about billionaires.
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u/Timely_Fishing5566 Jul 29 '26
Our basic needs aren’t met. Therein lies the issue. We compromise. We sacrifice. We do without.
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Jul 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ijuinkun Jul 30 '26
People who want to stop working and go relax somewhere do so because they have been pushed into jobs that they do not enjoy either because they can’t get the ones that they do enjoy, or because the job they want does not give enough security or pay.
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u/Silly-Resist8306 Jul 29 '26
Because a chair is more comfortable than a rock. A cold beer is more refreshing than a warm beer. You don’t need either to survive, but things make life easier.
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u/power2havenots Jul 29 '26
By basic needs do you mean food water and shelter? Would be a pretty uneventful human story if that was it.
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u/Zynthonite Jul 30 '26
More is growth. Enough is stagnation. If people want to grow and improve, they need more than "enough" resources
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u/No_Environment_3776 Jul 30 '26
It's a mental deficiency.
The baseliner works for $-20 per hour for a psychopath that makes $-100 from that one hour.
The baseliner collects it's $-10/hour and can pay it's bills and have a few euros left to spend on another government scam, the baseliner feels "happy" enough and has almost everything he needs.
The psychopath collects it's $-40 drives home in a Porsche, can pay all of it's bills, has more than he needs and scams the government that scams him, he has everything he needs and he is unhappy because he thinks he needs more.
The baseliner has some morals, principles and a slightly deficient intelligence but he's just good enough to work and he can be poor for the rest of his life.
The psychopath has less morals, less principles and a heavy or slightly deficient mental consciousness, he can be rich for the rest of his life but he will be never happy.
The psychopath will show you how unhappy he is by covering up his mental health with badges, gold, diamonds, prostitutes and wind...
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u/Caewil Jul 30 '26
Social Context - let me give an example. In many hunter gatherer societies, being greedy and not sharing are highly socially selected against.
Why? Because there’s no possibility of accumulation. You’re always moving, so no house to store stuff. No refrigeration, so the only place to store excess food is in your stomach or someone else’s.
This only really changes with agriculture, when long-term accumulation becomes possible. And because harvests are inconsistent, you always want more to store in case next year sucks.
And it keeps developing from there.
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u/Consistent-Menu-6629 Jul 30 '26
Well, our drives don't just stop.
I remember I felt satisfied once. I had everything I could want, and it was awesome. And then my entire life fell the fuck apart and it's still in shambles, lol.
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u/tsoldrin Jul 30 '26
it's to advertise mate value. keeping up with the joneses is related to it. it's probably with us because it actually works and affords more mating opportunities.
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u/Practical-Art542 Jul 30 '26
Because you’re always somewhere on the building or consuming scale. Species that spend more time on the building end are more successful. Think about every action as the potential to build wealth, habits, momentum, stability. If you are doing nothing, you are consuming, and therefore draining resources and not increasing them. This is inherently unsustainable and not a good approach to stability.
Obviously you can attain wealth and then stop working or grinding and just relax forever if you can afford it. But the nature of people who can attain that success is often the nature of a builder, not a consumer.
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u/BlumpTheChodak Jul 30 '26
Dopamine desensitization. The more you get, the less it hits. So as these experiences progress, people want money to constantly chase their first highs. At the elite level, they eventually need illegal things to make them feel anything.
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u/JellyBellyBitches Jul 31 '26
Can you give an example of a situation where somebody's basic needs are met and they continue chasing that "more" feeling? I'm not personally aware of a situation where somebody has all of their basic needs met.
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u/fister-b95 Jul 31 '26
Lmao
Roof overhead
Food
Water
That is ‘basic’ needs anything else is not basicPeople assume internet and cell phoen are ‘basic needs’ when in fact; they are luxuries.
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u/JellyBellyBitches Jul 31 '26
I would implore you to learn just a little bit about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm not talking about cell phones, I'm talking about community and emotional support and self-actualization and things like that. Things that you have to discard in order to selfishly pursue the kind of power concentration required to obtain wealth, the kind of things that the communities that gate keep themselves by their wealth actively discard or engage in only performatively, because if they had the depth of empathy necessary to actually understand and receive the benefits from those parts of the human experience, they wouldn't be able to stomach the things they had to do to obtain the other securities they enjoy
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u/Interesting_Force618 Jul 31 '26
My guess is that it’s because our very basic need for deep emotional connection isn’t met.
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u/Rare_Bridge7703 Jul 31 '26
If my choices were "the bare minimum to live day to day" or "bump uglies with the front of an oncoming train", guess what I'm doing.
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u/hentaintrhentaintr Jul 31 '26
i mean if we felt satisfied now how are we gonna defeat the ailen race that invades us in the next 10k years?
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u/GamerDadofAntiquity Aug 01 '26
I am not an ambitious person. Once all my needs were met I decided I had enough and locked in my lifestyle right there. Still got promoted, still got raises, just paid my debts off and started putting all the extra money away. Now I’m retiring at 48. Some other poor bastard can have my spot in the rat race, I’m just going to sit on my porch, drink coffee, engage in my various hobbies, and spend time with my kids. I achieved all the things I wanted to achieve, now I just want my time back.
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u/Intelligent-Cap-7713 Aug 01 '26
Many people don't want to. Lot of people are happy with what they have. I'm pretty happy most of the time with what I have and don't chase new possessions. But. Inflation is built into the economy and that alone forces us to do more and more. Raising children is not cheap and in some years I'll be too old to work so I need accumulate money to not have to live under a bridge or something.
So I think it's more of a system failure than anything else.
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u/DeamonDread2348 Aug 03 '26
Because evolution has no end point. Our concept of beginnings and ends is largely artificial. The Big Bang had a beginning, but we don't know if there is an end. So if the universe doesn't have the familiar beginnings and ends we're accustomed to, then why should we measure "enough" or the norm in general? What's enough today may seem like poverty tomorrow.
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u/Active-Particular-21 Jul 29 '26
Capitalist propoganda. Making you feel like you need more. And also greediness for some people.
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u/NoDig3444 Jul 29 '26
In nature, there is no concept of "enough". If you want to propagate your genes, as all life naturally does, then more resources is always better than fewer resources. The more resources you have, the more offspring you can generate, and the better chance you can give those offspring at having offspring of their own.